Survival Schools: The American Indian Movement and Community Education in the Twin Cities

Julie L. Davis, Survival Schools: The American Indian Movement and Community Education in the Twin Cities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. 328 pages. ISBN 978-0-8166-7429-9. $22.95 USD paperback.What might have motivated a group of Indian people in 1972 to create their own independent schools in the heart of the Twin Cities? American historian Julie Davis sought the answer to this question in her quest to understand the American Indian Movement (AIM) and its place in the history of Native American activism in education. In recounting the story of the Heart of the Earth school in Minneapolis and the Red School House in St. Paul, the author reminds us that AIM, then and now, is about more than political protest: the survival school initiative evolved directly out of AIM's local activism in matters of education, child welfare, and juvenile justice.For readers like myself who began reading the book with little knowledge of AIM Davis gives a clear synopsis of its history. Organized in Minneapolis in July 1968 by local Indian people fed up with racism, discrimination, and socioeconomic disparities, AIM started as a nexus of experiences that developed and converged over time. If diverse in origin, the collective always sought to secure and expand Native American civil rights, of which access to culturally-relevant education, of course, is one.In postwar Minneapolis and St. Paul, both stable employment and decent housing became increasingly scarce for Indian people. In response, AIM leaders developed an ideology stressing pride in Indian heritage. If the challenges of contemporary urban life stemmed from cultural loss, Native peoples' cultural persistence was essential to their survival. Early AIM leaders believed that public schools could not offer Indian children identity and pride in their cultural heritage. Envisioning a different kind of education that could, led some AIM people to establish the alternative Heart of the Earth and the Red School House.Davis is thorough and open about her bias as a researcher. She tells us she was not raised as a Native person and does not write as an Indigenous scholar. She did, however, grow up on the Leech Lake reservation and had many friends who were Ojibwe people. Davis aceveryone knowledges that the story she tells is her version of the schools' history, a version shaped by the environment in which she grew up.At times the stories seem repetitive, and yet Davis stays true to her goal to listen to Indigenous people talk about their experiences. Her version of the school's history and her attempts to interpret faithfully may have led to a desire to thread many similar stories together. The voices represented are consistent in their message. For young people labeled as troublemakers, who may not have experienced academic success in traditional educational environments, the survival school's unconventional structure was a radical and potentially empowering environment. …

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