Description:
Angelle A. Khachadoorian's Inside the Eagle's Head offers a compelling ethnographic portrait of the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI), a unique educational institution at the crossroads of tribal autonomy and federal oversight. Drawing on nearly a decade of immersive fieldwork and student interviews, Khachadoorian reveals how Native students navigate the tensions between bureaucratic control and cultural identity, crafting personal meanings within a hybridized college environment. This insightful study sheds light on the lived realities of American Indian education and the resilience of Indigenous agency.
Review Quotes: "A solid piece of ethnographic research based upon extended participant-observation, survey questionnaires, key-informant interviews, and focus groups. Beyond its value for American Indian studies, the work makes important contributions to educational anthropology generally."
--J. Anthony Paredes, coeditor of Anthropologists and Indians in the New South