I’d invited Weeden, a Mashpee Wampanoag educator, to visit my high school English class in Boston. When I began teaching American Literature, I felt the course had to encompass Native American literature. I started with Tommy Orange’s novel There There. But the book is set in Oakland, California, and I wanted its message to ring closer to home.

Weeden had once driven from New England to California to of redface. Before his visit, my students watched a video of his impassioned speech to the school board. We discussed how cultural appropriation undermines the right of all students to learn — and can, as happened with Weeden’s own brother, result in self-harm and suicide.

As a child, Weeden himself encountered racism in school. “It was the teachers, not even the students, who called me the worst names,” he recalls. “I had long braids. They’d call me sissy, queer, say, ‘The girls’ bathroom is over there.’”

Weeden’s own pedagogy couldn’t be more different than the harassment he faced in his youth. He meets students’ questions with some of his own: “Have you ever seen a square bird’s nest?” Heads shake no. “I’m gonna bet we’ll never see one. Because the square is not a shape we see in nature. Look around. We’re surrounded by squares.” He gestures to our classroom, students’ notebooks, the Boston skyline. Weeden asks students to consider whether the way things are now is natural.

In Massachusetts, students learn about Native people in two main ways: through the lens of Thanksgiving and in third grade, when the allocate time for a deep dive into Native history. So that’s the age group Weeden primarily works with. 

But there are certain topics — like forced sterilization or King Philip’s War, one of the deadliest conflicts in New England history — that you can’t broach with young kids. “We need middle school curriculum. We need high school curriculum,” Weeden says.

For the past four years, I’ve partnered with Weeden in 10th and 11th grade English. At this age, students are deciding not only their postgraduate plans, but the values by which they will live. If students’ only in-depth exposure to Native Americans is in third grade, how can they be expected to understand Native people as adults?

“It should be every year,” Weeden says. “The key is consistency.”

Many of the students at Boston Collegiate Charter School, where I teach, have heritage outside of the U.S. — from Cape Verde to Ireland to the Dominican Republic. Many would consider their families indigenous to those places. But few claim Indigenous American heritage. So students’ final project, presenting a lesson to their peers, is an act of allyship — teaching about another culture without speaking for that group. Like There There, the project aims to expand their ideas of what it means to be Native.

One common oversight is to think of Indigenous people as a monolith, when there are so many distinct tribes. “The reason I’m a Wampanoag is because of the land that I’m on. Cape Cod is where you see the sun rise,” Weeden tells my students. “We always identify ourselves as People of the First Light. And right now, we are in Boston, home of the Massachusett tribe. People say that word, Massachusetts, without ever questioning, What does it mean? It means Great Barren Hill Place.”

In some other states, Native culture is more visible. In Washington State, tribes guided revision of the state history standards. Now Indigenous studies are addressed in every year of K-12 through the In the Southwest, Weeden says, “You can’t go there and not see the Navajo, the Apache, all their artwork and pottery. It’s synonymous with the culture.

“Why New England chooses to only promote colonial history…that’s something for New England to examine,” he continues. “I’m sad and disappointed for the focus to be just Thanksgiving. I don’t want to be a token add-on to that narrative.”

As an educator, I believe in not only teaching about Native history, but inviting Native speakers into my classroom. I’m grateful that my school has funded these visits. There are also low- and no-cost online resources to connect students with local tribes. But until Massachusetts and other states recognize that education about Indigenous peoples must be sustained, consistent and inclusive of living Native people, we will not be able to overcome the ignorance that characterized Weeden’s youth.

“A lot of what I was attacked for as a kid, it’s because people had no clue,” Weeden reflects. “I wouldn’t have encountered that abuse if people were taught the right things about our culture. I don’t even honestly work with Pre-K and early childhood enough — you can never start too early. It’s weird how our culture is considered so foreign even though we’re the Indigenous people of this land.”

How do you get students to remember what they learn? According to Gladys Hawk, a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, you tell them a story.

Hawk is one of dozens of tribal elders featured on the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction’s website, which now boasts more than 350 videos.

In an played for educators at the Department of Public Instruction’s annual Indian Education Summit in Bismarck on Friday, Hawk spoke of the bedtime stories her grandmother would tell her in Lakota growing up.

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Hawk said at the end of each tale, her grandmother would tie in an important life lesson.

“She would say, ‘And that’s why I want you to be good — don’t be like this one in the story,’” said Hawk. “We have to listen to what our elders have to say, because usually they’re teaching us something important.”

Sharla Steever and Scott Simpson, who worked on the videos for North Dakota’s Native American Essential Understandings project, shared Hawk’s interview as one example of how attendees can integrate Native culture and history into the classroom.

“You can pull those stories in any time you want, if you want to focus in on a concept or a theme or something historical that the elder is speaking about,” Steever said of the Teaching of Our Elders videos.

Steever said in her experience, storytelling helps to create a sense of community in the classroom. Kids tend to retain information if they have a personal anecdote to connect it to, she said.

Under a law adopted by the state Legislature in 2021, K-12 schools in North Dakota are required to teach Native history. The website is one of a number of resources the Department of Public Instruction’s Office of Indian and Multicultural Education has developed that can support schools in this area, Steever said.

She said the Department of Public Instruction is still doing interviews with elders from time to time. However, it can be difficult to arrange.

While the agency likes to give elders who participate a stipend, there’s not a ton of funding available, Steever said.

“There’s never really been a budget for that,” she said. The department also has to squeeze in time for the interviews around its other work, she added.

Steever said she’s working on an additional set of video interviews with Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate elders.

Haiden Person, a recent graduate from Bismarck High School and the conference’s youth speaker, said Friday that teaching more Native American culture and history in schools is key to combatting anti-Indigenous racism.

“They don’t know it’s wrong, you’ve just got to teach them,” said Person, a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

Person recently graduated from Bismarck High School and plans to attend United Tribes Technical College in the fall. Person said mental health is an issue close to his heart, and that he plans to become a psychiatrist.

The summit also welcomed Daniel Kish, an expert in human echolocation — using sound to locate objects — and president of World Access for the Blind, for a keynote address.

Kish has been blind since he was a year old. He said he gained the ability to echolocate because his parents wanted him to be self-sufficient despite his disability. He now helps teach the skill to other blind people.

“It’s an ability that provides you with awareness of the environment that’s way out beyond the length of your cane,” he said.

He said a broader goal of his is studying how people develop a sense of personal identity and agency. Kish said he appreciated hearing Person talk about mental health and the importance of leaning on others in your community.

“Haiden had it right, don’t be afraid to ask for help,” Kish said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. North Dakota Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Amy Dalrymple for questions: info@northdakotamonitor.com.

Their calls have been mounting for decades, but the remarks marked a milestone: the first time a U.S. President ever acknowledged and apologized for the system where federal agents removed children from their parents, often at gunpoint, sending them to schools thousands of miles from home, stripping families of their language and culture.

The exact number of children who were forced into boarding schools in the U.S. for over 150 years is unknown, due to poor record keeping, but nearly 19,000 have been confirmed. Physical, sexual and psychological abuse was rampant at the schools often run by religious institutions. Some children were referred to only as numbers, pre-teen girls were raped and sent home pregnant. Thousands never returned home.

Addressing the public on the Gila River Reservation outside of Phoenix, Arizona on October 25, President Joe Biden fulfilled a long-delayed promise to visit Indian country and called the boarding school system a “sin on our soul,” adding there was “no excuse” for how long-overdue the acknowledgement was and that “no apology can or will make up for what was lost during the darkness of the federal boarding school policy. But today, we’re finally moving forward into the light.”
The timing of the visit has also been noted as a to to cast votes for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. But many Native Americans are by government inaction to adequately protect lands, provide access to quality education and healthcare, and enact an .

Survivors and descendants both acknowledge how meaningful Biden’s speech was after centuries of fighting for recognition from the federal government, and call on the administration to act swiftly on the apology. 

“In his last two weeks in office, we demand that President Biden also pass S.1723/H.R.7227: The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act,” said the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, a nonprofit that has worked with survivors and Tribal leaders for over a decade to educate about the system and facilitate repatriations. 

The legislation would provide a path for investing in language and culture revitalization efforts, educating the American public on the system via museums or curricula, and establishing trauma-informed mental health resources. 

It would also enable subpoenas to be used to investigate the scale of the system: Catholic entities have been able to hold onto private records for decades, some of which contain the only known photographs or remnants of survivors’ ancestors. Reintroduced in both the Senate and House last year, the bill has yet to reach a vote. 

The mental and physical health concerns of survivors and lack of widespread reconciliation reached national spotlight earlier this year when the Interior Department released its final on the system, which revealed at least 1,000 Indigenous children died or were killed. The schools operated using over $23 billion federal dollars, adjusted for inflation. 

Thousands were subject to child labor to operate facilities and be “outed,” working without wage for white families near the schools.

Angelique Albert, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and chief executive of the nation’s largest direct scholarship provider for Native students, Native Forward, referred to the boarding schools not as places of education but as places of “extermination.” 

Just as slavery was used as the tool to harm Black people across the Americas, “education was the tool to harm us, to assimilate us. That’s the tool where we lost our children,” Albert said, adding that the apology is a testament to the work done by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the nation’s first Native American cabinet member and former recipient of their scholarships, to unearth survivor testimony and investigate the system. 

“She’s in the very position that implemented the boarding schools. Do you understand? It gives me chills,” Albert said, emphasizing how critical it is for the federal government to maintain close relationships with Tribal nations and put more funding behind college access for Native youth so their voices can be heard in positions they’ve been historically excluded from. 

While the apology, however late, is a “critical first step in the truth and reconciliation process for Native and Indigenous communities,” Albert stressed, “Indian boarding school policies are not a horror of the past — these institutions operated through 1969, and many Native people who were subjected to these cruel policies are still living today.”

The boarding school system, while the focus of President Biden’s remarks, was not the only widespread, forced removal of Native children. Throughout the 60s and 70s, over a third were removed from their families and overwhelmingly placed in non-Indian homes after discriminatory welfare investigations. 

In Washington, Native children were placed in foster care and adopted at rates 19 times greater than their peers. The practice was widespread until 1978’s Indian Child Welfare Act was passed by Congress, who stated “wholesale separation of Indian children from their families is perhaps the most tragic and destructive aspect of American Indian life today.” 

Native populations now face , including the highest rates of substance abuse, suicidal ideation and chronic illnesses, which researchers have linked to centuries of genocide, disinvestment and generational trauma. 

Following Biden’s address, an Indigenous collective gathered to pray, mourn, sing and in South Dakota, on the lands of what will soon be the , a “culture-based school” for Lakota, Dakota and Nakota children.

“, we took to the land and reminded the world that we are the children of survivors … We will honor our ancestors by holding this country accountable for what it has done to our people,” NDN Collective president Nick Tilsen said in a release. “The U.S. government tried to exterminate and erase us. We will continue to remind them they have failed at doing so, and the warrior spirit of our ancestors lives in all of us.” 

TOPEKA — The Kansas State Board of Education on Tuesday voted to expand indigenous education outreach from the K-12 to college level, following debate that touched on mascots and political agendas.

Members approved 9-1 a memorandum of understanding to establish the Kansas Advisory Council for Indigenous Education, joining the Kansas Board of Regents with the agreement. The vote formalizes the partnership between the state board, regents and advisory council on consultation about Kansas indigenous education. The regents signed the agreement March 21.

“We have the opportunity to have some meaningful educational opportunities, just to have conversations, just to understand each other better. I think that is critical,” board member Jim Porter said.

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The Kansas Advisory Council for Indigenous Education was created as a temporary committee, meant to strengthen relationships with the state’s four Native nations and bolster educational outcomes for indigenous children and youths. Board member Dennis Hershberger cautioned against political animus in historical discussion before voting in favor of the measure.

“I’m just wanting to encourage factual history to be taught and if that’s the goal, then I appreciate that effort.” Hershberger said. “… From a biblical standpoint, everyone’s created equal and we want to look at every one with virtue and value. It’s so important that we look at history that way.”

The move comes two years after comments from Randy Watson, the Kansas commissioner of education, during a virtual education conference in 2022.

“I had some cousins from California. They were petrified of tornadoes,” Watson said at the time. “They’d come visit us, you know, in the summer. They were like, ‘Are we going to get killed by a tornado?’ And I’d say, ‘Don’t worry about that, but you got to worry about the Indians raiding the town at any time.’ And they really thought that.”

Watson apologized for these comments and was suspended.

During Tuesday’s Board of Education discussion, several members asked about the political impact of the council. Board member Danny Zeck, the one “no” vote, questioned council member Alex Red Corn, a citizen of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma and an assistant professor at Kansas State University, on mascot recommendations.

“Is this the same group that wants to get rid of all the mascots?” Zeck said

In 2022, the council  prioritize persuading local school officials to abandon culturally offensive branding.

More than 20 Kansas schools still have American Indian themed mascots, and many tribes have expressed opposition to these mascots due to concerns they damage the perception of indigenous people and encourage stereotypes that represent American Indians as “exotic, warlike people who are stuck in the past,” according to a council memorandum.

Red Corn said the group is currently focusing on analyzing student data and working on teacher certification.

“Mascots tend to get more attention,” Red Corn said. “But they’re actually not much of the bandwidth that we’re working on right now.  … We’re actually moving toward the idea that we need to create collaborative systems of education so they learn about this place, it is Kansas, and its history and what it is today because of that history.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on and .

All webinars should start with a music video this rousing. The occasion? The Haaland v. Brackeen case currently before the Supreme Court, which threatens to erase the protections established by the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1982. organized the conversation so that advocates could understand the stakes and prepare, if necessary, to push for measures at the state level. (Disclosure: I have done some freelance writing for the Alliance.)

Here are our takeaways:

1. ICWA exists for a reason. Olga Gonzalez, executive director of , provided a capsule history of ways that the United States has treated natives as expendable. She described the courage of Hatuey, who “the first prominent freedom fighter of the Americas,” and the , the weeping mother.

For decades, federal and state government agencies took children away from Native American families and sent them to live in boarding schools, where they were cut off from linguistic roots and the extended family, elders and community that conveyed cultural values.

Officials also facilitated widespread adoption by white families. A 1975 found, “One of every nine Indian children are in foster homes, adoptive homes, institutions or boarding facilities. Indian children in these states are withdrawn from their homes at a rate of 20 times the national average.”

Gonzalez celebrated indigenous resilience and environmental activism in the face of the colonial mentality of the past and present. “May our work be our prayer,” she stated.

2. ICWA is the gold standard. Federal legislation “to protect the best interest of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families by the establishment of minimum Federal standards for the removal of Indian children and placement of such children in homes which will reflect the unique values of Indian culture” came into being 40 years ago.

Jack Trope, senior director of the Indian Child Welfare Program, , described the tenets behind ICWA and summarized research findings that keeping families together is in their best interest and that removing children causes trauma. “You help the child,” he said, “by helping the family heal from generational trauma.”

The extended family and tribal network, along with cultural and spiritual traditions, constitute protective factors.  Kinship placements, he maintained, are more stable and less disruptive than placements outside tribes, reducing behavioral problems and mental health issues.

3. ICWA is not always upheld the way it was intended. As with any law, implementation matters as much as what the words say. The ways that ICWA is interpreted and put into practice varies. a 2015 publication by the National Indian Child Welfare Association, identifies such hazards as gaps in training and misapplied standards about who qualifies as well as lack of data and willful ignorance.

A zeroes in on how states interpret or misinterpret the “existing Indian family” exception. Media attention around Haaland v. Brackeen has allowed misleading opinions to proliferate.

Larissa Littlewolf, associate director of the Tribal Training and Certification Partnership at the University of Minnesota Duluth urged better training of state administrators as well as K-12 history education that acknowledges prejudice. “If you’re talking Native issues,” she said, “you should have Native people around the table.”

4. The foster system as a whole has moved in the direction that ICWA pioneered. As Trope observed, the biggest irony of the move to revisit ICWA is that advocates across the country are pushing for changes in the foster care system (also known as child welfare or child protective services) that would secure protections similar to those in ICWA.

“redirect[ing] resources to make help available within communities so that families can get assistance where they live, stay safely together and avoid unnecessary separation through foster care.”

5. Some states have passed their own versions of ICWA. California, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming have comprehensive Indian Child Welfare laws that complement or refine federal law. Legislation is pending in Colorado, Montana and North Dakota.

Dawn Gray, managing attorney, Blackfeet Nation, said that ideally, the state laws are written in a way that enshrines tribal values. She explained that tribes are familiar with each other’s processes. “This network,” she said, “helps children wherever they are in the state.” Whether the federal law is partly or fully overturned, Littlewolf recommended, “Get to know the tribes in your state. Find out how to be an ally, an advocate. Those conversations lead to action.”

“This is absolutely a step in the right direction,” said Esther Nystrom, vice president of the Arizona Indian Education Association (AIEA), a non-profit organization made up of educators and community members that work together to improve the K-12 and college education of Indigenous students in Arizona.

Through this renewal, Nystrom said that it shows that the Arizona State Board of Education and Arizona’s Department of Education are willing to continue to build relationships with tribes and leaders in Indian education.

“We want to make sure that we give encouragement and support to our Native American students and with the renewal of the policy it is advocating for Native American people,” she added. “We want people to understand our community and know that we are still here and that we are in the school system.”

The Indian Education Policy was adopted by the Arizona School Board of Education in 1985, then revised and adopted again in 2002. On Oct. 25, the board renewed the policy.

“The purpose of this policy is to promote maximum Indian participation and to ensure collaboration in achieving quality education for American Indian people,” . The Arizona State Board of Education recognizes the value and importance of Arizona’s American Indian languages, cultures, and histories.”

For Kimberly Daingkau-Begay, president of AIEA, the renewal shows that the State Board of Education recognizes the nation-to-nation relationship Arizona’s 22 tribes have with the state and federal governments. And it provides some weight for Indigenous educators when they want to address their needs or improvements for Indian education, Daingkau-Begay said. 

“Having this renewed is a fairly strong statement in support of American Indian students and their education,” she said.

“We are still here, we want people to know that we are still making a difference, we are still doing great things in Indian education,” she added. “We have a lot of Native students doing amazing things out there — let us show you what those are, because this is something that we are doing right now as Native American people.”

Nystrom and Daingkau-Begay are also part of Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman’s Indian Education Advisory Council at the Arizona Department of Education. It was members of the advisory council who brought the policy renewal request to Hoffman, and she took it to the Arizona State Board of Education in October.

Implementation of policy relies on local educators

The Indian Education policy has been in place since 1985, and according to the State Board of Education Executive Director Alicia Williams, once a policy is adopted it doesn’t expire.

“The Board is an entity, made up of individuals, but it is the entity that sets policy,” Williams said. “Members may come and go, may even change/adjust policies, but for the most part, policies remain because the Board, as the entity, approved them.”

So, when the board does renew an older policy, Williams said it primarily serves to remind people that it is there by bringing it to their attention.

“Renewing a policy allows schools to recall that SBE has the policy ‘on the books’ and allows for schools to remind their governing boards and apply the policy at the local level where it is relevant,” she added. 

Even with the policy renewal, it will still be up to local school boards and districts to make sure that education about Indigenous people and communities is included in their curriculums.

“The Arizona State Board of Education strongly recommends that Local Education Agencies integrate Arizona American Indian languages, cultures, and histories into all areas of the curriculum to foster appreciation and understanding for all students,” the policy states.

Hoffman said working with the Office of Indian Education has been a high priority for the Arizona Department of Education since she was elected in 2018. She said she wants to keep expanding and elevating the work they do. 

When she took office, she said the Office of Indian Education was run by one person, and it never received state funding, even after the department added it to its annual budget request. 

It wasn’t until the department received COVID-19 recovery funds that it was able to dedicate $1 million dollars to the Office of Indian Education, which allowed four more people to be hired. 

“With this bigger team, we’ve been able to do more to serve our tribal nations and really build on those partnerships with the tribal nation’s leaderships,” Hoffman said. 

She said that making this recommendation to the state board was really important after the recent experiences and challenges Arizona’s Indigenous communities faced during the pandemic. It helps align the policy as a priority by having the board recommit to it, she added. 

“This was just one way they felt like they could elevate and promote the needs of our schools, educators, and students who are part of our Indian education community in Arizona,” Hoffman said. “I feel very proud to be on the board that has unanimously supported this policy. I’m pleased that we were able to pass this with such ease.”

This article originally appeared in the .