The struggle of low-income, minority, and first-generation students throughout their academic careers is an issue of significant concern to scholars and educators in many fields of study. Research indicates an increasing gap in graduation ratesf or these students in comparison to their more affluent or White peers. Low high school graduation rates, poor access and participation in postsecondary education, and high collegiate attrition rates continue to plague students from these populations. Colleges and universities have employed many strategies to address retention and graduation for historically marginalized students. Though well intentioned, many of these efforts lack sufficient financial resources, structure, or appropriate staffing. While there is acknowledgment of this serious problem in education, there are numerous, disparate, and at times inconsistent, approaches to addressing the issues facing low-income, minority, and firstgeneration students.In Roberta Espinoza's book, Pivotal Moments: How Educators Can Put All Students on the Path to College, she addresses the difficulties that low-income, minority, or first-generation students face in education-difficulties compounded by the intersection of these identities. Introducing her framework of "Educational Pivotal Moments," she details their impact on the ability of students to access, persist, and successfully graduate from high school and college. According to the author, the overarching purpose of this book is to remind educators that "they are life changers and to give them the tools to be more effective in this role" (p. 18).College student access and retention is a major issue for all students hoping to secure a postsecondary education. Linda Darling-Hammond has addressed issues of inequity in education and the ways our educational system serves to perpetuate inequality and the status quo. In her book, The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine our Future,

This dissertation is a qualitative case study of the experiences of American Indian students attending a mainstream middle school. Presented as a set of three independent, but closely related articles, this research offers insight into several different phenomena experienced by American Indian students. In the first article, I present my findings on how American Indian students experience the social and intellectual environment of school. In this study, I found that American Indian students must make choices-engage in behaviors that go against their cultural background in order to be successful, or continue to engage in their cultural behaviors and risk marginalization in the classroom. The second article addresses some of the tensions that exist in the call for more culturally responsive schooling by studying the curriculum and teacher pedagogy of an eighth grade social studies class. Following work on TribalCrit, I focus primarily on the ways in which the concepts of race, culture and colonialism are treated in the curriculum. I found that not only does the curriculum fail to address these concepts adequately, the current curriculum reinforces notions of colonialism and White supremacy, thereby normalizing Whiteness, and presenting any perspective outside Whiteness as the "Other." The third article is a reflection on the theoretical lenses researchers have historically used when studying American Indian education and the broader purpose(s) of conducting research in American Indian communities. This article advances the argument that to counter the educational debt incurred by American Indian students we need purposeful research in American Indian communities that demonstrates a commitment to methodologies and methods rooted in American Indian knowledge and praxis and theoretical approaches that align with American Indian philosophies and worldviews. When read together, these articles highlight elements vi missing from the conversation on American Indian education research. Too often research with American Indian students occurs at tribally controlled schools, despite the fact that over 90% of American Indian students attend mainstream public schools. This study is my contribution to the goal of increasing equity in education for American Indian young people. My research suggests that while oppressive practices toward American Indians students continue to occur, educators have power to disrupt the practices that inhibit American Indian students from participating equally in the school environment. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Six weeks before I turned in my dissertation to my committee, I started and finished watching the entire series of The Wire (which I recommend to everyone). Without giving too much away, at one point the series tackles public education. During one scene, a character states that tests, problems, and homework do not matter to students because "they're not learning for our world; they're learning for theirs." That really resonated with me as I reflected on my entry into the middle school world of my p...