To Live Heroically examines American Indian education during the last century, comparing the tribal, mission, and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) schools and curriculums and the assumptions that each system made about the role that Indians should assume in society. This significant book analyzes the relationship between the rise of institutional racism and the fall of public education in the United States using the history of American Indian education as a model.

The author asserts that had the federal government really wanted an educated, self-sufficient Indian population, it would have selected the successful nineteenth-century tribal models of Indian education rather than the mission or BIA schools. And her description of the reservation and bordering white community demonstrates the depth of institutional racism and its impact on local politics, economics, and education. Huff wants the reader to see how policy is made about Indian education and to recognize the complex issues that Indian (and other minority) families and educators deal with in real communities.