Through a critical cultural assets model, the authors use the methodological practices of collaboration, community site visits, document analysis, and interviews with cultural insiders to explore schools' continued rejection of academic belonging for people from "othered" communities. They explore the case of Samoan youth--a marginalized cultural group--to contest the shared belief that school-based citizenry is an educational impossibility. Interview data with Samoan elders is analyzed using Consensual Qualitative Research methods (Hill et al. in "Couns Psychol" 24(4):517-572, 1997). They present themes of cultural capacities and academic disconnection to imagine a school context for the integration of cultural assets for "othered" youth (Kliewer and Biklen in "Teach Coll Rec" 109(12):2579-2600, 2007; Kliewer et al. "American Educ Res Assoc J" 3(2):163-192, 2006).