VOLUME VIII SPRING 1997 NUMBER 4
by Marjane Ambler
One day in 1975 a teenage bully yanked Rebecca Taylor's braid and said, "Get to the back of the line, you wagon-burning @#*#* squaw!" Within the week, the Ojibwe students all walked out of the predominantly white public school in Hayward, Wisconsin, and never went back. They had had enough of beatings on the bus and racist slurs scrawled on high school walls. With the help of parents, elders, and volunteer teachers, the tribe converted the old tribal gym into a school, which was accredited just in time for Rebecca to graduate.Today the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Tribe boasts not only a K-12 school but also a tribal college where Taylor- who was failing at the white school-became an honor student in Native American Studies. Although not born until several years later, Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College was conceived in the halls of the Hayward public high school in 1975. "I was glad that guy did that to me. I like to take the negative and make it positive," Taylor said.
Instead of becoming a drop-out statistic, Taylor had a safe place to learn that reaffirmed her worth as a person and as an Ojibwe woman. Yet when I tried to tell her story in an article about tribal colleges several years ago, a popular Native magazine would not include it. Her experience was too negative.
Racism is not a comfortable subject. However, it should not be ignored, especially by an education publication such as the Tribal College Journal. Racism confronts people of color daily wherever they go, including the classroom. In this issue, we explore not only the racism. We also look at what is being done about it by both American Indians and non-Indians, especially the tribal colleges' role as brokers between cultures. We also look at how racism against Indian people differs from racism against other ethic and racial groups. Dr. Michael Marker of Northwest Indian College raised the question of the "Missing Research" at a research symposium last summer sponsored by the Tribal College Journal, the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, and Lannan Foundation. Is it the role of scholars to study cross cultural relations when they are researching Indian students' drop out rates? In his article in this issue, Marker suggests that the university and the researcher have an obligation to look beyond easy answers. Buying alarm clocks for Indian students does not keep them in school if they are alienated and assaulted there.
Reservation border towns are notorious for racism. Stone Child College President Steve Galbavy, a non-Indian, says that when he coached an Indian team, the students became accustomed to being served last in restaurants and being followed like criminals in stores. The familiarity of the experience never removed its demoralizing sting, however. As described in the article in this issue about Alee Stewart, the Ku Klux Klan still thrives in Montana and threatened to ignite violence during a racial dispute in the local high school near the Crow Reservation two years ago.
COLONIZATION OF THE MIND
Too often the racism is internalized, sometimes resulting in lateral violence. I first became aware of internalized racism when I met a Shoshone high school student several years ago. She told me she was half Shoshone and half white. She said her father screamed, "Indians are drunks! Indians are stupid!" as he tried to beat the Indian out of her. I assumed that her father was the white parent, but no, her father was the Shoshone. He apparently had assimilated the values of some of the non-Indians around him.
In Canada, Native educators refer to internalized racism as "colonization of the mind." Joyce Goodstricker and Deborah Pace write in this issue about the attitudes of Native and non-Native teachers. Their research report raises an alarming question. Do Native teachers who are trained in a mainstream university internalize the racism they experience there? Do such teachers expect their Native students to fail? The report also suggests, however, that tribal colleges can decolonize their students' minds.
All races and ethnic minorities experience such problems, but Indian education involves several distinctions. For everyone, education has been a ladder out of poverty. For Indian people, it also has been a weapon used against them for several generations. The parents and grandparents of modern students were forced to attend boarding schools that were utilized to eliminate Native culture. Every family has its own story of punishments for speaking the Native language, some within the last 2() years: teachers washing students' mouths out with soap, taping students' mouths shut for the entire school day, or beating them with yardsticks for daring to speak in their own tongue. By separating generations, boarding schools eroded not only cultural but family values. In several documented cases, teachers started a cycle of physical and sexual abuse that continues in Indian families today.
This history of Indian education has resulted in students' ambivalence or even hostility toward education and toward teachers. Lydia Whirlwind Soldier says the passive resistance surfaces as high drop out rates and poor achievement. Whirlwind Soldier (Sicangu Lakota) is a regent for Sinte Gleska University and the Indian Studies Curriculum Specialist for Todd County School District, South Dakota. Although she now has a masters degree in education administration, she nearly dropped out of school in the eighth grade. Her grandfather made her go back. In fact, as she says in her article in this issue, despite the history, Indian elders recognize the importance of getting an education and emphasize it to the children.
Nevertheless, students feel the unspoken conflict. Even today, schools typically try to educate students away from their people and into the melting pot. "You can't believe in a system that is trying to override your family ties," says Leech Lake Tribal College President Larry Aitken. Indian students at most educational institutions feel that to be successful, they must choose between tribal cultures and mainstream American culture. They cannot be both Indians and good students.
The message is conveyed in many ways-racial slurs, such as Rebecca Taylor experienced, and white supremist violence are easily recognized. Mock Indian homecoming ceremonies and Indian mascots also attack Indian students' self-esteem. Of 460 school districts in Wisconsin, for example, 65 of them used Indian mascots. Only eight have changed, according to Sharon Metz, co-founder of HONOR (Honor Our Neighbors Origins and Rights).
Covert institutional racism expresses itself through textbook selection, curriculum, and stereotyped materials, according to Dr. Richard Littlebear, acting president of Dull Knife Memorial College in Montana. The most subtle of all is when there is nothing there: Indian students who open their history textbooks and find no mention of their people at all. They find glowing descriptions of heroes who are not their heroes-Andrew Jackson, George Armstrong Custer, Kit Carson-and perhaps a paragraph about people long dead who once inhabited the continent. As Elaine Fleming of Leech Lake Tribal College says, "We haven't been allowed to know our history."
Every one of us is probably racist to some degree. Cultural brokers are distinguished by our efforts to understand people of other cultures and, as Chip Clark says in her book review, by our expectation that we can learn from one another. To fight racism in education requires the efforts of scholars, the community, and the tribal colleges.
Not everyone understands or supports the importance of separate, tribally-controlled education. When the tribal colleges in the American Indian Higher Education Consortium were seeking federal operating funds two decades ago, they faced many opponents, according to Janine PeasePretty on Top, the president of Little Big Horn College. "One of the most vocal opponents was a liberal Democrat, Michigan Congressman William Ford, whose concept of American civil rights and American minorities was in the context of integration," Pease-Pretty on Top said in her doctoral dissertation. The U.S. Office of Education initially argued in 1976 that tribal colleges represented just another American minority group. That testimony did not acknowledge the unique federal Indian trust relationship, tribal control of education, or tribal sovereignty, Pease-Pretty on Top said.
The tribal colleges also suffered from the anti-Indian white backlash of the 1970s. One of the most influential Congressmen, Rep. Lloyd Meeds of Washington, withdrew his sponsorship of the tribal colleges bill as the of the fishing wars in his state according to Pease-Pretty on Top's dissertation. As illustrated by Marker's paper in this issue, anti-Indian groups focus upon Indian resource conflicts and treaty rights, and that sentiment spills over into education issues.
TRIBAL COLLEGES OFFER HOPE
Where is the hope? The hope for Indian students' success lies with tribally controlled education and with the cultural brokers-both Indian and non-lndian-who devote their lives to building understanding across cultural lines. Ignorance contributes as much to racism as ill will, even amongst close neighbors. We tend to tear and ridicule what we don't understand. In tribal college classrooms, however, neighbors finally become acquainted, as indicated in the essay by John Nash. Students shed their hostilities as they explore their differences-and their similarities-in a safe environment. Several tribal colleges, including Navajo Community College and Dull Knife Memorial College, offer cross cultural sensitivity training for groups such as instructors, researchers, and health care providers. The hope lies in non-Indians, such as the readers of the Tribal College Journal, who are themselves cultural brokers fighting the ignorance. They recognize the importance of understanding other cultures. Readers frequently call for recommended reading lists as they strive in their homes and communities to improve understanding; the resource guide in this issue by Julie Cajune should help.
Hope lies in people like Sharon Metz. The co-founder of HONOR, she has devoted 30 years to fighting anti-Indian racism, and HONOR has won some battles. In Wisconsin and Minnesota, HONOR joined forces with Indian educators to change the state laws. Now public school teachers must offer units covering American Indian government, history, and culture at three levels: grade school, junior high, and senior high. Since there are no provisions for enforcement, some school districts make a token effort; some do a good job; others don't know the law exists. But it's a start, according to Metz.
The hope lies in tribal college presidents and faculty who frequently become involved in advocating for such changes on behalf of Indian students throughout their states. David Gipp, president of United Tribes Technical College, and other college presidents in North Dakota have testified for years on the need for a state human rights commission; North Dakota is one of only two states without one, he says. In addition to the leadership role that Leech Lake Tribal College has taken to tackle racism on campus, President Larry Aitken serves on a task force on race relations started 12 years ago in Bemidji, Minnesota.
The hope lies in the tribal college students who emerge confident of being successful in their own and in the mainstream cultures. In public speaking and creative writing classes, they learn to express themselves effectively, whether they are explaining the derivation of a mathematic formula or the frustration of a racial incident. The tribal colleges create curriculum and prepare teachers. They tackle racism head on. They make it possible for Indian students to be both Indian and students. Instead of being immobilized by the helpless, hopeless rage that often leads to violence, the students stand up as leaders and ambassadors for their community, as Arlee Stewart describes in the article in this issue. Tribal college students wrote letters and testified before the Montana Legislature last winter, defeating legislation that would have eliminated affirmative action in Montana.
The hope lies in those institutional cultural brokers that understand the colleges' dual mission and support them in it. There are many, but the efforts of three are described in this issue-the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy. Tribal colleges provide a place where Rebecca Taylor and Alee Stewart can succeed in two cultures. Along with computer science, algebra, and European history, Indian tribal college students have the chance to study their own history, culture, and language. As Lydia Whirlwind Soldier says, "We want to be who we are."
Marjane Ambler is the editor of Tribal College Journal. For further reading see the Resource Guide in this issue. Also see "The Tribally Controlled Community Colleges Act of 1978: an Expansion of Federal Indian Trust Responsibility," dissertation by Janine Pease-Windy Boy. Montana State University, Bozeman, April 1994.