Research at the classroom and school levels suggests that children from many indigenous cultural communities appear to be at a particular disadvantage with regard to academic achievement and school retention. This paper reports on a continuing study with Australian Aboriginal and Navajo Indian children investigating the relevance and applicability of goal theory to explaining indigenous motivation in school settings. In particular it examined task, ego, social solidarity, and extrinsic goal structures as a means of explaining and predicting minority motivation in school settings. Subjects, 496 Aboriginal students from grades 7 through 12 and 529 Navajo students from grades 9 through 12, completed an instrument developed for the study, the Inventory of School Motivation (ISM). Exploratory factor analyses of results offered considerable support for the Personal Investment Model of goal achievement proposed by M. L. Maehr (1984). The study also supported the predictive power of the ISM. For each group the combined set of culturally determined predictor scales (multiple goals) developed from the personal investment framework was found to be significantly related to expectations about continuing or leaving school and a range of demographic variables. (Contains 4 tables and 34 references.) (Author/SLD)