Where tradition meets bureaucracy—Native students redefine education on their own terms. Inside the Eagle’s Head offers a compelling and deeply human portrait of the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI), a federally operated college serving Native American students from across the United States. In it, anthropologist Angelle Khachadoorian draws on years of teaching experience and extensive student interviews to illuminate the challenges and successes of life at SIPI. Far more than an institutional history, this book captures the voices of students navigating a complex educational landscape shaped by federal oversight, tribal identity, and personal ambition. Through vivid metaphors—SIPI as a family, a prison, a reservation—students articulate their struggles and resilience within a system that is at once empowering and restrictive. Khachadoorian’s analysis reveals how SIPI’s hybrid nature—part community college, part BIA legacy—creates both opportunities and obstacles for its students. With empathy and insight, she explores how young Native Americans forge identity, community, and purpose in a setting few outsiders understand. Inside the Eagle’s Head is essential reading for educators, policymakers, and anyone interested in the intersection of Indigenous education, federal institutions, and student agency. It is a powerful testament to the transformative potential of listening to students’ stories.   “A solid piece of ethnographic research based upon extended participant-observation, survey questionnaires, key-informant interviews, and focus groups. Beyond its value for American Indian studies, the work makes important contributions to educational anthropology generally.” —J. Anthony Paredes, coeditor of Anthropologists and Indians in the New South Normal0falsefalsefalseMicrosoftInternetExplorer4  “This is a well-conceived, captivating account of the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, a small and struggling federally funded Indian community college in Albuquerque, New Mexico, founded in 1971 to serve students from federally recognized American Indian tribes and Alaskan Native villages. Drawing on nearly ten years there as an anthropology faculty member and on extensive and vivid student testimonies, Khachadoorian presents a coherent analysis of unresolved structural contradictions within the institution's administration and the disquieting consequences of these contradictions for student learning and morale. The author's experience as a visiting professor at the US Air Force Academy gives a unique perspective on the parallels between these two different but, in important ways, similar federal institutions. A critical contribution to the literature on Native American higher education.” ― CHOICE Angelle A. Khachadoorian is an independent researcher currently residing in California. She taught at the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute for almost ten years and was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the United States Air Force Academy. Used Book in Good Condition