The peaceful tribe
Although the tribal community is perceived as savages, they are a peaceful tribe. This culture can be seen as a symbolic reference to the majority of Native American cultures which were harmonious with each other and with nature. This association also makes a kind of paradise of their culture, a paradise that is lost to Indigo when she is kidnapped and taken into American custody where she is re-educated and changed.
The police as a bad thing
The police are there to protect and serve, but here again, we see that in the perspective of a minority culture, the police can also be seen as the symbolic opposite of their alleged goals. They don't protect people; they kill Native Americans who will not abdicate their culture, and they kidnap children and separate them from their parents, believing hateful ideas about tribal life, like that they are savages. The police are a complex symbol for the authority of the American government.
School as a machine
Through school, the state educates young people about what kind of people they are supposed to be in order to fit into the American fabric. Although the language used in schools to describe America as a land of diversity and opportunity, the school is seen by this tribal community as a homogenizing tool. They notice that it isn't optional, and the school defines what kinds of education are important, and which ones (like heritage and religion) are not important. The school defines what kind of a person one must become.
The motif of homogeny and diversity
The motif that defines American culture in the eyes of these desert Natives is the problem of homogeneity. The schools take diverse kids with diverse natures and fates, and it pigeon-holes them into the universal culture of the American mainstream. The diversity of cultures is celebrated through lip-service, but once abducted by the authorities, the Native children are stripped of their tribal identities. Indigo experiences this for herself, seeing that it is actually more complex than her family understood, but she does discover that, basically, their point of view is valid.
Indigo, the product
Indigo becomes the product of the mechanism that her family feared for her. She is indeed kidnapped and removed from her family by the police. She is forced into a boarding school that runs on clocks and bells, and she is forced to sit in arrays of children and learn information that reshapes her worldview. Little by little, she forgets the mystic oneness with nature that she wanted, but because of her passions, her education actually does become an opportunity for her, and she becomes an anthropologist. She is both a tribal person and a modern student of tribal culture; Indigo's fate was not ruined by her modernization, so she sees through a bitter lens of experience that life is more complex and fateful than she originally suspected.
