The aim of this study was to test a hypothesis derived from the Cognitive Clarity Theory which compares Indian and non-Indian children in two localities of British Columbia. It was hypothesized that, in comparison with Indian children, the non-Indian children would show significantly superior performance on objective tests of cognitive clarity in learning to read. The subjects consisted of kindergarten children from two school districts. In District 1 all the Indian boys and girls were tested and compared with a sample of non-Indian boys and girls selected by random procedures. In District 2 the same sampling procedure was followed. Five subtests of the Canadian Reading Readiness battery were administered to the subjects. This test is experimental and contains the following subtests: orientation to literacy, understanding literacy behavior, technical language of literacy, visual letter recognition and letter-name knowledge, and initial phonemes. The results supported the hypothesis derived from the Cognitive Clarity Theory of learning to read. The Indian children were significantly less able to recognize the acts of reading and writing, their ability to recognize and name letters was significantly poorer, and their concepts of word and letter were significantly less than those of the non-Indian children. (WR)