Sherman Institute Research Articles

Architectures of Coloniality

The Owens Valley Paiute, traditional caretakers of the “Land of Flowing Water,” face continued threats to their livelihood due to decades of water extraction from the region by the city of Los Angeles. The precarious state of Indigenous lands and peoples across California is entangled with historical processes supported by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the off-reservation boarding school system. During the first half of the twentieth century, Paiute, Mission Indian and other Indigenous youth were sent to the Sherman Institute in Riverside, the last of twenty-five boarding schools to be built and operated by the BIA. Accompanying its Mission Revival style façade and the associated narratives of racial uplift, the school aimed to distance students from tribal affiliations, teaching them Anglo, heteropatriarchal forms of domesticity, and training them to become wage laborers in the farming, construction, and domestic service trades. After graduation, many students were employed by the federal government to convert tribal lands to agricultural plots and private property, while many others found low-wage, unskilled positions in the building and maintenance of Southern California’s expanding metropolis. This paper investigates the role of the Sherman Institute in the exploitation of Indigenous lands and labor for regional development, and therefore, the production of racialized precarity for Indigenous peoples. By engaging with Indigenous epistemologies, the paper works to stretch the limits of history/theory, to expose systems of confinement for their racialized underpinnings, and to introduce more fluid conceptions of land, property, and personhood.

Colonized through Art: American Indian Schools and Art Education, 1889–1915 by Marinella Lentis

Reviewed by: Colonized through Art: American Indian Schools and Art Education, 1889–1915 by Marinella Lentis Mackenzie J. Cory Colonized through Art: American Indian Schools and Art Education, 1889–1915. By Marinella Lentis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. xxvii + 421 pp. Marinella Lentis's Colonized through Art examines how local and federal policy decisions shaped the implementation of art education in Native American boarding schools across the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the core of her analysis is Jean and John Comaroff's conception of colonization as both a physical and mental imposition, supported by Gramsci's idea of cultural hegemony, the soft policies used to maintain control across generations without physical violence. This "colonization of consciousness" influenced the actions of boarding school administrators as they sought to create a serving class of Indigenous workers with skills learned in art classrooms (xxi). Throughout the volume, Lentis also relies on Lomawaima and McCarty's "safety zone" to describe how education incorporating traditional Indigenous arts fell in and out of fashion (xxii). This inclusion serves as the keystone explaining the seemingly contradictory policies present in boarding schools and constitutes one of the most groundbreaking aspects of the volume. The volume's chapters first present an overview of the current research regarding art education and Native boarding school policies before demonstrating how these policies were actually implemented at two institutions. These case studies are followed by a broader look at how the works produced by Native students were viewed by audiences from pedagogical backgrounds and the general public, both nationally and internationally. Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the development of art education pedagogy for the lower classes during the nineteenth century. Lentis argues that these efforts to develop the morality and character of children of rural and immigrant workers directly influenced boarding school policies in the last twenty [End Page 322] years of the nineteenth century. Chapter 2 presents a general discussion of how pedagogical models affected boarding school arts education during this time, strengthening Lentis's argument and setting the groundwork for the rest of the volume. These chapters provide excellent overviews of art education both broadly and in the boarding schools and allow scholars lacking familiarity with either field to form an understanding of Lentis's argument. Chapter 3 examines how the beliefs of individual boarding school superintendents influenced the policies identified in the preceding chapter. Though the ultimate goal of the superintendents was to educate Native youth into becoming productive members of industrial society, Lentis discerns considerable disagreement between administrators' opinions of the economic role of art in Native communities, the danger of preserving Native artistic motifs, and the risk of over-homogenization of Native youth. In particular, this chapter does an excellent job of demonstrating how the whiplash between superintendents with relatively short tenures and widely differing pedagogies opened the door for more local control, which is confirmed in the following two chapters. Chapters 4 and 5 present case studies of how these policies were implemented in the Albuquerque Indian School and Sherman Institute, respectively. Though it would be expected that the Albuquerque Indian School would encourage a strong arts program, given the emergence of a local Native art scene in the late nineteenth century, local administrators often defied federal calls for just that due to their belief that Native artisans were preventing the community from integrating into industrial American culture. Conversely, the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, encouraged art education, going so far as to include regional Native motifs in their lessons and encouraging performance of indigeneity for the local community and tourists. In both cases, Lentis clearly shows the influence of local administrators on their school's art education as well as the impact these choices had on other boarding schools in the region and nationally. Chapter 6 discusses the inclusion of artwork created by boarding school students at international fairs. The artworks and their creators were instrumental in producing a narrative of the United States' success in taming the North American interior while simultaneously allowing foreign visitors to experience the Other. During the early twentieth century, this belief shifted towards one of Native artwork as an essential method...

To (L)Earn Their Place in Society: Student Scrip and a Capitalist Education at Sherman Institute

In the late nineteenth century, off-reservation boarding schools became the instrument of choice for the United States federal government to assimilate Indigenous communities. By separating Native American children from their families and placing them in government-operated schools, white officials hoped to transform them culturally, politically, and economically. Although the system was reformed in the early 1930s, boarding schools continued to promote assimilation for several more decades. In fact, white officials even developed new methods to assimilate young Native Americans, including the use of substitute currency, or scrip, as a form of economic training. One of the first off-reservation schools to adopt a scrip system was Sherman Institute in Riverside, California. In November of 1933, school administrators introduced a system of paper money to teach the school’s Native American pupils about life in a capitalist society. Through an analysis of scrip, this essay explores what Indigenous students at Sherman Institute learned about capitalism during the 1930s. Specifically, the article analyzes how the scrip system replicated the US economy with individual consumption at its center in an effort to communicate specific values, and how Indigenous students navigated said system. Thus, this essay argues that administrators at Sherman Institute used scrip to transform school life in a flawed attempt to present an idealized form of consumption-based capitalism to young Native Americans.

A Dissonant Education: Marching Bands and Indigenous Musical Traditions at Sherman Institute, 1901–1940

At the end of the nineteenth century, the US government established a system of off-reservation boarding schools in an effort to assimilate Indigenous youth into the American nation-state. Music emerged as one of the most enduring strategies that these schools employed to reshape the cultural sensibilities of young Native Americans. A lively music culture could be found, for instance, at Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, which was home to a marching band and dozens of other music groups throughout its history. Although school officials created these institutions for the purposes of assimilation and cultural genocide, this music program often had a more ambiguous place in the lives of students. To understand the role of music within Sherman Institute during the early twentieth century, this article examines the school’s marching band and the place of Indigenous cultural expression. While the school had students march to the beat of civilization, young Native Americans found various strategies to combat assimilation using the same instruments. At the same time, they also used the cultures of their communities to navigate life in an environment that the government created to destroy those very cultures.

Profit and Loss: ‘Indian’ Art at Sherman Institute, a Native American Off-Reservation Boarding School

Abstract In the early twentieth century, the US’s federal policies regarding the production of Native American art in off-reservation Indian boarding schools shifted from suppression to active encouragement. Seen as a path to economic stability, school administrators pushed their students to capitalize on the artistic traditions of Native cultures, without acknowledging or valuing these traditions as part of an extensive body of Indigenous knowledge. Although this push contributed to the retention of some cultural practices, administrators, teachers, and other members of the local community often exploited the students’ talents to make a profit. At Sherman Institute (now Sherman Indian High School) in Riverside, California, Native students of today are free to creatively express their own cultures in ways that strengthen their communities and promote tribal sovereignty. In this article, I will argue that the art program at Sherman Institute served to extinguish Indigenous knowledge and expertise as expressed through culturally specific weaving practices.

Beyond School Walls: Indigenous Mobility at Sherman Institute

This article examines the centrality of mobility within student experiences at Sherman Institute, a federal Indian boarding school in Riverside, California. Archival information and autobiographical accounts show that during the early twentieth century, students at Sherman moved between their campus and surrounding cities and towns to work odd jobs, take classes at local colleges and universities, and socialize. Narratives from beyond the walls of Sherman Institute join a growing chorus of scholarly voices that push back against popular and scholarly depictions of Indigenous people during the so called Reservation Era, which have often painted Native communities as isolated within the confines of boarding schools and reservations, frozen in time and space. I argue that Native people at Sherman Institute and elsewhere made mobility a central component of their lives and cultures as they faced head-on the challenges of life at a boarding school. Exploration of this student mobility reveals new layers of Indigenous agency within boarding school experiences and exposes yet-unexplored forms of neglect by administrators who failed to protect students from the dangers they experienced beyond the walls of Sherman Institute.

Revisiting the Hopi Boarding School Experience at Sherman Institute and the Process of Making Research Meaningful to Community

In the early 1900s, U.S. government officials began sending Hopi pupils from northeastern Arizona to Sherman Institute, an off-reservation Indian boarding school in Riverside, California. At Sherman, the Hopi pupils received instruction in several disciplines and occupations, including language arts, math, industrial work, and domestic training. While the author of this essay has published extensively on Hopis at Sherman in the past, he uses this opportunity to revisit the topic by describing the path he took to study this history in graduate school. Relying on personal recollections, secondary sources, historical newspaper accounts, and interviews he conducted with former Hopi students, the author highlights the ways his research moved beyond the archive and into village communities to create a history that was both useful and meaningful for his people.

Revisiting the Hopi Boarding School Experience at Sherman Institute and the Process of Making Research Meaningful to Community

Revisiting the Hopi Boarding School Experience at Sherman Institute and the Process of Making Research Meaningful to Community

Kevin Whalen , Native Students at Work: American Indian Labor and Sherman Institute's Outing Program, 1900–1945. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016. 224 pp.

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Indian School, Company Town

During the early twentieth century, administrators at Sherman Institute, a federal Indian boarding school in Riverside, California, sent hundreds of students to work at Fontana Farms, a Southern California mega-ranch. Such work, they argued, would inculcate students with values of thrift and hard work, making them more like white, Protestant Americans. At Fontana, students faced low pay, racial discrimination, and difficult working conditions. Yet, when wage labor proved scarce on home reservations, many engaged the outing system with alacrity. In doing so, they moved beyond the spatial boundaries of the boarding school as historians have imagined it, and they used a program designed to erase native identities in order to carry their cultures forward into the twentieth century.

Book Review: Trafzer, Gilbert, and Sisquoc, eds., The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute, by Victoria K. Haskins

Book Review: Trafzer, Gilbert, and Sisquoc, eds., The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute, by Victoria K. Haskins

The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute

Book Review| January 01 2014 The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute. Edited by Trafzer, Clifford E., Gilbert, Matthew Sakiestewa, and Sisquoc, Lorene. (Corvallis: Oregon State University, 2012. viii + 224 pp., preface, introduction, illustrations, notes, index. $24.95 paper.) Steve Amerman Steve Amerman Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ethnohistory (2014) 61 (1): 204–205. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-2376168 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Steve Amerman; The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute. Ethnohistory 1 January 2014; 61 (1): 204–205. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-2376168 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsEthnohistory Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2014 by American Society for Ethnohistory2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Fighting a Two-Front War: Dr. Albert D. Lake, Thomas Indian School Physician, 1880–1922

New York History Summer 2014© 2014 by The New York State Historical Association 408 Fighting a Two-Front War: Dr. Albert D. Lake, Thomas Indian School Physician, 1880–1922 Laurence Marc Hauptman, SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History Amajor omission from the literature on Native American health in New York is an analysis of the role of state-appointed physicians in the state’s Indian schools. Records held by the New York State Archives and New York State Library offer a valuable picture of the medical practice of an extraordinary physician among the Iroquois [Hodinöhsö:ni’] in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From 1880 until 1922, Albert D. Lake attended to the medical care of children and adolescents at the state-administered Thomas Asylum for Orphan and Destitute Indians. This institution, which was renamed the Thomas Indian School in Figure 1. Dr. Albert D. Lake (1846–1923). Lake was the physician at the Thomas Asylum and School and health care advocate for the Senecas and other Hodinöhsö:ni’ from 1880 until 1922. New York State Archives. Hauptman Dr. Albert D. Lake, Thomas Indian School Physician, 1880–1922 409 1905, was located at the center of the Seneca Nation’s Cattaraugus Indian Reservation in western New York. Dr. Lake served the Native American children residing at the institution for over forty years. Over the course of his career, he fought a two-front war: first against the ever-present contagions that beset children at the school; and second, against state legislative inertia and bureaucratic resistance to supporting improvements in Indian health care delivery. Despite the frustrations caused by these two struggles, Lake made major contributions, which in some instances far outdistanced those of his medical contemporaries in the federal boarding school system.1 1. The best study of federal Indian health policies in this period is Diane T. Putney, “Fighting the Scourge; American Indian Morbidity and Federal Policy, 1897–1928,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Marquette University, 1980); see also David H. DeJong, “If You Knew the Conditions”: A Chronicle of the Indian Medical Service and American Indian Health Care, 1908–1955 (New York: Lexington Books, Rowman and Figure 2. The Cattaraugus Reservation in 1890. From: Thomas Donaldson, Comp., The Six Nations of New York. Extra Census Bulletin for the Eleventh Census of the United States, 1890. Washington, D.C.: United States Census Printing Office, 1892. 410 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY While federal Indian health policies have long been the focus of scholars , the history of medical care provided to Native Americans by New York State has yet to be written.2 The Thomas Asylum and School never operated as a federal institution, although at times it received a small allocation from Washington in its stated educational mission to bring “civilization” to the Indians. In the 1870s, the federal government hired doctors to vaccinate the Senecas, temporarily appointed the agency physician , and opened short-lived, underfunded, and undermanned infirmaries. Nevertheless, Washington officials almost entirely deferred to Albany in providing medical care to Native American communities. Indeed, the Indian Health Service (IHS), which was founded as the Indian Medical Service in 1908, did not enter the picture of providing health care delivery in the state until the Seneca Nation of Indians successfully lobbied for and secured these federal services in 1976. Long before Hodinöhsö:ni children were sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, Native American students in New York were being instructed in district schools operated and administered by state administrators. The first state district schools were established in 1846. From the mid 1850s onward, orphaned and impoverished Hodinöhsö:ni, as well as a few Shinnecock children from Long Island, were sent to reside at and attend the Thomas Asylum and School. Still other children were Littlefield, 2008), 1–58. For health concerns and policies in the federal Indian boarding school system in this era, see Jean A. Keller, Empty Beds: Indian Student Health at Sherman Institute, 1902–1922 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2002); David H. DeJong, “‘Unless They are Kept Alive’: Federal Indian Schools and Student Health, 1878–1918,” American Indian Quarterly 31 (Spring, 2007): 256–282; David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction...

The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute. Edited by Clifford E. Trafzer, Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, and Lorene Sisquoc. (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2012. viii + 224 pp. Illustrations, table, notes, index. $24.95, paper.)

<b><i>The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute</i></b>. Edited by Clifford E. Trafzer, Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, and Lorene Sisquoc. (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2012. viii + 224 pp. Illustrations, table, notes, index. $24.95, paper.)

Finding the Balance

Since mid-1990s, scholars of Indian education have placed increasing emphasis on indigenous approaches to federal Indian boarding schools during the early 20th century. Where earlier studies emphasized the design and operation of boarding schools, more recent literature often examines how Native students, families, and communities sometimes used the schools to access employment, offset financial hardship, and gain new skills and perspectives. To some, scholarly emphasis on “the brighter side of boarding schools” covers over the hardship and loss brought about by institutions created to eradicate Native American cultures and identities. In this article, I address a central question: How can scholars of Indian education illuminate Native approaches to boarding schools without underplaying the tremendous cultural loss they inflicted on indigenous communities? Drawing on the expansive secondary literature on federal Indian education and primary source documents from Sherman Institute, a federal Indian boarding school in Riverside, California, I argue that studies of Indian education can benefit from deeper consideration of the concept of “cultural genocide” and careful attention to Native voices of the past and present.

Education beyond the Mesas: Hopi Students at Sherman Institute, 1902–1929

Book Review| April 01 2013 Education beyond the Mesas: Hopi Students at Sherman Institute, 1902–1929 Education beyond the Mesas: Hopi Students at Sherman Institute, 1902–1929. By Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. 272 pp. Appendix. $40 (cloth). Kim Cary Warren Kim Cary Warren Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2013) 32 (3): 111–113. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.32.3.0111 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Kim Cary Warren; Education beyond the Mesas: Hopi Students at Sherman Institute, 1902–1929. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2013; 32 (3): 111–113. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.32.3.0111 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2013 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2013 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Education beyond the Mesas: Hopi Students at Sherman Institute , 1902-1929 (review)

Reviewed by: Education beyond the Mesas: Hopi Students at Sherman Institute, 1902-1929 Roger L. Nichols Education beyond the Mesas: Hopi Students at Sherman Institute, 1902-1929. By Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. Pp. 272. Notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9780803216226, $40.00 cloth.) This modest study of Hopi students' experiences with Anglo-American boarding schools joins the growing list of books that examine the U.S. program of forced Indian detribalization and acculturation through education. It traces tribal experiences with American actions from the 1882 creation of the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona through the establishment and operation of the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, a generation later. Although more isolated from most of late nineteenth-century American society than most tribal people, the mesa dwellers could not avoid the government's determination to bring them into the national mainstream. Their early confrontations with federal troops and the imprisonment of some village leaders at Alcatraz prison during the 1880s and 1890s persuaded them to end resistance to U.S. demands. The author's central thesis is that by using the concept of "turning the power," the Hopi sought to use the knowledge and skills acquired at Anglo schools to strengthen and protect their tribal culture. In using this approach he makes clear that most, if not all, Hopi opposed sending their children to BIA schools. Yet the issue led to the Orayvi Split, which divided the villagers into two distinct groups: those willing to accommodate white demands and those adamantly opposed to them. Labeled as "friendlies" and "hostiles" by local officials, the author uses "accommodators" and "resistors" to place his analysis in a Hopi framework. This intra-tribal focus works well early in the narrative, but slips from view as the story develops. After the first chapter that presents tribal resistance to the new school program, the emphasis turns to the experiences of village families and their children with its operations. The analysis of the accommodationists' role in accepting and using the California school places their early actions clearly within Hopi tradition. Their history included stories of repeated migrations during which they gathered knowledge and skills that they brought back to their desert home. Author Gilbert states that they expected similar benefits from education at Sherman Institute. To gain that, Tawaquaptewa, one of the village leaders, and his family accompanied the first large contingent of Hopi students to Sherman. There, acting in a traditional leadership role, he encouraged the students to learn, helped them practice traditional songs and dances, and led them in using their tribal language. While some Indian adults may have attended other boarding schools with children from their villages, his actions appear to have been distinct. The rest of the narrative follows a topical-chronological path as it presents students' experiences with academics, homesickness, physical ailments, personal accomplishments and feelings about their time at Sherman. These echo similar treatment and responses to Indian boarding schools across the country. The author's research is thorough. He relates this analysis to existing studies [End Page 95] of federal acculturative programs, individual tribal experiences and other Indian boarding schools. His thesis suggests that he will show how Hopi students returning from Sherman used their new-found knowledge to strengthen tribal culture, but the narrative gives little evidence to support his claim. Careful readers might look for some more data about how many Hopi students attended at any one time, or about the differences in how children from accommodating or resisting families responded to time at Sherman. They would be more impressed had it offered any examples of what made Sherman unique, or even substantially different from other similar schools. One hopes that the author will examine these issues in his forthcoming work. Roger L. Nichols University of Arizona Copyright © 2012 The Texas State Historical Association

Labored Learning: The Outing System at Sherman Institute, 1902-1930

J after sunset on June 5, 1925, Dick Foinill jumped down from the bed of an oversized truck and touched his feet to the dusty Kansas soil for the first time. Foinill and twenty-four Navajos from near Tuba City, Arizona, had just completed a long journey crowded shoulder to shoulder into the bed of a pickup. For five days and four nights, they rode northeast from Tuba City through the mountains and high deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. After arriving on the high plains of Kansas, Foinill and his companions worked there for two months. Ten hours a day, they stooped in the dreadful Kansas heat and humidity, topping and harvesting sugar beets. The labor would be performed under the auspices of the “outing program” of Sherman Institute, an Indian boarding school in Riverside, California.1 According to reformers, bureaucrats, and Indian schools administrators, such work would inculcate young Indians with the prerequisite qualities of racial “uplift”: thrift, economy, and a willingness to work. All of this would be done for the wages of a migrant laborer. Torturously long days, shoddy living quarters, and inadequate food made employer-run living quarters hellish places on other farms that utilized migrant labor. This one would likely be much the same.2 Despite these looming challenges, Foinill awoke on his first morning in Kansas filled with excitement rather than dread. Before trudging out to the fields for the first time, he wrote a letter to his love interest back at Sherman

Hopi Footraces and American Marathons, 1912–1930

The Hopi people of northeastern Arizona have always been known as great long distance runners. This article examines Hopi runners at Sherman Institute, an off-reservation Indian boarding school in Riverside, California. When Hopis succeeded on the Sherman Institute crosscountry team between 1912 and 1930, their cultural identities challenged white American perceptions of modernity and placed them in a context that had national and international dimensions. These dimensions linked Hopi runners to other athletes from different parts of the world, including Ireland and Japan, and they caused non-Natives to reevaluate their understandings of sports, nationhood, and the cultures of American Indian people. Furthermore, this article examines Hopi agency, and the complex and various ways Hopi runners navigated between tribal dynamics, school loyalties, and a country that closely associated sports with U.S. nationalism. It calls attention to certain cultural philosophies of running that connected Hopi runners to their village communities, and the internal and external forces that strained these ties when Hopis competed in national and international running events.

Viola Martinez, California Paiute: Living in Two Worlds by Viola Martinez, Diana Myers Bahr

Viola Martinez, California Paiute: Living inTwoWorlds By Diana Myers Bahr University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2003. Illustrations, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 211 pages. $29.95 cloth. Reviewed byAlanna Kathleen Brown Montana State University-Bozeman VIOLA MARTINEZ, CALIFORNIA PAIUTE IS an engagingwork, first becauseMartinez's life is so interestingand second because thewriter, Diana Meyers Bahr, is consciously working on the evolution of an autobiography/biography format that isbiculturally sensitive.The key to both the format and Martinez's life lies in the subtitle,Living inTwoWorlds. Let us begin with Bahr's choices to contextualize and forefront Viola Martinez's voice. As a project associate for theOral History Program at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles, Bahr is aware that oral representations carry lessweight than the written record inEuro-American culture. She is also aware thatthe written record can solidifythe flimsy and the careless, and thatboth oral and written formsof communication have inherent flaws and essentialworth. Bahr chooses to forefront Martinez's voice and perceptions while drawing extensively on historical records and photography, her own as well as others', to adhere a life to a place and time. She also includes a "literature review," an addendum that discusses fourteen collabora tions on twentieth-century Native women's lives, summarizing key elements of those women's storieswhile discussing theapproaches of other editors to illustrate the difficultiesof doing bi culturalwork. For Bahr, what matters most is communicating thevitality and understanding of thekey figure. She also insistson theneed to differentiate the collaborator from the subject in thepresentation of thematerial. Such work brings at leasttwoperspectives toa life, andmore ifother interviewees are included. To readViola Martinez is to see the cutting edge of an evolv ingformasworks in cultural studies,American pluralism, and feminist theory,affects thepre sentation ofmultiethnic lifereflections. The primary reason to read this text is the fascinating lifeofViola Martinez herself.Mar tinezdoes carefullynote that"these are not just my childhood memories but also recollections ofwhat people have toldme" (p. 4). Those with tribal consciousness always speak to represent their communities. While theywill point out tragicparadoxes, theytelltheirstorieson behalf of thosewho constantlyface the threatof erasure by Euro-American culture. Born in 1917, the tenthchildof amother who died inthe infamous 1918influenza epidemic,Martinez was raised by hermother's sister in traditionalways but also in extreme poverty. Her uncles decided to sendMartinez, at age ten, to the Sherman Institute Federal Indian Boarding School inRiverside, California. Chap ter3 isfilledwith anecdotes about being pun ished forspeaking her language and shamed for being Indian, training as a domestic servant, and being indoctrinated intoChristianity. The real horror inher storyisthe theft of Indian children eitherphysically,aswhen tourists just took away her beautiful sister, Alice, or psychologically, as when Martinez discovered that "she no longer quite fitin Owens Valley, nor did shefitcomfort ably inRiverside. Shewas on the margin of each society,partly in and partly out" (p. 67). Martinez's response was to master English, tobe one of thefirstthree Indian girls to request entrance intoRiverside PolytechnicHigh School, to go on to junior college, and ultimately to achieve a teaching credentialfrom Santa Barbara StateCollege in 1939,an amazing lifetrajectory for an Indian of that time. Fiftyyears later,as Bahr points out, only sixtyout of one hundred Indian students complete high school, and only i64 OHQ vol. 106, no. 1 threeout of one hundred Indians achieve a col legedegree. Martinez's adult life has been justas surpris ing. In 1940, allotments opened up forPaiutes inOwens Valley, and Martinez returnedwith her sisterand went into social servicework be cause "thepeople don'twant an Indian teaching white students" (p. 87). In the face of ongoing racism, Martinez became an office manager for the Indian Field Service Agency, managed a housing project for theDepartment of Labor with white workers under her supervision, and became a counselor at the Japanese Internment Camp atManzanar. Martinez's comments on the similaritiesbetween theBIA-run Indian schools and the Japanese intermentcamps of World War II aswell as Bahr's informativehistorical com mentary insightfullyexpose the interlinkingof race policies inAmerica. After raising her children, Martinez did become a teacher in 1968. She was an innovator in culturally pluralistic teachingmethods, and became a driving forcewithin theAmerican Indian Education Commission and theNative American Ministry of Southern California for the Presbyterian Church...