Drawing on treaties, international law, the work of other Indigenous scholars, and especially personal experiences, Marie Battiste documents the nature of Eurocentric models of education, and their devastating impacts on Indigenous knowledge. Chronicling the negative consequences of forced assimilation, racism inherent to colonial systems of education, and the failure of current educational policies for Aboriginal populations, Battiste proposes a new model of education, arguing the preservation of Aboriginal knowledge is an Aboriginal right. Central to this process is the repositioning of Indigenous humanities, sciences, and languages as vital fields of knowledge, revitalizing a knowledge system which incorporates both Indigenous and Eurocentric thinking.

The essays in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision spring from an International Summer Institute on the cultural restoration of oppressed Indigenous peoples. The contributors, primarily Indigenous, unravel the processes of colonization that enfolded modern society and resulted in the oppression of Indigenous peoples.

The authors -- among them Gregory Cajete, Erica-Irene Daes, Bonnie Duran and Eduardo Duran, James Youngblood Henderson, Linda Hogan, Leroy Little Bear, Ted Moses, Linda Tuhiwai Te Rina Smith, Graham Hingangaroa Smith, and Robert Yazzie -- draw on a range of disciplines, professions, and experiences. Addressing four urgent and necessary issues -- mapping colonialism, diagnosing colonialism, healing colonized Indigenous peoples, and imagining postcolonial visions -- they provide new frameworks for understanding how and why colonization has been so pervasive and tenacious among Indigenous peoples. They also envision what they would desire in a truly postcolonial context.

In moving and inspiring ways, Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision elaborates a new inclusive vision of a global and national order and articulates new approaches for protecting, healing, and restoring long-oppressed peoples, and for respecting their cultures and languages.