"Combining an in-depth study of the indigenous people of Alaska with comparative material from other indigenous communities around the world, Alaska Native Political Leadership and Higher Education explores the relationship between land policy and education. While the colonial function of education is just beginning to be acknowledged, Michael Jennings highlights, at the international, national, and local levels, the extent to which Euro-American institutions continue to define indigenous peoples' understandings of land and spirituality to conform to those embodied in the dominant society. He advances indigenous articulations of educational agendas as components of native sovereignty and distinctive spiritual, intellectual, and material relationships to land. This book will be of value to anthropologists, educational policymakers, Native American studies instructors, and teachers of multicultural and comparative education."--BOOK JACKET.