Draws on Isabelle Knockwood's memoir about Mi'kmaw children's experiences in a Nova Scotia boarding school to examine the contradictory impacts of English literacy on American-Indian peoples and cultures. Discusses literacy as a weapon of colonial assimilation and, conversely, the appropriation of literacy within a Mi'kmaw system of knowledge…

This book is an appeal to First Nations leaders in Canada to promote educational integration--a mixing of ideas in which non-Aboriginal people are taught those elements of Native culture and philosophy that support a reverence for the Earth and all living things. The benefits of such an undertaking cannot be overemphasized since the very existence…