"But Always My Thoughts Stay with Me, My Own Way": Intellectual and Creative Claims of Sovereignty by Indian Boarding School Students in The Colored Land : A Navajo Indian Book, Written and Illustrated by Navajo Children (1937)

In 1937, Ruth K. Brandt, Supervisor of Elementary Education, in the federal Office of Indian Affairs, edited and published The Colored Land: A Navajo Indian Book, Written and Illustrated by Navajo Children with Scribner's Sons. Diné elementary school students from the Tohatchi Boarding School in New Mexico were the featured writers of much of the text with supporting illustrations composed by students from the Santa Fe Indian School. It was presented by its editors as evidence of the government's successful approach to assimilation through education. Situating their work within frameworks offered by contemporary Diné poets, I argue that these young children resisted acculturation and assimilationist efforts in the Reorganization Era by maintaining cultural values and traditions and even, in a few cases, issuing challenges to Western epistemologies and educational regimes. This early collection of published creative work by Diné writers and artists features undercurrents of resistance alongside literary and intellectual claims of sovereignty.