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ix Acknowledgments This book was ten years in the making. But I could not have completed this journey without the aid, advice, and support of so many people along the way, from start to finish. The starting point, the Writing Across Cultures project, was funded by COTEACH (Collaboration on Teacher Education Accountable to Children with High Needs), a federal grant secured by my colleagues in the College of Education at Washington State University. The generous support, both financial and moral, of co–principal investigators Tariq Akmal and Dawn Shinew, in particular , launched this project. Two sabbatical years, as well as the Buchanan Scholarship , funded by the English Department at Washington State University, cleared my schedule, giving me the mental space and time to read, research, and write. Of all the institutional support I have received, none has been more important than that from Trevor Bond and Cheryl Gunselman from Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections of Washington State University Libraries. Trevor Bond not only helped me navigate the McWhorter Collection; he also schooled me in the whole point of curating: providing context for artifacts that would otherwise be as meaningful as a box of photographs and papers under a stranger’s bed. To Cheryl Gunselman, I owe a debt of gratitude in securing permissions to quote so extensively from that collection. Thanks are also due to the anonymous librarians at the National Archives, both in Washington, D.C., and in Seattle, as well as at the Yakima Central Library, which houses the Relander Collection—all of whom assisted me in retrieving archival material on multiple visits. I would not have known that this collection even existed had it not been for Debby DeSoer, director of the Ellensburg Public Library, who introduced me to that library’s historian-in-residence at the time, Milton Wagy, who in turn pointed me to the Relander Collection. Patricia Bizzell, Helen Fox, and Victor Villanueva wrote letters of support for grant applications, and in Victor’s case, multiple letters; I am so honored that you endorsed my work. Other colleagues at Washington State University and tribal colleges gave me invaluable feedback on my ideas, as they started to make their way into writing, either in grant applications or in early drafts of articles and chapters; these colleagues include Will Hamlin, Debbie Lee, George Ken- nedy, Lisa Johnson, Crag Hill, Laurie Johnson, and the blind reviewers at College Composition and Communications, Teachers College Press, and the University of Pittsburgh Press. Others heard me speak in public forums or in private conversations , asking questions that I was not always able to answer at the time but that continued to nag me like a bad tooth. This book answers those questions. Todd Butler, Augusta Rohrbach, Elizabeth Siler, and Laurie Johnson: thank you for asking them. Special thanks to my colleagues Lynn Gordon, Nancy Bell, and Michael Hanley , all of whom helped me with issues of linguistics and translation; and Deirdre Black, a linguist who has lived and worked with the Flathead for many years, who introduced me to William Leap’s American Indian English, a brilliant piece of scholarship on Native languages that transformed my own understanding of the abiding impact of one’s ancestral language. I want to acknowledge the support of the Plateau Center for American Indian Studies, most especially Barbara Aston, Mary Collins, and Kim Christen: Barbara, for introducing me to Native educators and for mentoring me through cultural expectations of those relationships ; Mary, for so enthusiastically embracing the project of recovery that my work represents; and Kim, for making me mindful of the problems inherent in white researchers curating Native materials. Colleagues from other departments, including Orlan Svingen (history) and Judy Meuth (critical culture, gender, and race studies), increased my bibliography, source material, and Native contact list, all taken to heart and rigorously pursued. To Brian McNeill and Laurie “Lali” McCubbin, co-directors of the Pacific Northwest Center for Mestizo and Indigenous Research and Outreach, I owe the notion of “cultural congruence” that I explore in chapter 7. Several graduate students worked with me over the years, assisting in various capacities: scanning hundreds of papers, driving to remote reservations, attending meetings, listening to my reasoning. Some students were writing dissertations themselves on American Indian topics, which also kept me thinking. Thank you, especially Heather Kimmel, Michael Jordan, Pam Chisum, Shawn Lamebull, and most of all, Jeanette Weaskus. Jeanette and I were mutual sounding boards for each other for several years running. Also important were the...

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