American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Although there is now a sizeable body of substantive knowledge concerning the political socialization of children in the United States, until recently research in this area focused primarily on white, suburban, middle-class children or on sex or social class differences in the political learning process. In addition to providing a foundation for later research these earlier studies point to the need for investigation of the political socialization process among children from other subcultural backgrounds. In the past few years race has emerged as the principal new area of socialization research. However, this research has been concerned largely with differences in the political socialization of Black and white adults (Olsen, 1970; arum, 1966; Sears, 1969) or Black and white children (Green, 1972; Greenberg, 1969, 1970a, 1970b, 197Oc; Jaros, 1967; Orum and Cohen, 1973). With the exception of one study involving Mexican-American high school students (Messick, 1970), other racial-ethnic groups have been ignored. The prese nt study increases our understandin g of childhood political development through an investigation of aspects of the political learning process among a sample of Native American children.