Tuesday, March 20, 2007

JUDGING CHARACTER BY WHAT WE SEE NOT WHAT WE KNOW

We have had a lot of news and comment about Somali cab drivers who won't pick up blind persons with seeing eye dogs. And the constant drumbeat about who is better qualified in school and who is making most of the trouble in public schools is also a topic of extensive comment.

We see comments about this or that group, which comes from seeing what is in front of us rather than an understanding of who the people are.

I do think we have a tendency to look at who is here and assume that means the entire group is defined by those smaller numbers. It certainly was true that the European immigrants of the last 23 million (1880s to 1920s) contrasted in that Jews were not representative of all Jews but Italians were representative of southern Italy.

Now we have Asians and Africans. At some point we will sort that out, too, but it is my unscientific observation that the Hmong immigrants are more representative of the spectrum of their group at home than other Asians who are here might be. The Hmong come in for some unfair comparison criticism as a result.

With American Indians you have the spectrum for sure except that so many were killed or died from European diseases, those who are left may not be as representative as one would hope. It is a population in recovery.

And with Mexicans and Central Americans - this group is highly representative of survivors of either earlier invasions and disease or more recent military actions in their home countries. Who we have here as far as representation is unknown, I think.

With African Americans, we have a preponderance of surviving members from certain areas, not all of Africa, so we should not try to draw broad conclusions. This population has become a truly American group but with a history of brutal killings and diseases suffered that went unchecked. It is a population in recovery.

You might say Africans on the whole represent the world's greatest diversity and American Indians on the whole represent a high degree of relatedness. Both groups have shown tremendous resilience and once allowed to recover their numbers sufficiently (post Civil War and post Great Depression) are now producing many examples of successful individuals who work in every walk of the American power and professional classes.

With Somali and other refugees from East Africa, I think it is hard to know and the taxi, pork handling, dog issues may be more local based on who is here than on Somali attitudes across the U.S. or in Somalia for that matter.

So I am just saying it is hard to talk of minorities and immigrants with a broad brush. We don't know really how representative the groups that live here are or whether they reflect the full population of their homelands.

Mr. Mork speaks of the earlier Europeans to the American continent. It seems clear from the record that those numbers were highly selective at either end of the spectrum from educated professionals to indentured servants. That very imbalance made it relatively easy for the elites to decide on the shape and content of the American government. No storming of the Bastille for them. From that juncture we derive an understanding of accomplished democracy when that was never the fact. It is a process that is yet unfolding.

That's not such a bad idea. We have to keep working on inclusion, day and night. The more the Western European group loses its demographic advantage in the democratic process, the more we will experience the joys of an unstratified society. I look forward to it.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

MINNEAPOLIS LIBRARIES COULD COLLABORATE

Definitions
・ Coordination: The organization of efforts of different parties to reach a common goal. High-stakes issues are not often involved, and parties need not carry a relationship beyond the accomplishment of the task at hand. The goal is static.
Cooperation: A means to an end that involves gains and losses on the part of each participant. This can sometimes foster a competitive environment, and parties need not carry a relationship beyond the accomplishment of the task at hand. The goal is static.
Definitions
Collaboration: All parties work together and build consensus to reach a decision or create a product, the result of which benefits all parties. Competition is a nearly-insurmountable roadblock to collaboration, and the relationship among parties must continue beyond the accomplishment of the task in order to assure its viability. The goal is dynamic.
COLLABORATION
Cross institutional collaboration is an important and often undervalued and overlooked means of extending the reach and capacities of any given institution.
-Wikipedia
Comparison
The general definition of a team is an interdependent group, which suggests that collaborative groups are teams, coordinated groups are not, and cooperative groups may or may not be. Where do teams, partnerships, and joint ventures fit in this schema? Partnerships and joint ventures are both primarily cooperative undertakings, whose objectives evolve over time.
COMPARING PURPOSES

Coordination: Avoid gaps & overlap in individuals' assigned work
Cooperation: Obtain mutual benefit by sharing or partitioning work
Collaboration: Achieve combined results that the participants would be incapable of accomplishing by working alone
EXAMPLES
Coordination: Project to implement an IT application across the MPLS system or city
Cooperation: Summer reading program in the library, parks, school libraries
Collaboration: Discovery of a dramatically better way to deliver services; Co-creation
THE ENVIRONMENT
Collaboration is future directed
It comes about in a reform environment
It can link institutions and governments in new ways
It holds the promise of preventing dismantlement in hard times
It brings people to the table to create new solutions
MINNESOTA TRENDS
In 2003, the Association of Minnesota Counties retained the public affairs firm of Himle-Horner to assess critical issues for county government in Minnesota and assist in the formulation of recommendations for the future direction of county government.
Survey
Survey/Poll Himle Horner contracted with the Twin Cities survey firm Decision Resources, Ltd. to conduct a scientific random-sample statewide telephone survey of 800 Minnesotans. Decision Resources conducted the survey fieldwork/interviewing and compiled the data tables.
FINDINGS OF INTEREST TO MPLS
When asked to generally evaluate Minnesota's tax climate, only 23% supported an increase in taxes to improve government services, compared with 47% who felt Minnesota taxes were already too high. Asked to look specifically at property taxes raised by counties, only 10% preferred having counties increase property taxes in reaction to their current budget situations, compared to 16% who want services reduced and 59% who want counties to find new ways to deliver services.
Public Supports Finding New Ways to Deliver Services
Public Focused on Reform Rather than Cuts
Public wants changes in service delivery, not cuts in services.
Support exists for reprioritizing county functions within current budget
New Minnesota model is service reform
Public’s attitude is not a California tax revolution (for now).
Attitudes on Taxes Differ Geographically

Federal Indian Education

1. The Snyder Act Public Law 67-85 25 U.S.C 13 November 2nd, 1921, Under Section 13. Expenditure of appropriations by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, this law enables the Bureau of Indian Affairs to “expend such moneys as Congress may from time to time appropriate, for the benefit, care, and assistance of the Indians throughout the United States for the following purposes: General support and civilization, including education.”
Two important amendments to this law are: any “institution of higher education” administered by the Secretary of the Interior is eligible for funds authorized by the Higher Education Act of 1965. (25 U.S.C. 13); and, Section 8 of Public Law 93-638 (enacted January 4, 1975) 88 Stat. 2206, adds that any funds appropriated for any fiscal year which are not obligated and expanded shall remain available for obligation and expenditure during a succeeding year.
2. The Johnson O'Malley Act of 1934, as amended. Provides federal funding for formula-based supplemental education programs to tribes and state public schools for the special educational needs of Indian students. Requires local Indian education committees to review applications and be involved in operations. Tribes receive preference when applying for JOM funding through the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
3. The Impact Aid Laws of 1950, Public Laws 81-874 and 81-815, as amended. Provide federal subsidies to state public school districts to construct facilities ('815) and educate children residing on federal lands including Indian country ('874). Amendments were passed in 1978 based on the government-to-government relationship between the United States and Indian tribes. These amendments require school districts to have policies and procedures which ensure that Indian parents and tribes have an opportunity to comment on the funding application process and are consulted in the development of school programs. Indian tribes may also file complaints with the Secretary of Education against school districts for violation of Impact Aid policies and procedures.
4. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Public Law 89-10, as amended. Provides supplemental federal funding for a variety of education programs including those that are known today as Chapter 1 and Bilingual Education. Both Chapter 1 and Bilingual Education funding may be provided to state public schools, Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, and to tribal contract or grant schools.
Chapter 1 formula-based funding provides supplemental educational services and programs, usually to develop basic academic skills, for disadvantaged youth including Native Americans. Bilingual Education competitive, discretionary funding provides supplemental bilingual education services and programs for limited English proficient youth including Indians. Both programs have a parent advisory committee requirement to provide schools with advice in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of their programs and services. This requirement may be waived and the elected school board may serve as a PAC in tribal contract and grant schools.
5. The Head Start Program Act of 1965, as amended. Provides formula-based federal funding for comprehensive health, educational, nutritional, social, and other services to economically disadvantaged preschool children including children on federally recognized Indian reservations. Federally recognized Indian tribes may directly receive Head Start funding and operate Head Start programs for Indian children on their reservations.
6. The Indian Elementary and Secondary School Assistance Act of 1972, Public Law 92-318, as amended. Provides formula-based federal funding for supplemental programs known as Title V. These programs are designed to meet the special educational or culturally related academic needs of Indian students. Title V formula funds may be provided to state public schools, Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, and tribal contract and grant schools. Indian parent advisory committees must approve Title V programs and be involved in program administration in the state public schools.
This Act also makes tribes eligible for certain competitive, discretionary grants for elementary and secondary school demonstration and pilot projects, special teacher training programs, Indian controlled schools projects, and adult education programs.
7. The Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, Public Law 93-638, as amended. Allows Indian tribes to contract for the operation of schools that were formerly operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs or that were funded by the BIA and privately operated. Authorizes direct funding to tribal schools for programs and operations that are regulated under the Education Amendments of 1978, Public Law 95-561.
8. The Education Amendments of 1978, Public Law 95-561, as amended provide broad statutory guidance to schools that are operated or funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Provides for Indian school boards in BIA operated schools. Requires the BIA to actively consult with tribes in all matters that relate to Bureau schools. Allows the Secretary of the Interior to implement cooperative agreements between tribes, school boards of Bureau schools, and state public school districts. Establishes formula-based funding for all BIA operated schools and BIA funded tribal schools. Requires that such schools be accredited or meet standards that are equal to or exceed those accreditation requirements. Allows tribes to set academic standards for BIA operated or funded schools that take into account the specific needs of Indian children.
9. The Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act of 1978, Public Law 98-192, as amended. Provides federal funding for post-secondary institutions controlled by Indian tribes. Tribal governments now operate 24 tribally controlled colleges. Two of these colleges are four-year institutions.
10. The Indian Education Act of 1988, Public Law 100-297, as amended. Allows tribes to operate BIA funded schools as grant schools rather than as contract schools. Grant school funding allows tribal schools to receive funding on a more timely basis, to invest those funds under certain restrictions, and to use the interest gained for further educational costs in their schools. This Act also authorizes federal funding for tribal early childhood programs and tribal departments of education. To date no money has been appropriated for tribal departments of education.
11. The Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act of 1990, Public Law 101-392. Provides funding for competitive, discretionary project grants that will provide vocational education opportunities for Indians. Allows tribes and tribal organizations to plan, conduct, and administer vocational education programs that will provide Indian students with skills related to jobs or further post-secondary training. Also allows tribal post-secondary institutions to compete for post-secondary vocational education grants.
12. The Native American Languages Act of 1990, Public Law 101-477. Recognizes the right of Indian tribes to use their native languages to conduct tribal business and as a medium of instruction in all Bureau of Indian Affairs funded schools. Directs federal agencies to consult with tribes in evaluating the agencies' policies and procedures and bringing these in compliance with the Act.
13. The Goals 2000: Educate America Act, Public Law 103-227. Provides funds and a framework for schools to meet the National Education Goals. Includes American Indian and Alaska Native students in public schools and allots set-aside funds for schools operated or funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to establish a plan to develop a reform and improvement plan for BIA education and to conduct a cost analysis of BIA academic and home living/residential standards. Specifically mentions Indian education in the activities of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), including placing the Director of BIA Education on the National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board and the inclusion of American Indian and Alaska Native students in OERI research institutes/activities.
14. The Improving America's School Act of 1994, Public Law 103-382. Amends the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, including Title I (formerly Chapter 1), Bilingual Education, Impact Act, and Title IX. This Act also amends the Education Amendments of 1978, which pertain to Bureau of Indian Affairs schools and programs. This Act also provides land-grant status to tribal colleges in accordance with the provisions of the Act of July 2, 1962.
15. The No Child Left Behind Act, Public Law No. 107-110, 115 Stat. 1907 (2001). The statutory policy provisions for this program were amended to state that it is the policy of the United States to fulfill the federal government's unique and continuing trust relationship with and responsibility to the Indian people for the education of Indian children, and the federal government will continue to work with the public school districts, Indian tribes and organizations, post-secondary institutions, and other entities toward the goal of ensuring that programs that serve Indian children are of the highest quality and provide for not only the basic elementary and secondary educational needs, but also the unique educational and culturally related academic needs of these children.
The primary objective of this program is to provide federal financial assistance to support public school districts, BIA funded schools, and, in some instances, tribes, in their efforts to meet the unique educational and culturally related academic needs of American Indian and Alaska Native students. 20 U.S.C. 7402(a).
Funds under this program must be used for the establishment, maintenance, and operation of supplementary comprehensive programs that are specifically designed to meet the needs of Indian students, including language and culture needs, and to assist Indian students in meeting state content and student academic performance standards. 20 U.S.C. §§7424(b) and 7425.
Programs and projects must be designed in response to a locally conducted needs assessment and with the full cooperation and involvement of an elected Indian parent committee. 20 U.S.C. §7424(c)Programs, projects, and activities may include culturally related activities, early childhood and family programs for school readiness, enrichment programs that directly support the attainment of state academic content and achievement standards, career preparation activities, substance abuse prevention activities, culturally responsive teaching activities, and tribal curriculum. 20 U.S.C. §7425(b).

American Indian Education

Demographics & Education Status

Indian education sprang from the misguided notion that assimilated Indians would be happy Indians. They would not be Indians at all, in fact. That was the goal of government and the religious community. For two hundred years, the federal government and the states have had great difficulty reconciling a free country with free nations located within the boundaries of that country. The Declaration of Independence itself stated an unreasonable and unfounded fear when it described the American Indian in this way: "HE {the King} has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions."

The belief that when Indians are educated, the courses provided should be in the mechanical and domestic areas operationally persisted well into the 1960s. Strong undertones of racism larded reports that identified Indians as "good with their hands," or possessing "natural" artistic abilities. An entire school of art was developed and taught to Indians early in this century, leading to Indian "genre" art expression in painting and sculpture.

Understanding the losses sustained by the tribes begins with looking at the loss of homelands. The land area of the United States is 2,423,884,160 acres. Excluding Indian lands and other trust areas, federal lands total 549,473,923 acres, or about 23% of all land belonging to states. Federal land areas vary throughout the states, from 63% of Utah to less than .5% of Iowa.


American Indians and Alaska Natives currently hold 100,015,221 acres of tribal lands in 33 States (excluding Hawaii), or a little over 4% of their original land base. There is very little room to grow.
Over 2.3 million people identify themselves as American Indians, an increase of 38% over the previous decade. However, to be identified as an Indian and recognized as such by the United States, an individual must be a confirmed citizen of a tribe. That number is thought to be around 1.9 million. Conflicting numbers arise when counts are attempted for reservation and urban dwellers.
It is generally estimated that 80% of the Indian population lives away from tribal homelands. This is in part due to the former U.S. government policy of removing Indians to distant cities and in part to the inability of the mostly rural and thus isolated Indian nations to sustain growing populations.


From a base that incorporates the U.S. Constitution mandate with respect to Indian nations and the many hundreds of treaties and laws, the United States has undertaken its charge as trustee. The federal agency charged with the responsibility of executing the trust responsibility of the United States is the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). There are twelve geographic area offices of the BIA.
Below is the 1995 BIA estimate of Indians living on or near tribal lands in the service areas, showing the population subset of children under 16 years of age. The BIA is careful to caution that these numbers have not been finalized and will be tested by the 2000 Census.The Census Bureau puts the median age for all Indians at 27, ten years younger than the median for the white population.
The average representation of the under 16s is 34%, with a high of 40% for Anadarko (Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and a part of Nebraska), and a low of 29% for Sacramento (California). However, Anadarko does not have the highest population. Muskogee has a much higher population and thus has more children under the age of 16.


TOTAL

CHILDREN UNDER 16

ABERDEEN AREA OFFICE

128,412

41,813

33%

ALBUQUERQUE AREA OFFICE

59,598

18,668

31%

ANADARKO AREA OFFICE

45,535

18,224

40%

BILLINGS AREA OFFICE

42,427

15,943

38%

EASTERN AREA OFFICE

50,272

16,187

32%

JUNEAU AREA OFFICE

85,259

28,040

33%

MINNEAPOLIS AREA OFFICE –

76,883

23,963

31%

MUSKOGEE AREA OFFICE

284,740

91,426

32%

NAVAJO AREA OFFICE

225,668

87,736

39%

PHOENIX AREA OFFICE

100,854

33,366

33%

PORTLAND AREA OFFICE

104,841

37,951

36%

SACRAMENTO AREA OFFICE

55,717

16,284

29%



1,260,206

429,601

34%



Generally, American Indians have a poverty rate of nearly one-third (compared to 13% national poverty rate, a high school dropout rate of 34%, and a four-year college degree attainment rate of 9.4%. The number of families are 450,000, 34.2% of which are single parent households. These characteristics vary considerably from one geographic area to another, but as averages, they describe a population under stress.


Tribes have control of tribal schools and aspects of federal schools, however, not every tribe operates a school system or has a federal school nearby. Eighty seven percent of all Indian elementary and secondary students go to state public schools, even on reservations. Under current federal law, tribes have yet to define their rights and roles in relation to state public schools, according to the Native American Rights Fund.


The U.S. National Center for Education Statistics, reports that in 1995, 131.3 thousand Indians were enrolled in college, of which number 120.7 thousand were undergraduates, 8.5 thousand were graduates, and 2.1 thousand were first professionals (law, medicine, etc.).


In terms of degrees earned, distribution for the Indian population is very small compared to other groups. For example, for 1994, 4,975 earned associate’s degrees, 6,189 earned bachelor’s degrees, 1,697 earned master’s degrees, 134 earned doctor’s degrees and 371 earned professional degrees. No other group is even close to this low attainment record. Of 41,610 doctorates conferred in 1995, 77.1% went to whites, 4.6% to Blacks, 13.5% to Asians, 3.3% to Hispanics and 1.6% to persons of unknown background. Only 0.5 went to Indians. This includes zero for Indians in Earth Sciences and Computer Sciences, two very important academic fields with high worker demands.


The significance of these figures to Indian education can be found among the 5,260,000 instructional faculty in the U.S. Of the total, 2,820,000 (54%) are between 46 and 60 years of age. This group will retire in ever increasing numbers starting in 2003. The numbers retiring now are already said to be larger than the replacement rate. Indians are only 3,000 of the faculty now. If low numbers continue for master’s and doctoral programs, the effect will be extremely negative on future quality of Indian education.


With 429,60l Indian children under the age of 16 (table above), the potential is there to raise the number of Indian earned doctorate and professional degrees considerably in the next decade. But, there are many factors working against this outcome.
Indian Education’s Bitter Legacy


It is extremely difficult for today’s tribes to overcome the history of educational experiments on Indians and the terrible effect this had on generations of people. The inability of the federal government to conduct successful social programs is nowhere better exemplified than in its record regarding Indian education.


From the provision in the U.S. Constitution reserving the federal right to transact with Indians to the end of treaty-making in 1871, the federal government in its various administrative departments along with Congress, attempted to address a range of social issues facing Indian people. This included education. After pushing Indians onto lands that could not support them, government then had to bring in food for distribution.


From the beginning, corruption was evident in the system. The federal practice of tribal allocations was operated under the worst set of colonialist attitudes imaginable. This included theft, inferior goods, services not rendered, immorality, and inhumane cruelty. Right up until 1952, tribes were actually charged for the provisions they received—recorded as "offsets" of lease payments and sales of minerals, land, timber and other natural resources. This despite the wording of treaties and the presumed reluctance of the government to give back the land ceded by the tribes.


Education followed a similar misguided and corrupt pattern. From the beginning, the intent of the U.S. government was to make Indians into white people. Only European education was considered. All of Indian life: culture, education, social and political systems, norms and religion were disregarded.


There was no uniform agreement among tribes that European education was desirable. Some embraced it in a desire to be progressive, others refuted it for teaching the wrong skills for the Indian environment. Treaties from 1794 (with the Oneidas), included education provisions, but not all treaties contained them. A national Indian education policy did not develop until 1802, when Congress provided that thereafter there would be an annual appropriation "...for teaching their children reading, writing, and arithmetic, and for performing such other duties as may be enjoined according to such instructions and rules as the President may give and prescribe for the regulation of their conduct..."


In a blatant transgression of the separation of church and state, the President handed over the job of educating Indians to Christian religious groups. This top-down policy having no regulation or monitoring, resulted in widespread corruption, extreme cruelty to the children, and it started to produce generations of children forced into long separations from their families. Meanwhile, other Indian policies were forcing families into poverty and dependency.
Not all tribes capitulated. The Choctaw (1805) and Cherokee (1841) ran public school systems for their citizens even before an American system developed.


Interestingly, most of the money for the misbegotten federal school system did not come from Congress. For example, from 1845 to 1855, Congress spent $102,000, the tribes spent $400,000, private donations paid $830,000, and $824,000 came from treaty funds (funds owed Indians from land and other sales). The money, regardless of source, was issued without controls on the missionary operators of the schools.


A secular approach to Indian education came about after the Civil War. In 1878, the United States Indian Training and Industrial School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania was authorized. On October 6, 1879, Lieutenant General Richard Henry Pratt, after months of recruiting in the Black Hills, brought 82 innocent children to Carlisle. It was the middle of the night and the BIA had not delivered the promised provisions and furnishings for the children. That was the ominous beginning of the federal boarding school system which still exists today.


Although secular, Pratt said of his mission, "In Indian civilization I am a Baptist, because I believe in immersing the Indians in our civilization and when we get them under, holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked."


His goal, Pratt said, was to "Convert him in all ways but color into a white man and in fact the Indian would be exterminated, but humanely, and as beneficiary of the greatest gift at the command of the white man - his own civilization."


It made no difference that Pratt was not an educator, or that he summarily cut the hair of the children (an act reserved for the death of a loved one) and put them in itchy woolen uniforms. He practiced military drill as a means of discipline and control. Carlisle stayed open until 1917. No Indian child who entered the school was ever allowed to speak his or her birth language.


Pratt thought Indians should be schooled in the practical arts. No academics for them. Training was the model. He went so far as to take squadrons of students and put them on exhibit at the (Chicago) Columbian Exposition in 1891. Rows of Indian children marched, holding the implements of farming, cooking, sewing, and mechanics.


In a letter home, published in the school newspaper (and thus approved) Harry Shirley, a young Caddo boy, wrote to his father: "And I am coming home in two years from now if Captain Pratt will let me and how are you getting along with the big house and will you tell me in your letter when you write and we get at Carlisle on Thursday and when we got here I did not like the place but since I have being here two or three days I have got used to the place and I like it very well but when we got I felt very home sick and be sure and send my bow and some spike arrows. And we go to church every Sunday. And I have a blue suit to where and there was one Shyenne boy shot himself with a pistol..."


The fear felt by this little boy comes through clearly, despite the cheerful prose. He asks for his bow and arrows twice in the letter and earlier mentions the death of a "Negro boy" in a railroad mishap.
As with other types of boarding schools, putting large numbers of children together invited infectious disease and contagion. Large numbers of children succumbed to illness. The cemetery at Carlisle and at all federal boarding schools, grew as the years went by.
Pratt was able to convince Indian leaders to send their sons and daughters to the school, although it is highly unlikely he told them what he told the white public about his motives. The children of American Horse, Spotted Tail, Two Strike and even Red Cloud’s grandson were sent to Carlisle. Spotted Tail was clear about why he wanted his children to go to school: he wanted to deal more effectively with an untrustworthy government. Treaty violations and encroachment into the Black Hills was commonplace only three years after the defeat of Custer.


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Essays by Laura Waterman Wittstock

"Seeing Whiteness" Essay | "American Democracy: An Invention or a Discovery?" | "Calling the Color Question" | "American Indian Alcoholism's Dark Past & Uncertain Future" | "Native Women and American Feminism" | "Press Coverage of American Indians" | "Minnesota Tribal Sovereignty" | "Rural American Indian Education: A Review of Issues"
Rural American Indian Education: A Review of Issues--Continued
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There seemed to be no end to the federal Indian education policy. No one feared reprisal for the wrongs committed and public opinion, although divided, was not greatly divided. Confident Indian commissioners sent in reports describing their work and popular writers expressed the sentiments of many.


Charles M. Harvey, writing in the Atlantic in 1906 stated, "To tempt the Indian into individual ownership Congress in 1862 passed an act to protect him in the enjoyment of his property if he would abandon his tribe and live the white man's life. As a further incentive Congress in 1875 passed a law to give him a share of his tribe's property if he would give up the tribe and settle on a quarter section of land under the free homes law signed by Lincoln in 1862. In 1877 an act was passed making appropriations to educate Indians for citizenship, and in 1887 one granting citizenship to all Indians who, separated from their tribes, accepted lands in severalty, and adopted civilized life. This act was extended to the Five Tribes of the Indian Territory in 1901, and thus covered all the red men in the United States."


"What use is the Indian making of his opportunities? Let these facts answer. Outside of those in the Five Tribes, in New York, and in Alaska, 30,000 Indians are attending school, or one out of every six of the population. Of these, 26,000 are in the government's 257 schools, and 4000 are in schools supported by churches or by contracts with the government. Civilized clothes are worn wholly by 116,000 Indians, and are worn partly by 44,000; nearly all of these reside in dwelling-houses; 70,000 talk English enough for ordinary purposes, and most of them can read it; and 40,000 are members of churches."


Harvey proudly states, "Only 26,000 blanket Indians are left in the United States."


Then in a marvelous string of prose, Harvey paints an overwrought picture of the dying Indian culture for his readers:
"Down in the foothills of the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma the Comanches' Epictetus, the aged Quanah Parker, discourses philosophy and stoically awaits the end. Like the Moorish king Abu Abdallah, looking mournfully backward at his lost Granada, Geronimo, from Fort Sill, gazes westward across prairies and hills to the Arizona of his great days, which he will not see again. Up at Pine Ridge agency the Sioux nonogenarian Red Cloud, the most famous of living Indian warriors, who could tell as many marvels as Aeneas told to Dido, refuses to accept the government's offer of an allotment of land, and goes down, like Dickens's Steerforth in the storm at Yarmouth, waving his hand defiantly in the face of destiny."
Ninety two years later, if Harvey were alive today, he would be astounded at the status of American Indians. What the tribes lost in education, they won in sovereignty protection in the courts. Had they not won, perhaps Harvey’s predictions could have come true. The reality is quite different. Now, from a position of strengthened sovereign status as recognized by the federal courts, all manner of treaty-based, trust responsibility mandates are on the books in support of Indian education.


Indian Education’s Great Potential

One hundred years ago, through the benevolence of some benefactors a few Indians became doctors, engineers and received other advanced degrees. But by the 1920s, the norm was more of the numbing curriculum of animal husbandry, mechanics, and "domestic science," very much like that designed by General Pratt. The only change was the relentless attacks on Indian culture had begun to ease. After Pratt resigned from Carlisle in 1904, Indian culture found some acceptability. Without the strength of will of individuals like Pratt, crushing Indian culture became less of a priority.


Now, the old ideas are gone, culture has made a dramatic comeback, languages are being studied and preserved, but educational practice is still stuck in the 1950s, when industrial and manufacturing jobs were plentiful. The overwhelming majority of Indian students are not educated to go on to higher education and professions. Support is there, for the few. But if the numbers were 50% higher, the strain on resources would be tremendous.


The BIA offers the following programs:
The Higher Education Grant Program is available to an individual who is a member of a Federally recognized Indian tribe. The program provides financial aid to eligible students, based on demonstrated financial need, who have plans to attend an accredited institution of higher education.


Graduate Funding: Funding is provided under a contract with the American Indian Graduate Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to individuals wishing to do postbaccalaureate studies. All fields of study are given consideration with priority given to business, engineering, Health, Law, and Natural Resources.


Tribally Controlled Colleges: Currently, the BIA provides grants for the operation of 24 tribally controlled community colleges. The number of Indian students enrolled in these colleges in school year 1995-96 was about 25,000 with a total funding of about $28 million.
BIA Post-Secondary Schools: The BIA operates two post-secondary schools: Haskell Indian Native University in Lawrence, Kansas, and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico. These schools have a total enrollment of 1,346 students. For the 1995-96 school year they were funded at about $11.4 million.


There are four parts to the puzzle that must fit together if Indian education is to realize the success it is capable of achieving: responsible tribal control, a continuing trust responsibility, cooperation from states and local government, and the partnership and support of the private/philanthropic sectors. Each of these puzzle pieces has its own set of complex internal issues which present challenges to success. Any one missing from the picture will leave behind a barrier to success.


Tribal control: The complexity of tribal conditions and history make general statements difficult. In addition, federal tinkering created the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. It was well-intentioned but incomplete. The idea was to create democratic government on reservations along with a legislative/administrative body to carry out the business of the tribe. Not all tribes signed on as IRA governments, but the majority did. Since the 1970s the tribes have had to break free from this model by adding judiciary branches, longer terms of elected office and business operations. This progress did not occur in a vacuum. As tribes were democratizing, so was America. Civil rights and recognition of imbalances were opening up the country. Congress hungered to bring individual freedoms and rights to the reservations. It was difficult in that environment to understand that tribes are not democracies, nor should they become them just because it is such a good idea. The trend was so strong that only a few tribes politely told Congress they did not need the white man’s measures of equality

Today there are Indian nations with balanced governments, developing infrastructure, good schools, and thriving business enterprises. The percentages of their high school and college graduates are up and climbing. There are other tribes who are rich in children, but little else. It is fair to say that tribes have uniformly recognized the value of educating their citizens. Only a few, however, have the power and steady control necessary to carry out their educational goals.


In the middle, there are a great number of tribes with internal problems: everything from political corruption to widespread poverty, poor infrastructure, and undulating stability, which make them susceptible to damage from downtrends. Bad economic times in town often spell disaster on reservations. To work with these realities, planning must happen in an organized and sustained way, from one tribal administration to the next.


Continuing trust responsibility: Every decade or so, there is some congressional or administrative shift that makes life hard for the tribes. The curse of the 1950s was termination of the trust responsibility. It started as a congressional resolution, but before it was stopped, the policy led to the destruction of several tribes. That termination trend was reversed in the 1970s and throughout the 1980s to the present time, new tribal recognition has taken place.
But there are congressional representatives who think the trust responsibility is something dispensable. Because the United States has never subjected itself to the authority of the World Court, tribes have been frustrated in attempts to have their issues with the United States heard in a court of international law. Thus, the power game goes on, year after year, and as is the case now, a bill is introduced that would wipe out the trust responsibility of government to the tribes.


Balancing these political outbursts has been the record of law and the interpretations and findings of the federal courts. Given no collusion between judiciary and the legislative bodies, the trust responsibility will go on. The level of support is another question. For years, funds for school construction, administrative support and repairs have been withheld. Release of these funds alone will go far to increase the quality of education of several reservations dramatically. An increase in funding would be miraculous.


Cooperation from states and local government: The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) has compiled a state by state record of laws and regulations relating to Indian education. An analysis of this record will probably show variations based on the general political leanings of the state, the number of reservations located in the state, the relations between the state and the tribe(s), and the level of racism generally expressed and tolerated in the state. Few tribes overcome a sustained environment of hostility.


But some do. An outstanding example of this is the Choctaw Nation located in Philadelphia, Mississippi. While the high school graduation rate is 52.9% and only 2.5% of the population have bachelor’s degrees or higher, unemployment has dropped to 20% and the tribe takes in an estimated $100 million a year from gambling alone. It is building its infrastructure and it probably resembles a "developing nation" in many respects. All of this was done in a hostile state environment where removal of the Choctaws was tried twice and tribal members were reduced to being fugitives or sharecroppers to survive after leaving their land and going into hiding. Education is high on the priority list for the tribe. Given its economic base, success is likely.


For the tribes with gambling operations, there is varying hostility from states. Some states want to tax tribes, others deny services. The uneven see-saw effect of this changing public policy and practice make tribes wary of dealing with states. Unfortunately, it is a state by state struggle, with no blanket solutions.
The partnership and support of the private/philanthropic sectors: American Indian nonprofits, the tribal colleges, and in some cases the tribes themselves, have been successful in convincing corporations and philanthropy to put money into tribal futures. However, the level of support is still a small fraction of overall support from these sources as well as a small fraction of the support needed.


To encourage greater participation and support, understanding of sovereignty and Indian education issues is needed on the one hand and overcoming fear of exploitation is needed on the other. Partnership models should be developed as well as illustrations from some successful cases.
Recommendations


The NARF review of state laws addressing Indian education included a conference on education reform. Following are some NARF observations and recommendations regarding Indian education.
These laws form the basis of Indian education today:


1. The Johnson O'Malley Act of 1934, as amended. Provides federal funding for formula-based supplemental education programs to tribes and state public schools for the special educational needs of Indian students. Requires local Indian education committees to review applications and be involved in operations. Tribes receive preference when applying for JOM funding through the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Recommendation: Tribal Education Departments could administer JOM funds with other supplemental and categorical funds to provide more coordination and focus on education issues.


2. The Impact Aid Laws of 1950, Public Laws 81-874 and 81-815, as amended. Provide federal subsidies to state public school districts to construct facilities ('815) and educate children residing on federal lands including Indian country ('874). Amendments were passed in 1978 based on the government-to-government relationship between the United States and Indian tribes. These amendments require school districts to have policies and procedures which ensure that Indian parents and tribes have an opportunity to comment on the funding application process and are consulted in the development of school programs. Indian tribes may also file complaints with the Secretary of Education against school districts for violation of Impact Aid policies and procedures.
Recommendation: If Impact Aid funds went through the tribes, they would have more responsibility for program operation and results.


3. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Public Law 89-10, as amended. Provides supplemental federal funding for a variety of education programs including those that are known today as Chapter 1 and Bilingual Education. Both Chapter 1 and Bilingual Education funding may be provided to state public schools, Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, and to tribal contract or grant schools.
Chapter 1 formula-based funding provides supplemental educational services and programs, usually to develop basic academic skills, for disadvantaged youth including Native Americans. Bilingual Education competitive, discretionary funding provides supplemental bilingual education services and programs for limited English proficient youth including Indians. Both programs have a parent advisory committee requirement to provide schools with advice in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of their programs and services. This requirement may be waived and the elected school board may serve as a PAC in tribal contract and grant schools.
Recommendation: If Chapter 1 and Bilingual Education funds were administered through tribal education departments, the tribe could assist in providing more coordination and focus on education issues.


4. The Head Start Program Act of 1965, as amended. Provides formula-based federal funding for comprehensive health, educational, nutritional, social, and other services to economically disadvantaged preschool children including children on federally recognized Indian reservations. Federally recognized Indian tribes may directly receive Head Start funding and operate Head Start programs for Indian children on their reservations.
Recommendation: If the tribal education department administered Head Start funds, there could be better coordination and transition from preschool into elementary school with fewer political complications.


5. The Indian Elementary and Secondary School Assistance Act of 1972, Public Law 92-318, as amended. Provides formula-based federal funding for supplemental programs known as Title V. These programs are designed to meet the special educational or culturally related academic needs of Indian students. Title V formula funds may be provided to state public schools, Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, and tribal contract and grant schools. Indian parent advisory committees must approve Title V programs and be involved in program administration in the state public schools.
This Act also makes tribes eligible for certain competitive, discretionary grants for elementary and secondary school demonstration and pilot projects, special teacher training programs, Indian controlled schools projects, and adult education programs.
Recommendation: Tribes could administer Title V funds with other supplemental and categorical funds to provide more coordination and focus on education issues.


6. The Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, Public Law 93-638, as amended. Allows Indian tribes to contract for the operation of schools that were formerly operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs or that were funded by the BIA and privately operated. Authorizes direct funding to tribal schools for programs and operations that are regulated under the Education Amendments of 1978, Public Law 95-561.
Recommendation: Tribal education departments could work with contract and grant schools to coordinate tribal education standards, implement tribal education policies, and promote education goals that perpetuate the tribe.


7. The Education Amendments of 1978, Public Law 95-561, as amended provide broad statutory guidance to schools that are operated or funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Provides for Indian school boards in BIA operated schools. Requires the BIA to actively consult with tribes in all matters that relate to Bureau schools. Allows the Secretary of the Interior to implement cooperative agreements between tribes, school boards of Bureau schools, and state public school districts. Establishes formula-based funding for all BIA operated schools and BIA funded tribal schools. Requires that such schools be accredited or meet standards that are equal to or exceed those accreditation requirements. Allows tribes to set academic standards for BIA operated or funded schools that take into account the specific needs of Indian children.
Recommendation: Tribal education departments could assist BIA operated or funded schools in lobbying for or obtaining the resources needed to implement the 95-561 requirements.


8. The Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act of 1978, Public Law 98-192, as amended. Provides federal funding for post-secondary institutions controlled by Indian tribes. Tribal governments now operate 24 tribally controlled colleges. Two of these colleges are four-year institutions.
Recommendation: Tribal education departments could assist tribal colleges in trying to gain needed resources, and tribal education departments could gain assistance from tribal colleges in solving Indian education problems.


9. The Indian Education Act of 1988, Public Law 100-297, as amended. Allows tribes to operate BIA funded schools as grant schools rather than as contract schools. Grant school funding allows tribal schools to receive funding on a more timely basis, to invest those funds under certain restrictions, and to use the interest gained for further educational costs in their schools.
This Act also authorizes federal funding for tribal early childhood programs and tribal departments of education. To date no money has been appropriated for tribal departments of education.
Recommendation: Tribal education departments could be funded through this law when appropriations match authorizations.


10. The Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act of 1990, Public Law 101-392. Provides funding for competitive, discretionary project grants that will provide vocational education opportunities for Indians. Allows tribes and tribal organizations to plan, conduct, and administer vocational education programs that will provide Indian students with skills related to jobs or further post-secondary training. Also allows tribal post-secondary institutions to compete for post-secondary vocational education grants.
Recommendation: Tribal education departments could assist vocational education programs and post-secondary institutions in focusing their training on employment areas relevant to the tribe.


11. The Native American Languages Act of 1990, Public Law 101-477. Recognizes the right of Indian tribes to use their native languages to conduct tribal business and as a medium of instruction in all Bureau of Indian Affairs funded schools. Directs federal agencies to consult with tribes in evaluating the agencies' policies and procedures and bringing these in compliance with the Act.
Recommendation: Tribal education departments could assist BIA funded schools and tribal councils in making the transition to greater use of tribal language to increase in student cultural awareness and self-esteem.


12. The Goals 2000: Educate America Act, Public Law 103-227. Provides funds and a framework for schools to meet the National Education Goals. Includes American Indian and Alaska Native students in public schools and allots set-aside funds for schools operated or funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to establish a plan to develop a reform and improvement plan for BIA education and to conduct a cost analysis of BIA academic and home living/residential standards. Specifically mentions Indian education in the activities of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), including placing the Director of BIA Education on the National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board and the inclusion of American Indian and Alaska Native students in OERI research institutes/activities.
Recommendation: Tribal education departments could assist BIA funded and operated schools and public schools in complying with the National Education Goals. Tribal education departments could also help the OERI with Indian education research.


13. The Improving America's School Act of 1994, Public Law 103-382. Amends the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, including Title I (formerly Chapter 1), Bilingual Education, Impact Act, and Title IX. This Act also amends the Education Amendments of 1978, which pertain to Bureau of Indian Affairs schools and programs. This Act also provides land-grant status to tribal colleges in accordance with the provisions of the Act of July 2, 1962.
Final Observations


A major question for tribes will be how to serve tribal members who do not live on the homelands. These citizens currently have limited access to services and frequently have no right to vote on tribal matters. If 80% of the potential workforce is estranged from the tribe, how will it make up for the loss?


Tribal governments may also have to do the heavy lifting in developing comprehensive educational policies and plans. NARF gives the example of the Rosebud Sioux in South Dakota. The Tribal Education Code, enacted in 1991, was developed and enacted after the Tribe went through an extensive self-assessment of where it was and where it wanted to be in education. The Code establishes a tribal education department. It regulates all schools on the reservation including the state public schools. It establishes guidelines and regulations in curriculum and education standards, staffing, alcohol and drug abuse education, and parental and community involvement.


Since enactment of the Code, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe has reached an agreement with the state public school district on its reservation regarding Impact Aid funding. The school district and the Tribe are equal partners in the Impact Aid funding application process and expenditure planning. And the district and the Tribe work jointly to monitor and improve student performance. With federal law changes and further tribal / state cooperation, this model could be extended to other reservations and Indian communities.


Government has to learn the lesson of sovereignty. For the Feds, that’s the trust responsibility and adequate financing of the authorizations. It will require the BIA to take its foot off the brakes and put it on the gas, instead.


State governments will have to find a benefit in having a better educated citizenry and a partner tribe that knows its way around Indian education issues.

And all outsiders must understand that Indian culture was once ripped away from the people. They won’t let it happen a second time.

Meaning of Democracy

The meaning of democracy seems to be shifting in these contemporary times, making footing difficult. Questions arise and fall away, to be replaced by other questions. Is it more democratic to forbid abortion than to guarantee health coverage? Is it less democratic to sit out an election without voting than to deliver votes to party bosses to ensure a winning ticket? Perhaps the saying is right that says, “the Democrats want to run our public lives and the Republicans want to run our private lives.” The guarantees in the U.S. Constitution that we the people will ensure domestic tranquillity and promote the general welfare seem more like suggestions now. The real concerns seem to be balancing the national budget and finding blame that will stick on one party or the other for wrongs politicians believe will resonate with the voting public.
Power politics is a more useful term to describe today’s interpretation of the meaning of democracy. The cowboy nation of the United States is the preeminent superpower in the world. The biggest and best six-guns, for sure—but are our boots getting a little splashed on as we belly up to the bar? Others appear to be moving away from self-absorption and the tough-guy demeanor.
Some other democratic countries openly scoff at our rough antics. They are fed up with our Cuban embargoes, failure to act in Bosnia, failure to pony up the dough we owe the United Nations, and they don’t seem to like our insistence on forging trade agreements that force American imports on unwilling partners, like insisting that inferior American rice be traded to people who have developed their own exquisite grains for over 2,000 years.
Other democratic countries look at us and think they can get away with more now that the United States is tougher, too. Capital punishment? Not a problem. Imprisonment for long periods on flimsy convictions or even no convictions? Not a problem. The United States can hardly get high and mighty on human rights when it is building prisons at record rates and some states are throwing drug possessors into prison for over 100 years! Cutting short public assistance to the poor in the U.S. is just another signal that it is okay to rough up the general populace in other countries possessing less evolved forms of democracy. If we don’t value the humanity of our citizens, why should they?
If it appears democracy is coming off the high hill and settling into the lower regions, what is society to make of these changes? For some, less reliance on government means greater individual freedom to act as one pleases within the confines of one’s own perimeters (private land, private home, corporation, cult or religion). For others, less reliance on government means living in the streets, early death, or the proverbial dependency “on the kindness of strangers.” One group gains while another loses. That is a lower form of democracy, sloping away from ideals and Constitutional promises, and settling instead for cold cash transacted in walled enclaves. In this landscape, the poor are discarded through neglect and the rich become indifferent. It is hard to tell who is punished more by this process and who loses more humanity.¬¬

Into this environment of governmental devolution come politicians and the media, who seem to be in a race with one another to capture American sensibilities. Defining democracy by limiting it to small bites, the American public is being spoon-fed to death. National politicians are prone to calling upon God and asking God’s blessings for the American people, though apparently not all of them.
Some politicians speak easily of “family values” and tell us what we think, want, and need. With candor and apparent sincerity, they characterize gay and lesbian citizens as undeserving of full citizenship. What can they be thinking? They demonize immigrants while knowing new and vital talent has always come into the county by this means. They denigrate the poor, knowing that bad education, low wages, and low quality health care will increase the numbers of poor, increase suffering and further alienate the middle class. Democracy takes a hit.
Somewhere between politicians and the media are the religious leaders who use broadcasting to influence the political process. With high moral impunity, they slash away at diversity of viewpoint, the right of privacy, and the behavior of those who do not believe in the particular brand of religion being promoted. Democracy takes another hit.
The media pretend that image approximates reality and that information approaches the level of news. The sound bite has replaced sound reporting. Broadcast journalism, particularly the group reporting from the White House, seem to have lost the connection between the public’s right to know and their right to slide into gossip by means of the unsupported short news segment. At one time, reporters confined themselves to repeating what the president said. Now the public hears what the president “admitted.”
Aristocratic reporters who cover government moonlight on the speakers circuit, pulling in six-figure incomes. When it comes to informing the American public, we hear their opinions and colorful twists of language, which help to make already suspicious American listeners more wary of slick presidents and hard-boiled First Ladies, but these things also make us less informed on what the president is proposing. Public opinion polls confirm that the general public knows less about American foreign or domestic policy than it does about the personality of the president. Democracy takes another hit.
Print journalism is going through its own devolution. The previous separation of news from opinion has now been blurred. Like the rules for the citizens of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, only those with the longest memories will recall that unsubstantiated allegations in a newspaper belong in the opinion pages or in paid advertising.
The corrections needed in the media will have to be more explicitly defined than these few examples. The gathering and production of news for the reading and listening public will have to undergo a vigorous housecleaning, and the many superstars put to work earning honest money. It will take more time to rehabilitate the errant religious leaders and politicians, but before the preamble to the Constitution becomes a sound bite, we’d better get cracking.

Press Coverage of American Indians

From 1970 to 1973, I served two stints in the Washington, D.C. —the Oz of print reporting; one as editor of the Legislative Review, a publication reporting on national legislation affecting American Indians, and the other as executive director of the American Indian Press Association a copy service to Indian newspapers and other print publications nationwide.
The first noticeable trouble began when Senate and House press tables were filled with “mainstream” press people who sometimes politely, sometimes not, advised our reporters that the tables were reserved for the press. After a while, it became routine to flash our press cards and a disdainful look at the hacks at the table. They would rather be covering the White House, and we were rubbing that in with our presence. There were, after all, no Indians in the White House press corps in the early 1970s.
If daring to share a press table with our betters was not insult enough to them, they were forced from time to time to call us up and ask background questions to get them into some story on Indians that was just too big to keep out of the paper or media.
It is now twenty years since the “occupation” of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. But shortly after February 27, 1973 when Federal military forces were called to the closest thing to a war inside the U.S. borders, the telephones at the press association and my publication began ringing off their hooks. All of the national newspapers, dozens of locals, all of the networks and many news services and local stations called. It was jokingly estimated that the staff spent more time answering the questions of the “majority” press during the early days of the siege than doing the work of turning out the news.
Careful not to become newsmakers, the staff worked hard to educate the laughably ignorant press and media, while directing them to sources for quotes. It was the most clear and compelling argument the staff had ever experienced -- the white press had not a clue about American Indians-- and up to that point had neither an interest nor any experience in reporting on the one segment of the population that has a legal, historical, treaty-based relationship with the United States government.
Even journalists of color had the impression that because Indians are U.S. citizens--conferred by the U.S. without being asked in 1924--we were just another minority. That made Wounded Knee doubly hard for them to understand. Some even said, “you guys lost the war; what’s the beef, now?”
Least of all could they understand why some Indians would not want to be U.S. citizens.

Twenty years later, is anything different? Yes and no. Since the 1974 report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Window Dressing on the Set, which found virtually no Indians working in the mainstream media, there has been progress. But some problems remain. Because Indians lack the numbers of other people of color, statistical information is more difficult to come by. Stories on people of color tend to discuss blacks, Asians, and Latinos. Political figures seldom mention Indians. Other people of color seldom mention Indians. The appearance of invisibility is an issue.
On the other hand, most people in the country have heard of Indian casinos. And the press is paying more attention. It used to be common to look for Minneapolis Indian stories next to the obituaries. It was a joke in the Indian community. “Our section” was op the obits. Now, casinos have forced newspapers to cover Indian related stories in the more respectable business sections and, occasionally, the front of the newspaper
But with casino clout has come journalistic and societal “high sticking,” to borrow a hockey term. Everyone from Minnesota legislator Charlie Berg, to foundation staff, to reporters for City Business and City Pages think they can hard ball Indian questions without race-checking themselves, in the name of tough but honest coverage.
The questions always come down to, “why don’t the casinos fund the Indian programs?” The variations are, “why don’t they fund them more?” And, “don’t you think the casinos should fund the Indian programs?”
Because casinos are Indian owned, and more significantly, owned by sovereign tribal governments, other questions vary from, “why won’t they reveal their profits?” to “is this wealth increasing Indian alcoholism?”
Some might say this is just part of what comes with success and the spotlight. But as little children from the Prairie Island reservation have experienced, they are no longer called “dirty little Indians” in the school yards. They are now taunted as “dirty little rich Indians.”
To the credit of the press, there is not nearly the level of malevolence such as Senator Charlie Berg exhibits, nor the outright racism of the trunk-stuffing Minneapolis cops who tucked two intoxicated Indians in the far back of their police car before driving them around, eventually getting them help. But ignorance and misunderstanding still prevail. The days are probably over when the news director at Minnesota Public Radio would slough off a proposed Indian story on the basis that it did not affect many people. But the dual negative image of Indians as the lurching drunk or the money grubbing entrepreneur prevails in a press that plays to the suburban peanut gallery.
Numbers will never be the coverage attention-getter for the Indian population. The Indian strategy has always been to produce a home grown press. There is a thriving radio station affiliate group around the country. However, coverage in the majority press and media is still vitally important. The danger, many feel, is more that of press silence and inattention than of blithering sensationalism. Except for casinos and Indian fishing rights, the stories come few and far between. But when they do come, they should be from an educated press.

MAKING GOOD ON EDUCATION’S PROMISES

In America today, the popular slogans are “make my day,” and “three strikes and you’re out.” These hip-shot judgments are making it easy to once again question Indian education. History is not something Americans learn from very well. The treaties are over. The Indian wars are over. They lost. What’s the issue? Indians are just like everybody else, so they should quit whining and take care of themselves. Stop looking to the government for a handout. The taxpayers won’t stand for it. And so the arguments go.
But trying to bury and forget history can have serious repercussions as we have seen with the Mille Lacs fishing rights issue, for example. Sports fisher people ringed the Minnesota State Capitol last year, objecting to Indian fishing rights and proclaiming that any treaty-based obligations ended long ago.
The former coach Bud Grant, having retired his venerable Vikings hat, sank to the more run of the mill racist level as he joined the debate and hissed in the face of Indians who came to remind him that the treaties are bigger than his ego.
Now the treaty debate will be in Federal court, where such arguments rightfully belong, many have said. The State of Minnesota tried to force a deal on the Mille Lacs people. Finally, the U.S. Justice Department stepped in and said the United States had an obligation to represent the interests of the tribe.
Unpretty confrontations such as those of Bud Grant and the miffed fisher persons are the outcome of very incomplete educations on the part of most Minnesotans. Had treaties been taught in the schools, the debate would not have erupted into violence and hatred. Had respect for the original inhabitants of Minnesota been taught in the churches and homes, the idea that Indians can be robbed twice would have been summarily discarded. Somehow the biblical command, “Thou shall not steal,” has lost its edge.
This April, the Minnesota legislature failed to stifle the few malevolent members who fearlessly put their historical --and legal--amnesia on record regarding Northern States Power Company’s request to store 17 casks of spent nuclear materials on the doorstep of the Prairie Island Dakota Nation.
They wrote in an amendment to Senate File 1706, “If an alternative site is not licensed and dry cask storage eliminated at Prairie Island by December 31, 1997, the state must, by purchase or condemnation, acquire 1200 contiguous acres of land in Goodhue county by December 31, 1999, for transfer without consideration to the United States in trust for the Mdewakanton Sioux Tribe at Prairie Island.”
The authors go on, “The state shall also provide relocation assistance to members of the Mdewakanton Sioux Tribe residing at Prairie Island for relocation to the land acquired and transferred by the state.”
Minnesotans’ lack of education about Indian treaties contributed to this shameful language which will now become part of Minnesota’s history. Lack of acknowledgment in churches and in homes contributed to the appalling belief that one group could simply uproot and move a people without their consent. This is what happened in one European capital after another. And this is what eventually led Germany to believe it could not only move people, but murder them with impunity.
Not two months earlier, on February 23rd, over 160 Minnesota senators and representatives went to the World Trade Center in St. Paul to take part in diversity training. The training seemed to go well. The lessons in power and tolerance seemed to be well received. But the language on removal of the Dakota people showed that racism is not so easily unlearned.
In 1972, the U.S. Congress enacted the Indian Education Act, following a long period of study. Indian education was made law in part as reparation for the genocide of Indian people, broken promises and neglected treaties. But it was also a belated recognition of the continuing treaty-based obligation on the part of the United States toward those who had become foreigners on their own lands.
The United States Senate hearings “investigating the problems of education for American Indians,” began in 1967. Senator Robert Kennedy traveled extensively to learn firsthand about the conditions of Indian people. At that time, widespread poverty, poor health, and punitive education methods were widespread among Indian people. After Robert Kennedy’s assassination in 1968, Senators Wayne Morse and Ralph Yarborough served as chairmen of the investigating subcommittee, and Kennedy’s brother, Senator Edward Kennedy finished the report in 1969. It was entitled, Indian Education: A National Tragedy - A National Challenge.
Senator Edward Kennedy went on to author the major bill that became the Indian Education Act of 1972. The report stated, “A careful review of the historical literature reveals that the dominant policy of the Federal Government toward the American Indian has been one of force assimilation which has vacillated between the two extremes of coercion and persuasion.”
“At the root of the assimilation policy has been a desire to divest the Indian of his land and resources.”
The report went on to explain the exchange between land greed and education: “Between 1778 and 1871, when the last treaty was signed, Indian tribes ceded almost a billion acres to the United States. In return, Indians generally retained inalienable and tax-exempt lands for themselves, and Government pledges to provide such public services as education, medical care, and technical and agricultural training.”
But, for nearly one hundred years from the end of treaty-making with Indian nations, the objective of education was for “civilizing” purposes. Most of the language of governmental support carried such language, i.e., “to provide civilization among the aborigines.”
In 1944, the House Select Committee on Indian Affairs began terminating treaty obligations, calling this “the final solution of the Indian problem.”
All of these lessons from history formed the basis of the 1972 Indian Education Act. It was clear. It was based on the historical record and the obligation of the U.S. Government. The only alternative would have been to give the land back.
But now in 1994, the renewal of the Indian Education Act’s authority is folded in as Title VI of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, an “omnibus” catch all bill.
On the House of Representatives’ side, the new legislative language says in a rather lukewarm way that the purpose of Indian education is to “support the efforts of local educational agencies, Indian tribes and organizations, postsecondary institutions, and other entities to meet the special educational and culturally related academic needs of American Indians and Alaska Natives, so they can achieve the same challenging State performance standards expected of all students.”
Now, the treaty obligations of educational services to American Indians is tied to a new form of “civilizing,” and that is to meet GOALS 2000:
•All children will be ready to learn upon entry into school.
•The high school graduation rate will increase to 90% nationally.
•U.S. students will be competent in core academic subjects.
•U.S. students will be first in the world in science and math.
•Every adult American will be literate and able to compete in a global economy.
•Every school in America will be safe, disciplined and drug free.
It had been clear enough that land for education was the exchange. But perhaps it would be more real to Americans if the Federal budget contained an item that said, ‘TREATY OBLIGATIONS,” or if there were a treaty tax like the social security tax which withheld from all taxpayers amounts to be paid annually for the governmental responsibility.
There would be far less ambiguity, less talk about “that was then---this is now!” Schools would have a very deep interest in teaching about treaties and where the American lands came from. There would be no more talk of “discovery” and vast empty territories. Every taxpayer would know quite directly that his/her land did not come free of charge and that continuing ownership requires care and responsibility.
Indian education should be left to the policies of Indian governments and people. The GOALS 2000 describe everything American Indian students have not received from the Federal, State and local school systems so far. But that is not because Indian education has lacked goals. It is because the educational systems throughout the country were built for European Americans. If the systems had been built for Indians, most others would fail and most Indians would succeed. That is the political and power imbalance.
America has not learned to appreciate what it came by so cheaply. Americans have not learned responsibility.
The legal scholar and author of the reform that led to the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, Felix S. Cohen, in 1953 described Americans in the following way:
It is a pity that so many Americans today think of the Indian as a romantic or comic figure in American history without contemporary significance. In fact, the Indian plays much the same role in our American society that the Jews played in Germany. Like the miner’s canary, the Indian marks the shifts from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere; and our treatment of Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise and fall in our democratic faith.
Senators Robert and Edward Kennedy, and members of the special subcommittee on Indian education quickly found the historical and legal precedents supporting Indian education. When the report was issued in 1969, the committee’s first recommendation was: “That there be set a national policy committing the nation to achieving educational excellence for American Indians; to maximum participation and control by Indians in establishing Indian education programs; and to assuring sufficient Federal funds to carry these programs forward.”
GOALS 2000 is just so much window dressing. The reauthorizing legislation needs to look to its origins and relearn the lessons of history.

Answer May Be to Switch Off the Color

People of color—as we call those who are not white—have had an uncomfortable and sometimes adversarial relationship with the American media since the first days of the republic, when newspapers were the medium (no plural).
In British colonial times, during the occupations of India and parts of Africa, “people of color,”a term invented by the colonizers, meant Indians and black Africans. The secondary immigration waves coming to America included people from southern Europe and the Middle East. They were not considered “white people” when they arrived. Today, Jews (but not Arabs) and southern Europeans are “white” while the category “people of color” has broadened to include Asians and Western Hemisphere Indians.
The power to define who we are/are not—including color—has rested among the powerful, which now includes those who own broadcasting entities and who spread information to the highest number in the population.
In the newly created United States, broadcast was limited to the eastern states. The Atlas of Early American History (Princeton University Press, 1976) calculates that an event occurring in Boston in the 1790s took 15 days to be published in the Philadelphia newspapers. From Charleston, South Carolina the time lag was 22 days. Information flow skewed to the east coast, to the cities, and to those who could read. The rest of the population—most women, slaves, the indentured, and American Indians—were shut out except for what they could get from secondhand reports.
There were, to be sure, alternative sources for the unprivileged, but these were mostly circuit riders, travelers and the mail, with one exception: The powerful Six Nations Confederacy of the Iroquois had been sending runners over well established trails for centuries. Their job was to carry the information that kept the far-flung confederacy together, and they could reach destinations in very short periods of time by means of an elaborate relay system. Before, during, and after the Revolutionary War, Iroquois couriers were vital to the confederacy’s war intelligence. Had this system been converted to a general information “network,” who knows what unique social transition might have taken place?
But the emerging eastern presses were either unaware of this alternative and were so bent on creating the most purchased source of information that they could only move in one direction—proliferation of reporting and development of a rapid distribution system.
Now, in the 1990s, continuously broadcasting networks spread televised information virtually instantaneously to a global audience which can view it with no reading skills. To have access, however, the audience must be close to a broadcast outlet and a receiver. In the 1790s, reading was for the privileged. Today, access to information depends more on infrastructure, (formidable political barriers in some cases) and the funds with which to buy a television set.
But before information gets to the viewer, it must be collected and processed. And it must be paid for. Neither the readers of newspapers nor viewers of broadcasting are prepared to pay the full cost of gathering and delivering information. For that, producers go to third parties who have an interest in influencing those who get the information. It is this economic fact that has for over 200 years attracted more buyers into the “power to define” equation.
Broadcast reporter and analyst Jeff Greenfield says broadcast news is undergoing extremely rapid change. Greenfield notes that the 1960s introduced the first U.S. Presidential debates on television (1960). From 1961 to 1965, some television stations refused to run network stories on civil rights. Television broadcast the assassination of President Kennedy, the escalation of the Vietnam War, the massive tumult in American life, and covered the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy. By 1969, the networks were being attacked by conservatives as ideologically biased, hostile to American values, neutral in the freedom-versus-Communism struggle, and indifferent to traditional values.
As bystanders in the liberal-versus-traditional values debate, people of color and women may have done well as they increased their on-screen numbers and made modest gains in the ownership class, but they certainly were trivialized in portrayals as the 1980s and 1990s arrived. When we look at the current commercial and cable fare of comedy, action, drama, talk shows and news, the shallowness of the content is extraordinary, especially compared to earlier decades. Color and gender are only incidental to the wretched lack of brilliance coming into America’s homes. Viewers are far more likely to see diversity and depth on the “live” cop shows, historical documentaries, and America’s Funniest Videos.
Some critics point out in a hopeful sort of way that the public airwaves are a part of the public trust. And indeed, there is a major difference between newspapers as protectors of free expression and electronic broadcasting. This difference is succinctly defined by the District of Columbia District Court in United Church of Christ v. FCC (1966): “A broadcaster seeks and is granted the free and exclusive use of a limited and valuable part of the public domain; when he accepts that franchise it is burdened by enforceable public obligations. A newspaper can be operated at the whim or caprice of its owners; a broadcast station cannot.”
Sure enough, the Federal Communications Act of 1934 treats the public trust generously. It grants licenses to broadcast operators provided that “the public convenience, interest, or necessity will be served thereby,” and it allows the operator to renew the license as long as the “public interest” continues to be served. But as with all good intentions, what defines the “public interest” has since 1934 been the subject of bitter debates and extensive case-law record.
If people of color care to be part of the power to define identity in America, there will have to be a diminution in the power of broadcast networks and newspapers—monopolies seldom change of their own accord. Second, people of color must gain greater access to the capital flows and ownership of the media. Third, those so labeled must resolve self-definition by color—the very core of separateness. There may be more limitations than gains from holding onto that concept.
Fortunately, the first two of the changes are underway. The third will be the sticker.

NATIVE WOMEN AND AMERICAN FEMINISM

The exciting message of the 1960s Berkeley Free Speech Movement which spread from California across the country carried with it the startling awareness that women did not have an equal place in the movement. It had been presumed, wrongly, that women students and faculty would share every level of responsibility in the free speech and anti-war organizing efforts. But early on, it became clear that the male leaders would not share the stage with women. As one student put it, “we were welcome to make the coffee and pass out the handbills, but the front of the stage was for the men.” This souring led almost instantly to the beginning of the women’s movement.
At the same time the American Indian Movement and other groups were organizing to push the causes of Native sovereignty and government accountability. The 19-month occupation of Alcatraz island in San Francisco Bay spread the word of Native sovereignty from California throughout the rest of the country. Prior to Alcatraz, several urban Indian centers had been established to provide services to Native people who had been relocated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs from their homelands to big city ghettoes. These centers became launching pads for the larger organizing efforts.
The emerging women’s movement and the Native justice movements of the late sixties took different paths, and there are several reasons why they did. Some say those paths may never converge.
During the Berkeley Free Speech days, attempts were made to form alliances between the university students and the emergent Black Panther organization. It was thought that civil rights, free speech and black power all had much in common and that support of one should include support for all. However, the cultural gap between the mostly white students and the black power group was never bridged, and after a time each continued on separate courses. Among the Native movements, white participation was viewed with suspicion and separation was the preferred posture, and even though an occasional meeting was held and declarations of cross-support were issued, in the main the groups remained apart.
As time passed, the strengthening women’s movement came to be seen as a culturally white organizing effort and a distance developed between it and other groups. In the excitement of organizing and pressing claims on behalf of feminism, inclusivity was not paid much attention to until it was quite clear that there were many missing faces. By then, after the organizing work had been done, it seemed like window dressing to try to bring in women of color, particularly since the leadership roles had been well-established, and they were occupied by almost all whites.
Meanwhile, the Native groups had gender problems of their own. The structure of these groups was loosely organized around tribal models, with “councils” of the leadership, charismatic spokesmen (nearly 100% male), and large numbers of “warriors” or support workers. In this configuration, women found themselves in the support roles of cooks, security, clerical help, messengers, and medical personnel. Nevertheless the glue holding all of this together was culture. A strongly defined sense of history and the challenge of righting wrongs done to Native people united everyone in the group to press forward together as a single body. There was no room in this organizing model for women to press separate claims of feminism. In fact, feminism was seen as a white concept that had to be rejected as the cultural model was embraced. Participation in the Native movements by large numbers of professional women never occurred, in some part due to the male dominance of the leadership and the lack of opportunity for educated women to play much more than minor supporting roles in the development of the groups.
Eventually, Native women as well as other women of color did join the women’s movement, although never in the numbers that should have been there, nor in any significant representation in the leadership. By that point, fifteen years after Berkeley, the icons of the women’s movement were well known, and none of them included women of color. In an evolution very much like all of the other movements, a few women became preeminent and closely identified with the very essence of feminism, thus mirroring in most aspects what spokeswomen said they rejected in male-dominated organizations. They replaced white American culture with its subculture in a white female dominated organization that had few avenues that would allow women of color to feel comfortable or succeed. Yet, inclusiveness became a watchword. Great effort was made to recruit women of color, Native women among them. But it was not until the battered women’s groups became a subgroup of the larger women’s movement that greater numbers of Native women joined. Here, women had a common experience—the domestic violence that cut across all cultures. To a lesser extent, the reproductive rights groups also had success in recruiting women of color for participation. The greater women’s movement had to find areas where the common experience cut across cultures and where the issue had a fundamental link to the relationship between men and women. This was to become no more evident than in the competition for jobs.
Whereas the great thinker of the African American civil rights movement, W.E.B. DuBois said that women’s suffrage and the equality of slaves were so similar as to be linked, feminism in the late twentieth century pressed hard for economic parity but did little to support men of color. This attitude was not lost on women of color who sensed a similar betrayal was in store for them if they became too closely aligned to feminism.
Now, some thirty years after Berkeley, it cannot be said that any of the movements have evolved into permanent institutions. Perhaps it was not the natural path for these large social groups to take. A great number of social changes have occurred which acknowledge the prejudice practiced against women and attempt to remedy the inequity by means of rules similar to civil rights rules. However most of these remedies put women in a category like those of identified people of color, the so-called “racial minorities.” Stuck in this clutch of protected groups, women are permanently in a minority status, even though they are neither a minority nor a cultural group per se. It is the latest dilemma that the women’s movement must face—whether to maintain the protective cover of a special class or solve the problem of being defined in such a way that women are set apart from men more or less permanently. To some, it is a matter of timing—a certain level of economic parity must be reached. To others, it is a matter of history—men must never be trusted or they will always take the upper hand.
In this mix, Native women, like some of the other cultural groups, are doing fairly well. There is a strong leadership group, professional women’s ranks are growing, and pay, while not at parity, is closer than that of women overall. By sitting out the women’s movement’s organizing phase, Native women seem to have reaped many of the benefits while not compromising a strong cultural affiliation. It is hard to tell. The Native movement also brought about changes in U.S. governmental practice, thus opening up many opportunities for men and women. The outcome is Native women seem to have suffered less as a result of their exclusion from the women’s movement than feminism suffered from a lack of participation by women of color. Feminism finds itself in dire straits, struggling to define itself in the new twenty—first century context of competition and individualism. A reexamination of the cultural chasm might help the women’s movement to build a bridge to other groups that have long eluded the feminist embrace.

WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH

March is women’s history month. It is a time of the year when the accomplishments of American women of history are remembered and celebrated. Without taking anything away from the importance of women of history, included in this review are some contemporary women, particularly a few who have accomplished much at a very young age,with many more years of creative expression to come. These young women are the living proof that the fight for women’s rights was worth the effort and sacrifice.
It is easy to think of the past as the time in which women overcame trials and attacks to make their way in the world. But it was only one year ago this month that the South Carolina military academy, the Citadel, announced that two women cadets had been attacked by ten male cadets. Of this number, two were accused of setting fire to the sweatshirt of one of the women.
We celebrate women’s history month and we salute young women in America who are moving ahead to meet today’s challenges and tomorrow’s promise.
A HISTORICAL WOMAN OF POWER:
MADAM C.J. WALKER
Madam C.J. Walker was America's first woman self-made millionaire. She was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 — the daughter of former slaves — on a Louisiana cotton plantation. They died by the time she was seven. Breedlove was married at age 14 and widowed with a small daughter by age 20.
Despite this harsh beginning, Breedlove is the only African-American woman in the U.S. National Business Hall of Fame. She was the founder and CEO of the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, the nation's first successful black hair-care products firm. It was headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana.
At age 37, after working for 20 years doing other people’s laundry, she used her creative genius to develop grooming and conditioning products. "I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South," she said. I was promoted from there to the washtub. Then I was promoted to the cook kitchen, and from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations."
Starting with $1.50 in capital, she mixed her first products in her washtub and personally marketed her "Wonderful Hair Grower" door to door. Slowly, with patient work, she built a fortune that was estimated, at her death to be over $2 million.
Her company was founded in 1905, and it grew to become a factory employing 50 people. Thousands of women were trained in her Walker Hair Care Method at her beauty school, Lelia College, and through special courses she established at black schools and colleges. Some of her employees went on to operate their own hair salons. "I am not merely satisfied in making money for myself, for I am endeavoring to provide employment for hundreds of women of my race," she said.
Madam Walker organized a sales force of more than 20,000 in the U.S., Caribbean and Central America. She took her professional name from her third husband, Charles James Walker. He was a salesman for a black newspaper, and his marketing skills were helpful in building the Walker company. Although the couple divorced in 1912, he was a Walker sales representative for the rest of his life, and she kept his name. She died on May 25, 1919.
SHE STAYED TRUE TO HER VISION:
MAYA YING LIN
Renowned architect and artist, Maya Lin is the designer of the U.S. Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In 1981, at the astonishing age of 21, Lin won a competition to design the Memorial on the Mall in Washington D.C. Her design called for the placement of two massive v-shaped black granite stones— mostly below ground level— in an open field. The walls would bear the names of over 58,000 Americans who died or remain missing in Vietnam. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated on November 13, 1982 to honor and recognize the men and women who served in the armed forces in Vietnam.
When Lin's dramatic design was selected for the Memorial, veterans groups, special interests and several politicians opposed the design, but Lin could not be dissuaded from her original vision. These critics attacked her vision, her design, her creativity, her age and her gender .The proposed monument was said to be "dishonorable" and "a scar."
"I believed that this was going to help people," she says. "The only thing that really hurt me was when people said it was my ego getting in the way...."
Lin was born October 10, 1959, in Athens, Ohio, and she holds a BA in Architecture from Yale College, where she graduated in 1981. She received a Masters of Architecture from Yale in 1986, and she also holds honorary doctorates from Yale, Williams and Smith.
She was commission to design the Women's Table by Yale University. It is a granite circular slab with a concentric spiral of zeros for each year that Yale was male only. Numbers begin to appear at the mark for the year 1969, to commemorate the time when Yale graduated its first women.
Today, she runs her own design studio in New York. Of her childhood years, Lin says, "I was lucky. There was never any pressure from my parents to become anything I didn't want {to be}." As a child, she spent a lot of time in the artists' studios at Ohio University in Athens, where her father was an art professor.
Another dramatic memorial is the Civil Rights monument in Montgomery, Alabama, where a sheet of water runs over a granite table which bears the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: "We are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."
START PUBLISHING!
CHRISTY HAUBEGGER DID
Christie Haubegger was born Aug. 15, 1968 in Houston, Texas to a Mexican-American mother, but she was adopted by an Anglo couple as an infant. Fortunately, her new parents were determined to raise their daughter with a strong awareness of her ancestry. She started learning Spanish in pre-school.
As she got older, differences began to be more apparent to the adolescent as Haubegger looked more critically at the world around her. She says the blonde, blue-eyed models she saw in women's magazines as she was growing up did not reflect her body type or her beauty concerns. When she went to college and law school, she found that she and her fellow Latinas had trouble finding professional role models. "I wanted to change the way Latinas see themselves, as well as how others see them," was her conclusion. Haubegger earned a BA in Philosophy and Spanish literature from the University of Texas, and a Juris Doctor ( JD), from Stanford Law School in California.
In 1996, she became the founder, president and publisher of Latina, the first glossy national magazine for Hispanic women in the U.S. The magazine’s circulation was 300,000, but it was not yet profitable. Latina went monthly in July 1997.
The magazine is published in Manhattan. Latina covers a range of women's issues with a Hispanic slant. Recent features include a cover piece on "La Bombshell" actress Salma Hayek, and the first all Latina sex survey. The main articles are in English—with summaries in Spanish presented in sidebars—for Latina readership, ages 18-49. Many of the advertisements are in Spanish. The magazine find its readers in areas of the country with large Hispanic populations, such as Los Angeles, New York City and parts of Texas.
A CUT ABOVE THE OTHERS:
VERA WANG
Vera Wang became a household name in 1994 when she designed those beautiful and dramatic costumes for figure skater Nancy Kerrigan to wear in the Winter Olympics. "Offering a dress to Nancy started as a way to make a statement in the skating world, being a skater myself," she says. Wang had Olympic dreams too. They were dashed in 1968 when she didn't place in the National Figure Skating Championships. "I wanted to make an artistic contribution to the sport. I never thought I would get the exposure I did. I don't know if designing costumes for Nancy has been good in terms of actual sales, but it has been tremendous for name recognition."
Famous clients include actors Alicia Silverstone, Mare Winningham, Penelope Ann Miller; singers Mariah Carey and Chynna Phillips; and models Donna Peele and Vendela. Designing for individuals takes anywhere from one hour to six months—more when a client vacillates about the style of her gown. Wang creates with what she calls "illusion" netting that gives the appearance of bare skin while being totally covered.
Wang says, "I wanted to build a fashion company starting with one market. I chose bridal wear. It was important to me to become an expert in this one market, and then expand into others."
She was born in New York City, June 27, 1949, and holds a BA in liberal arts from Sarah Lawrence College. Because her father would not let her go to art school, Wang has no formal design training.. Dad wanted her to concentrate on more "practical subjects," she says.
Yet, Wang has become a significant contributor to the fashion industry in just six years. She opened her first boutique on Madison Avenue in Manhattan in 1990 following work as an editor at Vogue for 17 years and a short stint as design director for Ralph Lauren for two years. Wang moved into the mid-cost line of ready-to-wear bridal and evening dresses in 1992 and 1993.