Educating the Indian, Part 2 (L20)Day Schools

Dr. Anton TreuerBemidji State University

How they worked

• Regular school routine during day, kids live at home with parents

• No uniforms, no school control over home life• Still a strict English-only policy: tribal language

use often punished or resulting in learning disability label

• Kids sometimes suspended for long hair, policy changes come slowly, attitude changes even more slowly

Curriculum Issues - Columbus

Curriculum Issues - Columbus

George Bush, Sr. on the Jubilee Commission

Great Seal for the Territory of Wisconsin

Whose Heroes?

• Washington• Lincoln• Grant• Jackson• Architects of American

democracy• Constitution, rule of law

• Indian killers• Architects of removal

policy & genocide• Broken treaties

Bering Strait

• Fact v. Theory• How does it feel to be told that your culture,

your parents and grandparents are consistently wrong?

Thanksgiving / King Philip’s War

Opportunities

• Schools provide many opportunities to learn about white culture, history, heroes

• How many opportunities are presented to learn about native culture, history, heroes?

• Is there any wonder that there is a disconnect for many native students?

• How different are day schools from boarding schools?

George Bush, Sr.

• “We are approaching a momentous year in history, a year that will mark the five hundredth anniversary of one of the greatest achievements of human endeavor: Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World... Christopher Columbus not only opened the door to a New World, but also set an example for us all by showing what monumental feats can be accomplished through perseverance and faith. I strongly encourage every American to support the Quincentenary, and to discover the significance that this milestone in history has in his or her own life.”

Truth Rewritten

Ronald Reagan

• “We were wrong to let Indians have reservations, we should have done more to bring them into the fold of American life.”

Resisting Education Assimilation• Drop out is not just from

lack of smarts or motivation

• Often lack of participation in education goes across the age spectrum in Indian communities

• 1945, 8 Indian high school grads in MN

• 1970, 32% Indians grad high school, 2% grad college

• 1980, 55% Indians grad high school, 5% college

• Better and better every decade

• Indians still 4X more likely to drop out and 3X more likely to be suspended

Educational Achievement

Politics & Power in Education

• Jerry-mandering reservations in school districting (Leech Lake)

• Few native teachers and administrators• Few educated Indians to work in schools as

teachers or administrators• Little native control of the curriculum:

textbooks, language & culture offerings as electives or part of the mainstream curriculum

Tribal Initiatives

• Changing attitudes, awareness of the benefits of education, NIEA, MIEA

• Advocacy, JOM funding• New tribal schools, culture based curriculum,

HOE in Minneapolis has more native grads than all other schools in the metro combined

• Trying to make schools places where kids can learn about themselves as well as the world

Challenges

• Finding qualified staff• Tribal politics, micromanagement• Attitudinal change comes slowly – developing

an educating ethic• Making sure that schools don’t assimilate• Problems pervade Indian communities

Interpreting

• Germans still wrestle with national guilt over the Holocaust – addressed in part by mandated instruction about it

• America has dark chapters in its history too, but we have yet to assume national responsibility for them much less make them right

Tribal Languages in U.S. & Canada

Tribal Language Immersion Schools

• Waadookodaading (Hayward, WI)• Niigaane (Bena, MN)• Hawaiians, Maori, Piegan, Mowhawk