How you were educated in Louisiana and how much were largely a matter of race, according to the state's United Houma Nation in. The Nation did not have access to adequate or appropriate systems of public education, triggering the longest desegregation lawsuit in American history. Ng-A Fook (curriculum theory, U. of Ottawa) tracks the evidence of segregation and its impact on the Nation as it struggled through educational deprivation, using techniques of ethnography, historiography and oral history. He examines the lives of elders who experienced systematized racism, aiming toward increased sensitivity to the effects of colonialism. Along the way he deconstructs a literature of dominance in educational prison camps to mission schools to modern classrooms, describes the curriculum the United Houma Nation constructed outside of school, and analyzes the clash between Louisiana's education system and the Houma's understanding of wisdom. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)