Education remains one of the most important avenues for success for many communities. However, while national high school graduation rates have reached 81 percent, Native graduation rates are at 67 percent, well below their peers. Access to good, equitable and safe schools are often difficult for our students to come by. Even states that have Native-friendly legislation are not always the best allies — tribes in Montana have recently filed a lawsuit against their local school district for discrimination and harassment of Native students, and the Onondaga Tribe in New York recently staged a walk out to protest discriminatory hiring practices of a school district serving their students.
Native students are unique. While 93 percent attend public schools, the remaining 7 percent attend federally funded schools on reservation land in rural areas. Our students face endemic and policy-driven barriers to success — many students don’t have adequate access to broadband internet, must drive upwards of 300 miles a day to attend class and are educated in decrepit and decaying school buildings on reservation land.
Native students must have access to the most basic necessities to be college and career ready, but what’s needed goes beyond that. Unless educators make sure Native cultures are included in school culture, and Native history is taught in the classroom, Native students won’t do as well as they could either academically or socially.
Culture-based education encourages educators and schools to be responsive to the unique needs of each student. A comprehensive approach to nurturing and educating the whole student is imperative when teaching Native students, because for hundreds of years, education was a weapon against Native culture — our students were kidnapped, abused and isolated from their families in an attempt to “kill the Indian, save the man.” Since the Boarding School Era, our communities have suffered and struggled to retain the unique parts of our culture that shape our identities, and our students continue to bear the trauma of this history.
TToday, we still see the erasure of Native identity in classrooms — Native stories and history continue to be talked about in the past tense. We are relegated to lesson plans shared during Thanksgiving. But there is some progress, in places. States like Washington and Montana are changing the narrative by consulting with tribal leadership in developing and passing legislation that mandates the creation of standards and curriculum showcasing tribal culture. These are great examples of how state governments can be important allies to tribes, and how culture-based education can be easily incorporated into classrooms.
However, tribal autonomy in education is the most important path to success for Native students. A handful of tribes have begun to charter their own schools with promising results. Charter schools give our tribes the flexibility to decide courses, provide language classes and make culture an integral part of a student’s school day. Values are often explained through traditional teachings and ceremonies. It is important that schools provide this opportunity for our students, and that these schools are packed with teachers who understand the importance of culturally responsive schooling.
Native charter schools serve a second important function — they are saving languages by raising the next generation of language speakers. Language preservation is perhaps the most important and urgent concern of Native communities. Language immersion programs provide an important opportunity for instruction, and they boast lower dropout rates and increased graduation and college-readiness levels. Native Hawaiian immersion programs are a prime example of language revitalization and show the academic success these programs provide.
Language nests, programs that start from birth to 5 years of age, are an important part of language immersion programs. Through a casual and structured environment, students are able to acquire Native languages naturally, learning by hearing the language from the elders and fluent speakers who talk and visit with them. On the Brighton reservation of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, the Este-Cate Em Ponvkv Cuko Immersion Program provides a unique environment in which Creek is the only language spoken. Students are learning to speak, pray, count and tease using only their Native language. The students who complete the program will have complete fluency in Creek This is a perfect example of how tribal control of education can provide opportunities that will never be possible in public schools.
The program has widespread support from the community, from parents and from the administration, and is run within the Pemayetv Emahakv Charter School. Wherever you go on school grounds, culture is a clear and present part of the ethos of the school. There are even traditional huts on school grounds where students learn how to cook traditional foods. Instead of running away from Native culture, this school provides exactly what our students need — a chance to see themselves represented in the school’s culture. And they embrace it.
This is a perfect example of how tribal control of education can provide opportunities that will never be possible in public schools.
The success of our students has an impact on the success of our tribal nations. When they do well it is a victory for tribal sovereignty, and a celebration of the tribe, school and community that have supported them. To protect tribal sovereignty and to promote the economic security of our nations, tribes must have the ability to provide for the education of their citizens. When we allow this to happen, our students will be successful.
