Clean modern buildings, desks, air conditioning, running water, very nice. You were fooled by that photo into making a bigger assumption about the full school and situation.
The story that photograph is from is about distance learning enforced by the COVID pandemic. https://navajotimes.com/edu/hill-becomes-makeshift-classroom.... The family does not have internet access, and while they were issued a laptop and mobile hotspot, it only gets signal from the top of that hill.
OP may have misunderstood the context but I think it's a stretch to say they were intentionally fooled.
What I meant was they fooled themselves. They had negative assumptions about how Native Americans live and are treated, then they see a photo of a dirt pit, and even though it is completely implausible, assume it is a school. It is so far off reality it is notable.
Not sure exactly how obvious it is to most Americans, but the Navajo reservation is extremely poor by American standards. When I went there, the local roads were all dirt and the houses seemed to have no electricity.
I used to have Hopi and Navajo friends and I have no idea what they are referring to.
One thing I can tell you that the whole situation up there is contentious and complicated between the tribes, the states and the feds where one could support any argument as there isn't some standard "Rez Life" one can point at.
I mean, I used to have this one friend who grew up (and still had family) on a part of the reservation which was completely surrounded by the other tribe and her and my other friends (from the other tribe, don't quite remember which was which here) would get into some serious arguments at the bar over the issue where we'd have to separate them before it came to fisticuffs.
https://cds.bie.edu/
Clean modern buildings, desks, air conditioning, running water, very nice. You were fooled by that photo into making a bigger assumption about the full school and situation.