Four American Indian women, who attended Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools, off-reservation public schools, and Indian mission schools, unflinchingly recount the experiences that shaped their views on individual, family, and community survival. Their stories give graphic evidence of the mistreatment of native children in many of these schools during the middle and later years of the twentieth century. The stories of the lives of these women are highly instructive as enlightened documents of reconciliation and human possibilities.