{"id":22099,"date":"2018-04-09T10:42:15","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T16:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=22099"},"modified":"2018-04-09T12:00:34","modified_gmt":"2018-04-09T18:00:34","slug":"educator-sees-hope-in-new-generation-of-native-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2018\/04\/educator-sees-hope-in-new-generation-of-native-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Educator sees hope in new generation of Native students"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Crow\"<\/a>

Adrian Jawort<\/p>

At theMontana Indian Education Conference last week, Lavonna Real Bird, right, of Wyola Elementary School, talked about the importance of the Crow Culture Club.<\/p><\/div>\n

Speaking at the 37th Annual Montana Indian Education Conference at the Billings Hotel and Convention Center last week, Reno Charette envisioned a future where all Native American students are so educated they\u2019ll continually challenge college professors with their viewpoints.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen our kids walk through that classroom door, I want college professors to shake in their boots, unnerved by the challenge that our kids are beyond the average learner,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Charette, the keynote speaker and director of American Indian Outreach for Montana State University Billings, addressed attendees sponsored by the Montana Post-Secondary Educational Opportunities Council. Educators who teach students from pre-school to college attended the three-day conference, the theme of which was \u201cEducational Sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur kids will demand a new standard of excellence of education that means they will unleash their intelligence of an interconnected universe managed by harmonious relationships as stewards of the environment, who make decisions with the Seventh Generation in mind,\u201d Charette said.<\/p>\n

(Decisions made today with the foresight of acknowledging the impact on future generations is known as the \u201cSeventh Generation\u201d philosophy.)<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, that day isn\u2019t here,\u201d Charette acknowledged. \u201cInstead our kids are measured by their deficits against the mainstream educational system. We are portrayed in grant proposals as problems, categorized by gaps in academic achievements, and calculated as the group least likely to graduate.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Montana Office of Public Instruction, after five years of steady increases, Native American graduation rates remained the lowest, dropping from 67.3 percent to 66 percent in 2016. During that time, white students held a steady 88.7 percent graduation rate, and non-Native students in general 88.4 percent.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>\u201cI\u2019ve had enough of \u2018deficit thinking.\u2019 It\u2019s a pit of a despair that isn\u2019t getting us anywhere fast,\u201d Charette said. \u201cI\u2019m all for thinking Indian. \u2018Think Indian.\u2019 What does that mean? To me it means as sovereign nations, we can do education the way we want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charette noted that educational sovereignty and tribal independence are subjects a lot of U.S. policymakers would prefer to ignore, given their propensity to whitewash history.<\/p>\n

After much destruction of Native peoples through disease, wars, outright genocide and the near extinction of food sources like the bison, their remaining culture was effectively outlawed. Native children who dared speak the languages first heard across North America were beaten and tortured for doing so in boarding schools they were forced to attend far from their homelands.<\/p>\n

\u201cKill the Indian, save the man,\u201d was a phrase coined by Richard Henry Pratt of the infamous Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. It became a de facto motto for all Indian boarding schools, where tribal children were taught to be ashamed of who they were.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United states of America set forth a political mission to target the destruction of our culture,\u201d Charette says. \u201cIt was a war most savagely waged against our children. It was a war of forced assimilation disguised as education. A war in which children were brutalized physically, sexually, emotionally, and many died from the wait within this war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet all that is Indian within you die!\u201d the Rev. J.A. Lippincott said during a Carlisle commencement address. The students were told they could never be \u201ctruly American \u2026 until the Indian within you is dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Reno\"<\/a>

MSU Billings<\/p>

Reno Charette is the director of American Indian Outreach for Montana State University Billings.<\/p><\/div>\n

Charette says as devastating as it was for Native peoples to see their way of life essentially banned, \u201cWe as a people are not so easily beaten.\u201d<\/p>\n

She cited the Crow Chief Plenty Coups, who once said, \u201cEducation is your most powerful weapon. With education you are the white man’s equal; without education you are his victim.”<\/p>\n

Within that context, Plenty Coups didn\u2019t mean for Natives to abandon their ways, but to become educated so as to not be taken advantage of.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if our tribal ancestors had been able to choose how they might adopt, adapt or reject what Western education had to offer?\u201d Charette said. \u201cOur cultural evolution from first contact with the colonizers to now would have taken a very careful journey of selection.\u201d<\/p>\n

In drafting a new state constitution in 1972, Montana pioneered the importance of acknowledging American Indian culture. Article 10, Section 1 of the Montana Constitution says, \u201cThe state recognizes the distinct and unique cultural heritage of American Indians and is committed in its educational goals to the preservation of their cultural integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, it took almost 30 years for this commitment to Indian education to fully reverberate among Montana teachers and students. During that time, it was left up to individual teachers to incorporate Indian education into their lesson plans, and most teachers simply didn\u2019t have the training, expertise or will to tackle Montana Indian issues.<\/p>\n

In 1999, House Bill 528, the Indian Education for All Act, was sponsored by then-state Rep. Carol Juneau to bring to the forefront the lack of implementation of Indian education as written in the state\u2019s constitution. (Carol\u2019s daughter, Denise Juneau, was the Montana state superintendent of public instruction from 2008 to 2016, and was recently selected to lead<\/a> Seattle Public Schools.)<\/p>\n

A lawsuit in 2004 finally pushed the state to put money behind the implementation of Indian Education for All.<\/p>\n

Charette spoke of how this generation of Native college students, who grew up in an era of IEFA, have grown frustrated by some of their own tribal leaders\u2019 reluctance to embrace progress via education. A woman with advanced degrees from a top university said she tried to come back to help her tribe, but said it was like banging her head against the wall.<\/p>\n

However, Charette sees hope in educated up-and-coming generations.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur tribal millennials will be the voters that expect higher standards,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are losing patience with the snail pace of tribal politics. They desire greater prosperity for their tribal communities and believe that higher education is the tool of a brighter future.\u201d<\/p>\n

She believes that having a college degree will be considered a strong prerequisite for being a tribal representative in the future.<\/p>\n

Although tribal communities are plagued by addictions, suicide and poverty, the consensus was that an antidote will involve going back to traditional ways, ways that preceded the rise of those problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing our tribal culture \u2014 living our tribal culture \u2014 is the best defense against the cruelest of social ills that plague our tribal culture,\u201d Charette said. \u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t our tribes want to mandate it for all our youth, or all of our tribal members for that matter?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaking at the 37th Annual Montana Indian Education Conference at the Billings Hotel and Convention Center last week, Reno Charette envisioned a future where all Native American students are so educated they\u2019ll continually challenge college professors with their viewpoints.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":22100,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[2932,6891,6889,6890],"class_list":["post-22099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","category-news","tag-chief-plenty-coups","tag-indian-education-for-all","tag-montana-indian-education-conference","tag-reno-charette","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22099"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22110,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22099\/revisions\/22110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}