American Indian Education
Past, Present, and the Future
Presentation to Augsburg College
By: Sophia J. Jacobson, Ed.S.
Thank you, Cindy, for inviting me to share who we are as a people. I am an
Anishinanbe que, we are also known as Ojibwe or Chippewa Indians. The words
Ojibwe and Chippewa derived from what we call our language O’chippeweiyan. I
am an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Pillager
Band. And, I have been involved with Indian Education for more than thirty years.
As an educator, I am happy to give you your quiz question for today: HOW
MANY OF YOU KNOW WHO THE THREE SISTERS ARE? Please raise your
hands. Of the hands raised, HOW MANY OF YOU MAINTAIN THE THREE
SISTERS IN YOUR DIETS? Thank you.
For generations our people taught us who the three sisters are and why we
should keep them in our diet. The three sisters are: CORN, BEANS, AND
SQUASH. The traditional ways of planting THE THREE SISTERS, produced
nitrates for a healthy crop. Maintaining THE THREE SISTERS in our diets
cleanses us and keeps us healthy. This is an example of the oral traditions that have
been passed down through generations. Today, THE THREE SISTERS, maintained
in our diets, helps to curb diabetes. These are among our sacred foods.
The teaching of our past generations educated us to learn:
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Knowledge of our traditions.
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Access to the privilege to perform certain roles in our culture.
-
Access to the powers upon which successful progress toward life
goals can be made.
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Some may ask, who are the Native Americans, or who are the American
Indians. We are the indigenous people of North America, we call the earth we walk
on Turtle Island (our Mother Earth). We are guided by our spiritual beliefs, our
spiritual beliefs are learned through the cosmos. It is interesting how many people
really don’t know who we are as a people. For generations, the cosmos guided our
people. The cosmic education of the people continues today. Within this traditional
education, we have been taught about the four direction, east, west, north, and
south; along with above us (the sky), below us (the earth) and inside of us (our
hearts). So besides the number four, the number seven becomes sacred to us as
Indian people. The education of our past generations has been carried on today.
Many times I ask myself, “How could our traditions be preserved from
generation to generation,” especially since we had no writing language and
considering the history of our people. There was a time in our history when our
ancestors could not practice who they were as Anishinabe people. Indigenous people
on Turtle Island were forbidden to practice their language, culture, and religion.
The people who discovered America and wrote the Constitution of the United States
considered the “Indian” people to be pagans and savages and less than human,
because they did not know who we were. This history of our ancestors contains dark
chapters.
Within those dark chapters treaties were made with Tribes; within the War
Department, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs was created to oversee the Indian
wards of the government. Manual labor schools were formed to educate Indian
children in farming and homemaking (to take the Indian out of the children). Six
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manual training school and eighty-seven boarding schools were in existence by 1839.
The schools were mainly operated by missionaries. Ten years later the Office of
Indian Affairs (Bureau of Indian Affairs) was transferred to the Department of
Interior. Land ownership was forced on the people. Indians didn’t comprehend
owning the earth, the earth was highly regarded as our mother, and how could our
mother be owned? This is when reservations were “developed” to contain the
indigenous people on land unwanted by the settlers. Schools on reservations were
designed to devalue the traditional culture and religion of Indian people and
assimilate Indian youth into the dominate society. The forced settlement on
reservations caused an almost total dependence on the federal agent for food,
shelter, and clothing. American’s believed this was God’s will and this was their
manifest destiny. The United States government officials saw themselves as trading
education for land. Indian children could no longer be Indian, they could not speak
their language in school, nor practice their culture or religion. Captain Richard
Henry Pratt started the first government run, off-reservation boarding school at
Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1879. Haskell Institute was established in 1884 at
Lawrence, Kansas. Carlisle is not operating today, but Haskell is now a four-year
tribal college. Each of the 465 Federally recognized tribes today, have stories to tell
of how their people were assimilated into an unfamiliar lifestyle.
In 1919, Indians could apply for citizenship after World War I because of
their willingness to participate in defending Mother Earth, none applied. In 1924,
the Snyder Act had a “tail” put on that forced citizenship on American Indians. The
Commissioner of Indian Affairs also formed a committee of One Hundred Citizens
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to discuss how Indian Education could be improved. John Collier, a reformer,
criticized how the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) treated Indians. Which lead to the
(Lewis) Meriam Report of 1928, which condemned government relations with
Indians and recommended that Indians be given more freedom to manage their own
affairs. John Collier became Commission of Indian Affairs in 1933 and worked on
the recommendations of the Meriam Report. The result was the Indian
Reorganization (Howard-Wheeler-Howard) Act of 1934. The Johnson O’Malley Act
was also passed at this time, which allowed the secretary of the interior to enter into
contract with states or territories to educate Indian children. Historically, this
money was used by the states to educate all children, and today the money is focused
on Indian children.
Changes in Indian Education were slow, after World War II and through the
1950’s Indian children were still taken out of their homes and sent hundreds of
miles away to missionary controlled residential government boarding school. I am
the youngest of ten children and I heard my sisters’ story of being returned to our
mother. They were five and six then they were sent three hundred miles away and
finally returned when they were eleven and twelve. The twelve year old said, “They
are sending us to this woman, they called her mom.” My sisters didn’t even know
they had a mother or what a mother was.
And so the dark chapters of the history of American Education are closed
but not forgotten, “as one door closes another opens” giving Indian people a way of
moving through life and accepting new challenges.
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In 1968, after the civil rights movement, the Bi-Lingual Bi-Cultural Act was
passed which allowed English as a Second Language to be taught in schools, this
opened the doors to American Indian survival schools in the Twin Cities area: The
Little Red School House (no longer in existence), Heart of the Earth (currently
operation in SE Minneapolis) and Center School. Minneapolis can also be credited
for initiating the National Indian Education Association (NIEA) during this time
period. NIEA is now located in Washington, D.C. and lobbies for Indian Education
today. The Navajo Community College was also founded in 1968, and opened doors
for other reservations to develop their own culturally relevant schools. Today there
are 34 Tribal Community Colleges in the United States and Canada. Minnesota has
Fond du Lac, Leech Lake, White Earth, and Red Lake Tribal Colleges. The schools
unite together by lobbying through the American Indian Higher Education
Consortium. Many of schools build partnerships with American Indian High
Schools and four-year colleges to provide transitions for the students, along with
developing model technology projects to bridge the gap on the electronic highway.
The elders have not been forgotten, but have been included in the educational
systems. These schools value their cultural heritage and work at preserving the
language, culture, and religion; while offering challenging math and science
programs.
Numerous four-year colleges value educating Indian students and include
Indian Studies in their curriculum. Augsburg College is an example. Augsburg has
an Indian Studies major and focuses on teaching who the American Indian people
are. Today, we, as Indian people, only number .09 percent of the total United States
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population. We are not very many people, is that why American people don’t know
us? But, more importantly we need to know ourselves. We need to know what our
vision is and stay focused on the vision.
The journey of American Indian Education is continuous. When one chapter
closes, a new chapter begins. As Indian students, we must stay focused. I can say we,
because I am a doctorial student at St. Thomas University. We cannot count on
government money to pay our way through school if we choose the structured
educational road in life. Some people believe that Indians get a free education, but
we don’t. In order to qualify for the government money, we need to meet poverty
guidelines and be in need. And being in need, may blind our vision. What I can
count on are my choices to pursue my educational vision at any financial cost, which
means working while going to school. And, I’m not going to shortchange my vision
because I deserve the best education possible, no less. The road of life is an
orientation; hopefully, we have learned to take along positive people to support us,
strong role models, knowledgeable mentors, and our own good choices. We are
setting examples for future generations.
Today, I am not going to fill your minds with statistics of how many students
are in school or how many students are not. Because as I said our numbers are few
in regards to the total population, and our chances to succeed are few unless we can
keep our educational vision clear today and in the future.
Remember: The teaching of our past generations educated us to learn:
-
Knowledge of our oral traditions.
-
Access to the privilege to perform certain roles in our culture.
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And,
-
Access to the powers upon which successful progress toward life
goals can be made.
These are the oral traditions handed down to us by our ancestors, and we must
hand them to future generations.
Thank you for listening.
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