Break Dancing and Breaking Out: Anglos, Utes, and Navajos in a Border Reservation High School

This study presents an analysis of one event—break dancing—in an ongoing three‐year study of social identification and interactions between Ute, Navajo, and Anglo students, their communities, and their high school. It presents one social group or clique, break dancers, in a larger, intertwined set of social interactions in the school and community. In response to continual academic failure and social isolation, these Indian students turn to break dancing to express their uniqueness, facilitate intragroup communication, create group identity, and achieve a kind of success in an otherwise indifferent or negative school and community environment.