«“In the face of white colonialism, Native American leaders have long had to wrestle with the timeless question: how can we change without destroying ourselves? As John A. Goodwin demonstrates in this deeply researched and thoughtful study, answering this question has always been at the heart of Native intellectuals’ efforts to create a model of higher education both by and for Indians. To understand the multiple struggles they encountered in this journey—a journey in which the issues of power and purpose were central—this study is must-reading.”—David Wallace Adams, author of Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928»

«“Goodwin’s sympathetic and insightful history underscores the importance of tribal colleges and universities as intellectual spaces that are educating, decolonizing, and sustaining the tribal communities they serve. This book fills a gaping void in American Indian historiography and will undoubtedly transform how scholars think about Indian education.”—Bradley Shreve, editor of Tribal College Journal of American Indian Higher Education»

"This thorough exploration of the intellectual foundation upon which the tribal colleges and universities have been created would be appropriate assigned reading for courses on the history of higher education, Indigenous education, American history, and Indigenous studies."—Jarita Greyeyes, American Indian Quarterly

"Without Destroying Ourselves provides readers with a well-written and thoroughly researched exploration of how Indigenous people in the United States have negotiated settler educational institutions to advance goals of their own making over the course of the twentieth century. . . . An outstanding history that deserves wide readership."—Daniel M. Cobb, American Historical Review

"Goodwin's monograph goes above and beyond simple institutional histories of tribal colleges and universities by offering historical and intellectual contexts that led to their founding, growth, and development. His work gives attention and primacy to Native intellectual voices of the early and middle twentieth century by focusing on individuals whose names and work we are familiar with, but not perhaps in the context of higher education. Finally, Goodwin brings renewed attention to the intellectual activism that went alongside the Red Power Movement of the 1960s."—Majel Boxer, Journal of Arizona History

"Without Destroying Oursevles is an exceptional addition to the Indigenous Education Series alongside other works on American Indian experiences in settler colonial education."—Teagan Dreyer, South Dakota History