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. 307 pp. Paper, $22.95.

Nicholas A. Timmerman, Mississippi State University

The popular narrative of the American Indian Movement (aim) focuses on the glorified and controversial militant actions of the organization between 1968 and 1973. However, Julie L. Davis argues that the influence of aim extends well beyond the perceived decline in 1973 by successfully demonstrating that the American Indian Movement was not entirely focused on large political demonstrations. Davis's work examines the survival schools established by aim in the Twin Cities of Minnesota in the early 1970s and their connection to preserving American Indian culture through educational self-determination. According to Davis, aim also concentrated on local community issues for American Indians in Minneapolis and St. Paul. By examining aim through the lens of the survival schools, Davis reveals the concern of parents and community activists in preserving American Indian languages, culture, spirituality, and identity.

Davis constructs her argument around the history and actors involved with establishing separate American Indian educational institutions from the public schools of the Twin Cities. The long history of American Indians in the upper Midwest greatly influenced aim and its development of the survival schools. Many of aim's members were victims of the boarding school era and actively living through what Davis termed "American settler colonialism," which Davis defines as the work of...