Free to Be Mohawk: Indigenous Education at the Akwesasne Freedom School by Louellyn White (review)

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE "FULLY MOHAWK"? In Free to Be Mohawk: Indigenous Education at the Akwesasne Freedom School, Mohawk scholar Louellyn White addresses this question through a detailed historiographical and contemporary account of the Akwesasne Freedom School (AFS), a small, community controlled Mohawk language school in the Akwesasne Mohawk community (also known as St. Regis, Quebec / New York State). The school was born out of political conflict that consumed the community in the late 1970s, which highlighted a desire from community members for a space where Mohawk youth could reclaim their culture and their identity. The result was AFS. Today it is an example of a self-sufficient, community-driven, independent education program that operates free of both U.S. and Canadian state funding and control. Free to Be Mohawk tells the story of the Akwesasne Nation's expression of their right to education sovereignty and shows how AFS was designed to counter and transcend colonialism through a culturally specific curriculum and Mohawk language immersion.

White carried out her research on AFS in direct response to a request from the AFS community, which wished for a research project that traced the impact of the school on the lives of its students and also documented the school's history. White has provided readers with a resource that does the latter, as well as situating AFS within a broader conversation that explores the links between self-determination and education. Her work also speaks to how Native scholars can go about doing research with and for their own communities, as well as to the power and potential of Indigenous, critical pedagogy in countering the legacy and contemporary effects of continued settler-colonialism.

White combines interviews with AFS students, teachers, and alumni; participant observation in the classroom at the school; and curriculum review and archival research to tell the story of AFS. A number of insights are revealed through White's research. Here I address three. One, the experience of students and teachers at AFS counter the oft-held belief that immersion or tribal schools are less academically rigorous than public schools. Free to Be Mohawk reveals that students at AFS not only performed well academically, they were strong in their identity and culture and had proficient Mohawk language capabilities. Two, the link between Indigenous language acquisition and identity formation is complex. Free to Be Mohawk reveals that language acquisition, while important, is not necessarily the basis of identity construction; in other words, being fluent in Mohawk does not equate to being "fully Mohawk." Other components are just as necessary and required for identity construction—song, dance, cultural teachings and practices, social connection, and so forth—all of which can be enhanced in educational settings that are rooted in cultural content and utilize holistic pedagogies. Finally, Free to Be Mohawk also reinforces the importance of language use at home, in addition to at the schools, as a way to support Indigenous language acquisition and revitalization.

Free to Be Mohawk is an important contribution to the field of Indigenous education and Indigenous language revitalization. It is useful to communities and scholars interested in language immersion, decolonial identity construction, and critical pedagogy, as well as the praxis of Indigenous self-determination and nationhood-building via educational initiatives. White's work is especially revealing about the realities of community-controlled education initiatives with respect to cost, time, commitment, and levels of community/parental involvement. Her work also speaks to the level of freedom available to schools that operate outside state control with respect to curriculum development, organization structure, teacher training, and policies.

White's work is a valuable contribution to the growing body of research on Indigenous communities that are exercising their inherent right to education sovereignty. As a young Indigenous educator, I am curious about the ways that communities are developing their own culturally relevant curriculum, and the creative and culturally informed ways they are teaching it. Perhaps future work in...