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.