Educating the Indian, Part 2 (L20) Day Schools

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Educating the Indian, Part 2 (L20)Day Schools

• Dr. Anton Treuer
• Bemidji State University

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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

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Curriculum Issues - Columbus
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Curriculum Issues - Columbus
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George Bush, Sr. on the Jubilee Commission
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Great Seal for the Territory of Wisconsin
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Whose Heroes?

• Washington
• Lincoln
• Grant
• Jackson
• Architects of American democracy
• Constitution, rule of law

• Indian killers
• Architects of removal policy genocide
• Broken treaties

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Bering Strait

• Fact v. Theory
• How does it feel to be told that your culture,
  your parents and grandparents are consistently
  wrong?

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Thanksgiving / King Philips War
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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?

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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.

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Truth Rewritten
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Ronald Reagan

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

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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

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Educational Achievement
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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

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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

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Challenges

• Finding qualified staff
• Tribal politics, micromanagement
• Attitudinal change comes slowly developing an
  educating ethic
• Making sure that schools dont assimilate
• Problems pervade Indian communities

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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

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Tribal Languages in U.S. Canada
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Tribal Language Immersion Schools

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