Imagine a former deputy assistant and White House liaison to the American Indian community in the Clinton administration who in her 60s takes a job as a low paid security guard at one of Phoenix’s best high schools in order to enable her grandchildren to attend. Imagine she discovers physical abuse and terrible educational neglect of the school’s few Native American students, from the Gila River Indian Community.

Imagine she tries to help them and is fired.

It’s an amazing story of the last overlooked crime of educational discrimination – against Native Americans – often in communities and school systems nearest Indian reservations. The superbly reported account, by Jana Bommersbach, is in the February Phoenix Magazine.

Thanks to San Carlos Apache artist and “community organizer” Douglas Miles (about whom watch for my post in the coming days) for calling it to my attention.

AJA