In the thick of the summer, 10 high school and college students sat in the empty library of MaȟpĂ­ya LĂșta — Red Cloud — High School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. There, they recited everyday phrases in Lakota, the language spoken by the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, one of the nation’s largest.

TaƋyáƋ niĆĄtíƋma he? Did you sleep well? 

OkĂłihaƋke k’uƋ heháƋ tȟabwaĆĄkate. Last weekend I played basketball.

Táku wičhókaƋ wótapi he? What’s for lunch?

The students were paid participants in the school’s annual summer language internship program, learning the language and culture to teach others — and posting videos of themselves speaking, translating and describing everyday activities in Lakota.

It’s part of MaȟpĂ­ya LĂșta’s mission to preserve the 1,000-year-old language, which is in danger of being erased because it is to younger generations.

Opened in 1888, MaȟpĂ­ya LĂșta (mah-PEE-yah loo-tah) was one of many boarding schools the U.S. government created to culturally assimilate and “” Native Americans. Roughly 19,000 children were taken from their families and forced to attend. The schools made the children use English names, cut their hair and prohibited them from speaking their language, according to a 2022 federal .

“Boarding school rules were often enforced through punishment, including corporal punishment such as solitary confinement; flogging; withholding food; whipping; slapping; and cuffing,” the report said. as a result of abuse and inhumane conditions.

While the Lakota population is more than 170,000 strong, there are fewer than , according to the Lakota Language Consortium. Most are in their 70s.

Ashlan Carlow-Blount, 17, didn’t grow up speaking Lakota, but discovered a passion for it in high school. She joined the internship to improve her speaking skills and share the language with other young people.

“Our ancestors couldn’t speak it — if they spoke it, it was like a punishment for them,” Ashlan said. “That’s why we lost our language, because they were so afraid to speak it and they didn’t pass it down. That’s why it’s important to us to [do this], because we have the opportunity to speak it freely now and then keep it going.”

The summer internship is the next step toward fluency for students who have completed other Lakota classes. For two months, they learn through singing, activities, group conversations and lectures. This year’s group began to — sometimes receiving thousands of views.

Learn some Lakota sentences with us!!

“Our summer interns kind of put [the program] on the map, and it was a good outlet for them to showcase what they’re learning and also showcase how language could be used in the day-to-day,” said Jennifer Irving, MaȟpĂ­ya LĂșta’s communications director. 

Mya Mills, 17, said a lot of teens know basic Lakota words and speak some at home but aren’t fluent. The internship has helped her speak the language outside of school, and older adults have told her how much they appreciate students trying to bring Lakota back.

“That’s the point — for us still to try to keep it going,” she said. “Even when we’re around people who don’t speak it.”

MaȟpĂ­ya LĂșta’s internship is only one piece of its mission to increase Lakota fluency, Irving said. The school of 500 students created a dual language immersion program in 2019 that has since expanded from kindergarten through eighth grade. About 90% of classes are taught in Lakota, so students can become fluent early on instead of catching up in later years.

The movement to revitalize and preserve native languages in schools has boomed in recent decades, Irving said. Immersion schools and language preservation programs have increased in and other states like , and . In December, the Biden administration published a 10-year , which called for action to address the U.S. government’s role in the loss of Native American languages. The program’s future is unclear under the Trump administration.

“I think 40 years ago, our education system in this country was very different — very much reading, writing, arithmetic,” Irving said. “We all see now, not just with tribal languages or Lakota language, but we see the benefits for students that are in immersion classrooms and in immersion schools.”

Researchers that Native American students in bilingual programs scored higher on English language standardized tests than those who received education in an English-only program. Including indigenous languages and culture in school curriculum have also been identified as ways to improve chronic absenteeism for Native American students, according to a from the national nonprofit Attendance Works.

The Minneapolis American Indian Center, which serves more than 35,000 Native Americans in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, created a in 2019 that teaches youth the Dakota and Ojibwe languages. Coordinator Memegwesi Sutherland said he’s seen students have “life-changing experiences” after being exposed to their language and culture for the first time.

“Most schools don’t offer much for a Native education,” he said. “Students who do take my class end up learning a lot — they want to reconnect with their people, relearn their language and culture, and sometimes their [college] majors change and they ask me how they can keep learning it.”  

Kiana Richards, a 2017 MaȟpĂ­ya LĂșta graduate, became so passionate about Lakota while in high school that she earned an associate degree in the language. She joined AmeriCorps and worked as a MaȟpĂ­ya LĂșta employee from 2018 to 2020. But she stopped speaking Lakota when the pandemic struck, and after several years realized her fluency had “completely faded away.”

Last year, she rejoined AmeriCorps to refresh her Lakota skills and teach students about the language and culture.

“I wanted to continue to keep doing this for the sake of my own self, my identity, my Lakota identity, and for the sake of me wanting to be an immersion teacher,” she said. “I want to encourage the [students] so much, because it is a part of who we are.”

Tylia Mad Plume, a 2023 MaȟpĂ­ya LĂșta graduate, said she initially cared only about getting a decent grade in high school Lakota classes. But after an educator encouraged her to work with children, she joined AmeriCorps to help teach while taking language classes herself.

Both Mad Plume and Richards were fired from AmeriCorps this spring, when the Trump administration from the national service organization. The school used its own budget to hire them as staff for the summer internship.

Many MaȟpĂ­ya LĂșta staff come from AmeriCorps. Funding has since been reinstated to Democratic-led states that sued, but the school is still waiting for a solution as a named plaintiff in a lawsuit that seeks a in every state. 

“I think it’s important to keep going, to keep the Lakota Nation sovereign, because it’s really scary with everything going on right now,” Mad Plume said. “You have to keep that because in history, for the people who didn’t keep it or the tribes who weren’t as strong in their language and culture, it’s gone.”

Richards said she’s excited for the future because while Lakota wasn’t passed down through generations in the past, she believes the current generation will bring it back. 

This is foretold in the Lakotas’ seventh generation prophecy, she said — a made in the 1800s by Lakota holy man that after generations of great suffering, the Lakota of the seventh generation — the current generation — will take back what little culture and rights remain to spur positive change for the future.

“Here we are in that moment,” Richards said. “I feel like it’s coming full circle, because now we’re teaching the [children] how to speak Lakota and some of them are more fluent than I am. It’s amazing to see, and that’s what encourages me and inspires me. It’s so important because it connects us to who we are, in our spirits, our knowledge.”

Correction: The name of the Twin Cities cultural center is the Minneapolis American Indian Center.

It worked. Reimbursements rose from $1.7 million in state funds to 41 providers in 2017 to to 328 providers in state and Medicaid funds through the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention benefit in 2023.

Most of those new centers engaged in applied behavior analysis. ABA is an intensive behavior modification technique that aims to make autistic children act more like their typically developing peers by “extinguishing” certain traits through compliance with specific repeated commands. (A 74 investigation last year demonstrated that there is no reliable data to show the treatment works, and that it may actually cause harm to patients.)

Last year, the FBI began investigating whether some of those treatment centers have defrauded Medicaid, billing for services never provided. Though investigators have not said how many for-profit centers they are looking into or who their clients are, many are believed to enroll the children of East African immigrants, who are particularly vulnerable because of the lack of culturally appropriate services. There are also indications the alleged fraudsters may have ties to defendants in the country’s largest , in which nonexistent food distribution sites supposedly created to provide children with meals during COVID-related school closures billed the state for hundreds of millions of dollars.

As the 2025 legislative session gets underway, state lawmakers are holding hearings on proposals to tighten oversight. Most of the testimony has centered on to require services to be provided by licensed professionals in safe settings. But some autism advocates have expressed concern that those standards will entrench ABA as the dominant approach — one that, among other things, is replacing other special education services in schools — instead of supporting alternatives that they say are more effective and humane.     

One of those who testified is Native American Jules Edwards, the autistic parent of three autistic youth, ages 11, 19 and 21, and a member of the Anishinaabe Eagle Clan. After , she told a state Senate committee that ABA is not a therapy, but “a specific methodology that was created by the same people that created gay conversion therapy.”  

Right now, providers are not required to be licensed; are allowed to describe employees who may have only a high school diploma as therapists; and are not held to the same safety standards as even home day care centers, Edwards testified. “Despite the ABA industry lobbying for more power over the autism community, they need their power restricted until they can prove with empirical and independent evidence that they are doing what they claim they are doing” in terms of providing effective, safe services.  

Edwards recently expanded on her testimony in an interview with ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What motivated you to testify?

When my children were diagnosed with autism, I threw myself into research. I learned about autism and I learned about interventions. I learned from professionals, parents and autistic adults that autism is a social, communication and sensory disability, and not a behavioral disorder. I learned that applied behavior analysis is a behavior modification program that requires autistic children to suppress their natural way of being in order to please the adults around them. 

That didn’t make sense to me. Why wouldn’t we want to address any underlying needs first? Typically, autistic kids specifically need to learn the why, because we’re bottom-up learners. We like to gather information about things before taking action. But ABA requires a top-down, authoritative approach, where autistic children are not allowed to ask why. They are required to comply with authority, and that poses a lifelong danger to that child. 

Testifying was an opportunity to highlight the fraud, waste and abuse that happens within the ABA industry. American taxpayers pay billions of dollars per year to enrich private equity investors under the guise of an autism therapy that works. However, ABA isn’t a therapy, and it hasn’t been proven to improve quality of life. 

The Department of Defense’s 2020 reported that 76% of children in ABA showed no improvement after one year, 16% had improved, but 9% were worse after a year of treatment. That really brings into question the cost-effectiveness of ABA. When we’re talking about fraud and waste of Medicaid dollars or taxpayer dollars generally, we need to be honest about the actual outcomes. 

But there’s little oversight. The state doesn’t require health and safety procedures, behavior guidance, standards, first aid, CPR. They aren’t required to have a mental health response, crisis response or suicide intervention plan. They don’t have to provide culturally responsive treatment practices. 

A 5-year-old child was just in a hyperbaric chamber in an unaccredited ABA center in Troy, Michigan. The chamber exploded with the child inside, and he passed away.  We know that hyperbaric chambers aren’t actually a treatment or cure for autism or anything like that. It’s not approved by the FDA. If there was oversight, if there was licensing, if there were safety requirements that prevented this kind of alternative treatment it could have saved that boy’s life. 

The state’s suggests “modern” ABA has largely stopped using punishments to discourage certain behaviors. But I have heard parents and autistic adults who have experienced ABA say it is still coercive. Can you give us an example?

Planned ignoring, which is a technique used in ABA, basically denies the humanity of the child who is subjected to it. When we’re children, whether you’re autistic or not, and you’re hanging out with another kid, and the other kid is pretending you don’t even exist, it’s dehumanizing. But now, within ABA, the adults do that to the children.

Say a child is throwing a toy that they shouldn’t be throwing. They may not be hurting anybody. They might be throwing it because they like the sound. It could be stimming [the term for a repetitive sound or motion an autistic person may use for emotional regulation or to express ]. It could be anything. The adult doesn’t want the child to play with the toy that way. 

They might try other interventions before planned ignoring, but then the child is being ignored completely, whether the child is trying to gain the attention of the behavior tech or not. This can cause increased “behaviors” of the child escalating, trying to gain that attention. But no matter how much the child tries, the adult is not going to give in.

We can see how frustrating that must be, particularly if that’s a child who may be struggling with communication and may not say, ‘Hey, I really want to play ball right now.’ That kid is maybe unable to ask for what they want, or the way that they’re asking is a behavior that the behavior tech doesn’t like.

Is there a danger that as the state creates standards and licensing procedures to protect children, it will further codify this industry as the dominant treatment? 

Absolutely. ABA is currently the dominant treatment. They have lobbyists. They absolutely can persuade legislators to further empower the industry. Because they have the most money, they have the most power right now. 

A lot of the research about ABA, claiming it’s the gold standard treatment, etc., is funded by and conducted by the people who profit from it. We need to be sure that decision makers are looking at facts and data and information that isn’t that doesn’t involve a conflict of interest. It’s really important that we refer to outside, independent researchers, like the Department of Defense study.

There was a push at one point for board-certified behavior therapists [credentialed ABA supervisors] in Minnesota to be able to diagnose autism. They would then be able to enroll those children in their services. That is dangerous, because children who need a diagnosis need to go to an actual medical professional and have other conditions ruled out. They need to be evaluated for potential co-occurring conditions, etc. If a behavior therapist is able to diagnose autism, but they can’t diagnose anything else, then all of that child’s underlying conditions or additional conditions may be overlooked. 

If my children didn’t have full-team neuropsych evaluations, I wouldn’t know about their learning disabilities, and I wouldn’t know how to provide support. I wouldn’t know how to advocate for my children in school. My child used to be punished for his writing disability until we learned, through that neuropsych evaluation, there’s a dysgraphia issue. So let’s provide writing prompts. Let’s provide support for writing. Let’s provide adaptations and assistive technology. If he only had an autism diagnosis, that would have been met with behaviorism, he would have been rewarded for doing well, punished for struggling, and he wouldn’t have had access to the tools that he needs. 

There are definitely other treatments that don’t have that same level of influence but may be more effective, may be more humanizing. A lot of those are not as widely available. 

Many kids spend half or or all of their day in an ABA center rather than in a school where their learning would be attended to.

It’s a problem that begins in preschool. Children are often pushed out of public schools when a school or preschool doesn’t have the knowledge or resources to care for the child. They say, “Maybe this isn’t the best fit for you.” That’s something that my family has heard from our local public school. That’s not really a thing that a special education director should be saying to any family, and we should be concerned about the people who are most marginalized in our communities. When those kids are excluded from public schools, parents are often left with very few options. 

ABA centers market themselves as being able to help children to gain skills and become more independent. But if that were so, why isn’t inclusion in public schools the ultimate goal of ABA centers? ABA centers are not schools. They’re not accredited to provide education. There are very few ABA centers that have transition paths or goals for kids to move out of ABA and into mainstream schools. Instead, many children remain in ABA, sometimes throughout high school, deprived of the opportunity to learn what their peers are learning. It’s a form of educational neglect. 

Children in ABA often aren’t allowed to learn the most basic things. For example, [behavior therapists] often dissuade spelling to communicate, which means that they’re not encouraging autistic kids in ABA to even learn the alphabet. They aren’t taught literacy, they aren’t taught math, they aren’t taught history. That’s sad and scary, because then when these children grow up, all they’ve learned how to do is comply with authority.

There was a hearing a couple of days after yours where a number of East African parents testified about the conditions that compelled them to take advantage of ABA. There’s an element of desperation, in terms of a lack of alternatives, that must be clouding the picture.

It’s a sad reality that there’s a history here in Minnesota of people preying on immigrant communities. For example, in 2017 there were 75 cases of measles identified in the Somali population in Hennepin County alone, a result of anti-vaxxers who saw an opportunity to push their narrative that vaccines cause autism. They targeted immigrant communities with fearmongering tactics. 

The ABA industry pushes itself onto parents by claiming to be the only hope for their children. I’m very concerned that marketing targets immigrant communities without sharing balanced information that will help parents make informed decisions for their families. I’m worried about the conditions in which ABA is the only option. 

A lot of the time, parents are in a desperate situation where it’s like, “I have to go to work to pay the bills, and I have to have a place for my child to be that is safe and supervised.” And instead of lobbying for inclusion, for appropriate support and services in schools, we’re saying, “Well, this kid can go to ABA instead.” 

That’s not good for anyone, because inclusion benefits all of us. Inclusion benefits abled and typically developing people just as much as it benefits disabled people. I think we can see that right now in our current political climate, where it’s been so normalized to “other” people. That causes harm to all of us. 

ABA is problematic in your culture.

I’m Anishinabe. ABA could never meet my needs as a Native person. “Culturally responsive” essentially means to adapt services to meet the needs and values of a person’s culture. Some cultures, particularly settler-colonial culture, values assimilation. Settler-colonial culture prefers when people blend in and are agreeable to authority. ABA is rooted in that.

Behaviorism seeks to control a person’s behavior with the carrots-and-sticks analogy. We reward the things we want to see, we punish the things that we don’t want to see. We all do get rewarded for doing certain actions, and we all could potentially be punished by other actions.

But it’s not the same micro-management of behavior — you can only communicate the way I want you to communicate. You can only experience your senses the way I want you to experience your senses. You can only socialize the way that I have determined is a valid way of being. 

There’s the stereotype that autistic people don’t make eye contact, but that eye contact is a cultural phenomenon. Not every culture thinks eye contact is this great thing. Some cultures find it disrespectful, but ABA doesn’t always take that into account. It’s determined by the [therapists], not necessarily the child and their family and their culture. 

We should all have some self-determination with how we use our bodies. If I’m not hurting anyone else, I should be able to stim. If I communicate best by writing, that should be encouraged, and I should be provided support and tools to do that. Rather than what happens often in ABA, where parents are told, “This will help your child speak,” but it’s not speech therapy. 

One of my children didn’t speak until he was a little bit older. Starting when he was about 2, he would use one or two words here and there, but he wouldn’t combine them. It was tough, because at the time, we didn’t have a diagnosis, we didn’t have any sort of speech language therapy. As a parent, I relied on very basic sign language. And I was thrilled because I could communicate with my kid whether he was using mouth words or not. Do I wish that we had speech language pathology at the time? Yes, absolutely, that would have been great. But we didn’t. I think that if we had pushed that particular child into using mouth words, I think it would have built resentment.

Now he can speak, but his preferred language now is music, which is really cool because he’s a musician. Music is a really strong cultural practice that’s traditional for Anishinaabe people or Ojibwe people. It’s healing for us, something that we love. Why don’t we encourage that, rather than the ABA ideal of mouth words?

South Dakota public schools would be required to teach a specific set of Native American historical and cultural lessons if a bill unanimously endorsed by a legislative committee Tuesday in Pierre becomes law.

The bill would mandate the teaching of the Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings. The phrase “Oceti Sakowin” refers to the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people. The understandings are a set of standards and lessons adopted seven years ago by the South Dakota Board of Education Standards with input from tribal leaders, educators and elders.

Use of the understandings by public schools is optional. A survey conducted by the state Department of Education indicated use by 62% of teachers, but the survey was voluntary and hundreds of teachers did not respond.

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Republican state Sen. Tamara Grove, who lives on the Lower Brule Reservation, proposed the bill and asked legislators to follow the lead of Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Chairman J. Garret Renville. He has publicly called for a “reset” of state-tribal relations since the departure of former Gov. Kristi Noem, who was barred by tribal leaders from entering tribal land in the state.

“What I’m asking you to do today,” Grove said, “is to lean into the reset.”

Joe Graves, the state secretary of education and a Noem appointee, testified against the bill. He said portions of the understandings are already incorporated into the state’s social studies standards. He added that the state only mandates four curricular areas: math, science, social studies and English-language arts/reading. He said further mandates would “tighten up the school days, leaving schools with much less instructional flexibility.”

Members of the Senate Education Committee sided with Grove and other supporters, voting 7-0 to send the bill to the full Senate.

The proposal is one of several education mandates that lawmakers have considered this legislative session. The state House rejected a bill this week that would have required posting and teaching the Ten Commandments in schools, and also rejected a bill that would have required schools to post the state motto, “Under God the People Rule.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com.

Education programs run by Native American tribes in New Mexico rely in part on money from the state, but accessing those dollars makes it difficult to complete all of the work they envision.

Tribal leaders and advocates have long lobbied for a change. This year they want to make it happen.

Each year, tribes can apply for grants, and if their applications are approved, they must spend the money first and then submit documentation to the state for reimbursement. 

On paper, it sounds straightforward. But in reality, sometimes tribes can’t spend down all the money by an artificial deadline. In fiscal year 2020-2021, 22 tribes received grants under the Indian Education Act but only two  for the full amount they were awarded. 

It’s a cycle that repeats year after year, hampering their ability to realize the vision of educating their own children. 

With state lawmakers heading into the 2023 legislative session with a multi-billion dollar surplus, Rep. Derrick Lente, a Democrat from Sandia Pueblo, said he will introduce legislation to create a $50 million tribal education trust fund that would provide tribes automatic funding every year. 

Tribes would use annual interest earned on trust fund money for language revitalization efforts, resources such as wi-fi, and career readiness programs, among other priorities. It would give tribes greater autonomy, Lente said. Tribes could develop educational services guided entirely by their own communities rather than depend on small grants the state awards for specific uses.

Native people live in two societies with different educational focuses, he said, and tribes don’t want one to overwhelm the other. 

“One being the more Western-focused society, where you go to school, you earn a diploma, you get a job, and you work at that job to sustain a family, that’s the Western style,” he told New Mexico In Depth. “But there’s also our more traditional, Indigenous style of education where you learn the language, you learn the traditions and the culture. You learn the songs, you learn the dances.”

The All Pueblo Council of Governors in November passed a resolution calling on state lawmakers to create such a fund. It’s time to make historic investments in the education and other needs of Native American children after decades of neglect, Lente and tribal leaders say.

The need for change

There’s a profound need to improve education for Native students. 

A landmark 2018 court ruling, Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico, found the state has failed its constitutional duty to provide an adequate education to Native children, along with low-income students, English language learners, and students with disabilities, who together represent 70% of students in the state.

That failure has resulted in poor outcomes for those student populations, including the lowest graduation rate in the country and low proficiency rates in reading and math.

Despite progress in recent years, Native students continue to graduate high school at lower rates than their peers, at 71.5% compared to 76.8% for all students in 2021. 

In New Mexico’s largest school district, Albuquerque Public Schools, Native students have the lowest proficiency in reading, math, and science of any student group, according to the . Math saw the worst rate of the three, with just 12.4% of Native students testing at or above proficient.   

And in 2019, only one out of 10 Native American students  that would earn the student college credits while still in high school, according to plaintiffs in the Yazzie/Martinez lawsuit.  

Automatic year-over-year funding for tribal education departments and greater tribal control over the education of Native children are two of several recommendations in the , a plan created in response to the court ruling that’s endorsed by leadership of the state’s 23 tribes, pueblos, and nations. 

A trust fund that automatically generates interest revenue for tribally-controlled education would speak to both of those demands, which are rooted in a genocidal history regarding Indian education. 

Between 1819 and 1969, the federal government operated more than 400  designed to destroy Indigenous languages and cultures and assimilate Native children, who were taken from their families.

An untold number of children died, although the Department of the Interior has accounted for over 500 deaths according to a  published in May 2022 and expects that number could rise to the tens of thousands with continued investigation. 

Another result of the boarding school era has been a dramatic and rapid decline in the number of Native language speakers.

When the government eventually shut most of the boarding schools, many Native children went into the public school system, over which tribes, again, haven’t had authority and where children often aren’t given the opportunity to learn their heritage language. 

Take public school students in Albuquerque. 

Roughly 4,000 students affiliated with the Navajo Nation are enrolled in the city’s public schools, but as of late August, only about 200 of those students were taking Navajo language classes. 

Philip Farson, director of the district’s Indian Education Department,  that the district would need to hire up to 100 Navajo language teachers over the next few years to meet the language programming needs of all DinĂ© students. 

The district, as of October, employed six.  

There are other deficiencies as well. 

“In tribal communities, there are few programs, few services, and very limited facilities,” Lente told lawmakers at a joint meeting of the Indian Affairs and Legislative Education Study committees this fall. He and Regis Pecos, a former governor of Cochiti Pueblo and co-director of the Leadership Institute at Santa Fe Indian School, presented the trust fund proposal. 

“In many cases, and I think this was really brought to light by COVID, but even prior to COVID, students don’t have anywhere to go,” Lente said. “We don’t have anything on tribal lands. When you saw the pictures of the children huddled around a building outside simply to get their work done, that happened before COVID. It’s happening today still.” 

Early on in the pandemic, some Native students  to connect to the schools’ broadband internet because they didn’t have it at home, according to court motions filed by school superintendents related to the 2018 Yazzie/Martinez court ruling. 

Many children travel from their tribal communities to go to public schools and when they go home for the day or the weekend, they often leave behind “the opportunities and the abilities to continue to work like their peers and to learn like their peers,” Lente said.

The majority of Native children in New Mexico attend public school rather than Bureau of Indian Education operated or tribally controlled schools — 40,759 students compared to 6,704 students, respectively, during the last school year, according to the state Public Education Department’s latest . 

The goal of the trust fund isn’t to build schools in every tribal nation, Lente said, but rather educational hubs — safe spaces, with heating in the winter and cooling in the summer, that could provide, for example, internet, language classes, tutoring, and college and career readiness programs to all Native students, regardless of whether they attend school in their tribal nations or go to public school. 

In Zia Pueblo, many of those services are already available to the pueblo’s children, most of whom attend school in nearby Jemez Pueblo, Bernalillo, and elsewhere. The pueblo is currently building  an early childhood education center that will also be used occasionally for community events.

Marsha Leno, Zia Pueblo’s education director, said revenue the tribe can count on every year would help grow the pueblo’s language program and staff to help guide students through an educational plan and ensure they’re receiving support in school. 

She’d also like to construct a building for her team to have offices and meeting space.  They are currently spread out in a handful of buildings. A central location, she said, would make it easier for community members to connect with services, and added tutoring and other academic assistance could also be offered there.

Those ambitions are informed by community input that Leno, who’s a member of Zia Pueblo and a Yazzie/Martinez plaintiff, said she worked hard to gather when she became director almost three years ago. 

Leno worked for two other tribal education departments before returning to her home community as an early childhood education manager and then director. 

“My thing was I was tired of making other tribal members from different tribes doctors, lawyers, sending them to school,” Leno said. “Why can’t I do it for my own people? That’s why I’m here. I want my people to be successful, too.” 

A dysfunctional system

Tribes and school districts that serve Native American students apply for annual grants from the Indian Education Fund, set up by New Mexico’s 2003 Indian Education Act, which is supposed to ensure equitable and culturally relevant education for Native children.

Education priorities identified in the grant requests vary by tribe. 

Isleta Pueblo’s priority for the roughly $92,000 it was awarded in 2020-2021, for instance, was “culture and identity development,” according to . The grant’s outcomes included 150 students engaging in Tiwa language lessons and 30 students receiving internet hotspots to continue those lessons virtually.  

Santa Ana Pueblo, which was awarded nearly $100,000, focused on college, career, and life readiness, and reported that 12 students received credit recovery support and all middle and high schoolers got access to tutoring. 

Neither pueblo requested reimbursement for the full award amounts. 

One possible reason for that: Slow processing of funds by the Public Education Department can lead to grant recipients having less time to spend the funding, according to  by Legislative Finance Committee evaluators. 

“It’s a common occurrence and that’s definitely where bureaucracy gets in the way and almost sets up tribes, education departments to fail,” Lente said.  

Between fiscal years 2018 and 2020, 29% of awards from the Indian Education Fund went unspent, according to the legislative report, which notes that grant recipients are required to submit documentation and invoices before the state releases funds. 

A  from the same committee called on the state education department to “improve the timeliness of grant administrative processes.” 

It doesn’t help that many tribal education departments are understaffed and experience high turnover due to underfunding, making spending grants even more difficult, according to a December 2020 . 

Zia and Jemez Pueblo were the only tribes that requested full reimbursement in 2020-2021. 

Leno said despite Zia Pueblo’s spending the full grant amount, she’s been frustrated and at times confused by the state’s grant process, including reporting requirements. 

Grants go through a multi-stage approval process before they can be spent, which takes time away from implementation, Leno said. “Why waste our time there when we have other priorities here within our community? I know we need the funding but we need to move forward.”

State education department spokesperson Kelly Pearce wrote in an email the department “has been actively streamlining the process to ensure that it is clear and consistent, easier to navigate and faster,” but didn’t offer specifics.

There’s a need not only for consistent funding but also greater tribal control, Leno said. 

“Allow us to run our departments the way we want to run them,” she said.

Money generated by the proposed trust fund would be distributed to tribes annually based on a formula and the dollars that are unspent wouldn’t return to the state. 

Staff from the Legislative Education Study Committee and the State Investment Council, which manages investments for the state’s four permanent funds, helped develop the concept. 

“Given the nature of things in New Mexico, where oil and gas prices can drive budget cuts one year and deliver giant windfalls just a few years later, these funds help you plan for the future and help steady the ship when things get rough,” Charles Wollmann, communications director for the investment council, told lawmakers at the September meeting where Lente and Pecos presented the proposal. 

The trust fund wouldn’t replace the Indian Education Fund, Pecos said in an interview, but would add to it, empowering tribes to create sustainable, community-based programs. 

“It comes at a time when language and culture is at its most fragile state it’s ever been,” Pecos said. “And that’s because of the waves of the onslaught of policies and laws to purposefully kill language and culture to assimilate our people, but the resistance has been 150 years of pushing back
If we don’t succeed, we can see the end of language and as our elders say, when we lose language and we lose, subsequently, culture and a way of life, that will be the end of who we are as Indigenous peoples.” 

Pecos served for many years as executive director of the state Office of Indian Affairs and, later, chief of staff to the late Speaker of the state House of Representatives Ben LujĂĄn. He said that while his legislative history spans over almost 25 years, he considers the trust fund proposal to be the most important of his career.

“If we prevail, it may be the game-changer we’ve not had in the last 150 years,” Pecos said. 

Recent history, however, suggests the education trust fund might need substantial persuasion to pass muster with state lawmakers.

Lente sponsored two bills during the 2022 session that would’ve given tribes more than $40 million for education. One of the bills would have also created a recurring appropriation in the annual state budget that tribes could’ve counted on. 

, and the Indian Education Fund got $15 million. 

The boost, while less than what Lente had sought, was a substantially greater amount than any previous year. 

Neither the Legislature’s nor Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s budget requests include funding for the education trust fund, but when asked whether the governor supports the proposal, spokesperson Nora Meyers Sackett said Lujan Grisham is asking for over $25 million, up from the current $15 million, for the Indian Education Fund. 

At the request of tribal governments, her administration is also proposing budgetary language that would extend the grant cycle to two years, Meyers Sackett said, with the state education department able to extend that time period if needed through future appropriations language.

Asked whether he’s optimistic about the trust fund proposal passing, Lente said: “I have to be. This is an initiative that we don’t take a break from.”

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Brian Melendez can trace his family history back to an encampment on the land where the Reynolds School of Journalism now stands, before they were forcibly removed to make room for the old Mackey Stadium.

“Not too long ago, my great-great-grandmother gave birth where the University of Nevada, Reno football statue is currently located. That hillside was once our people’s traditional homes,” said Melendez, a citizen of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, who advocated for a Native American tuition waiver for years.

The construction of Nevada’s only land-grant university required the removal of tribes from their homelands and gave the university the right to fund itself through the sale of those unceded lands — a right it has to this day.

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UNR is also a stronghold for the accredited teaching of the Northern Paiute language — a language tribes in Nevada are fighting to preserve. The opportunity to achieve fluency in the language of the state’s original peoples is a particular draw for tribal citizens attending the university.

Paiute culture and language has been studied by academics at Nevada universities since the institutions were established, and countless graduate degrees awarded to non-tribal students have resulted from the use and study of cultural materials housed in Nevada’s universities.

Still, less than 1% of tribal citizens attend college in Nevada, let alone graduate school, says tribal leadership. One of the largest barriers is the mounting cost of higher education.

So when the Nevada Legislature passed a law in late Spring 2021 prohibiting the Nevada System of Higher Education from charging tuition to any Native American student who belongs to a federally recognized tribe in Nevada or a descendant of an enrolled member, tribes and students rejoiced.

Native graduate students at UNR took to saying a phrase that summarized their point of view on higher education: While the bill “cannot decolonize the academy” they will work to “indigenize the academy.”

The timing of the bill’s passage left only a few months for  the state’s colleges and universities to implement the program and get the word out to Native American students about the waiver in time for the 2021-2022 school year.  During the first school year of implementation, $457,449 in tuition and fees were waived for 140 students, .

As of October, 73 students have benefited from the waiver at UNR alone, accounting for about $330,000 in waived tuition this year. For the 2022-23 academic year, another 50 students have applied for the waiver at UNR, said Daphne Emm Hooper, the school’s director of Indigenous Relations.

Since the waiver passed, UNR has seen a 13% increase in Native American undergraduate students and a 3% increase in graduate students.

“Part of it is that we’re seeing more graduate students coming in,” Hooper said “It created access to additional funding. Graduate students don’t have access to as much financial aid. The waiver applies towards graduate courses, I think that’s why we are seeing more Native students seeking out more advanced degrees.”

‘This has been life-changing’

Alyssa Sweet, 20, a descendant of the Lovelock Paiute Tribe, is still an undergraduate at the Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada. Last year, 24 students at the community college benefited from tuition waiver amounting to about $30,000 in fees waived.

Next semester, Sweet is transferring to UNR now that she has more stable funding for her educational goals of becoming an elementary school teacher.

“The only reason I’m able to go to the university is because of this waiver,” Sweet said. “And it’s because I’m Native. It makes me feel good about who I am.”

Before the tuition waiver, Sweet could only afford to attend about two classes a semester at Truckee Meadows Community College, a story she’s seen repeated by other Native students.

“Without the fee waiver I honestly would have had to drop out this semester. I’ve been having a lot of financial issues and I can’t rely on most help,” Sweet said. “This has been life-changing for me just because I can rely on something else, something I know that’s going to be there.”

The process of confirming Sweet’s eligibility with records of her family’s tribal enrollments has been complicated, she said. A lack of communication and coordination between higher education and tribes has made navigating the waivers requirements difficult. Still, she says the process led her to reconnect with the Lovelock Paiute Tribe and she’s taken steps to enroll as a citizen of the tribe.

“I think that it’s really important for the school administration to have the knowledge and know how to help us with it or always have someone we can ask. I feel like there should be more resources,” Sweet said.

Higher education administrators in Nevada agree that as awareness of the fee waiver grows so will the number of Native students applying.

More than one NSHE institution has added additional staff and programs to provide wrap-around supports for Native American students since the tuition waiver was passed.

Native American student advocate at Truckee Meadows Community College, Delina Trottier, is one of those newly hired staffers. Her outreach was the reason Sweet first found out about the tuition waiver.

“Since August, I’ve been reaching out to the Native American student population and encouraging them to look at the waiver and seeing if they meet the requirements or if they need any help applying,” Trottier said.

She’s also a student at the University of Nevada, Reno and a citizen of the Onion Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada. But for the last 10 years she’s called Pyramid Lake in Nevada home.

“One day my daughter will get to utilize this waiver,” Trottier said.

Many Native students had some awareness of the tuition waiver through their own social networks, but didn’t know where to start or how to apply, said Trottier. Soon she was receiving steady emails from students seeking guidance.

“I used to be a student at Truckee Meadows and they didn’t have this position,” said Trottier. “I was kind of timid and shy to even ask for help when I needed it. I’m trying to be that person I needed when I went to TMCC,” Trottier said.

Connecting with tribal leaders and arranging information meetings and tours with high school students has helped bridge a gap between tribes and the community college, said Trottier.

“There’s a lot of interest from the tribes,” Trottier said.

Karin Hilgersom, the president of Truckee Meadows Community College, said she hopes to grow the program and connect with more tribal nations through public higher education.

“This important fee waiver also started a series of events over the past year that strengthened our relationship with tribes and their representatives. In May 2022, I was honored to award Arlan Melendez, Chairman of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony and TMCC alumnus, with our President’s Medal,” Hilgersom said. “We are proud of these efforts and are dedicated to serving all students with accessible, affordable educational opportunities.”

As of December, 16 students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas have benefitted from the free tuition waiver.  Most of those students are undergraduates. Zack Goodwin, UNLV’s executive director of financial aid and scholarships, said he suspects the waiver will encourage more of those same students and others across Nevada to eventually apply to more costly graduate programs.

“We did have more people applying for it than we did in its initial year,” said Goodwin. “I think the word is pretty much out at this point.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com. Follow Nevada Current on and .

Kathleen George grew up in Oregon hearing cautionary tales about the mythological figures Wolf and Coyote. One of those ikanum, or traditional stories, that sticks with her today is the story of Coyote and the Big Sickness.

An oral tradition of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, the story describes how Coyote tried to defeat the Big Sickness on his own, using his innate trickery against the formidable foe. But in the end, Coyote had to find an ally. He turned to the little Mouse for help, and exploited the Big Sickness’ own weaknesses.

Such stories are traditionally told in the cold of winter and not repeated after the “frogs start singing” in the spring, when there is work to be done on the land.

But George, now a member of the Grand Ronde Tribal Council, has repeated the Big Sickness tale over and over since COVID-19 came to Oregon more than a year ago. It comes with important lessons for today’s pandemic.

“No. 1, don’t be selfish and just try to abandon other people to save yourself. You know that kind of selfishness doesn’t work,” George said. “No. 2, we have to be true to ourselves. And thirdly, we have to work together. We can’t get through this alone. We have to come together and help one another out.”

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She said traditions and cultural practices have helped Native communities cope with the COVID-19 outbreak. Tribal governments are also able to use their sovereignty as a weapon against the virus, closing their borders or imposing restrictions that state, county, and municipal governments couldn’t or wouldn’t enforce.

“Despite the fact that this COVID-19 pandemic is a spectacular, unprecedented event, being a tribal person, we come to that in a little bit of a different context,” George said. “So while these are very difficult times, I’ve tried really hard to remember that we’re fortunate that our ancestors left stories to help guide us.”

Loss of Community

Native Americans’ long history of being ravaged by introduced diseases stretches well into the modern era. When 27 different bands of Native people were forced onto the first Grand Ronde reservation in the 1800s, 20% of the population died, George said.

In the 20th Century, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde lost their federally recognized status and their reservation, and only recently reestablished recognition in 1983, now occupying a 11,500-acre reservation southwest of Portland.

Losing recognition, and therefore sovereignty, even for a short time caused a great loss to tribes, many of whom are still fighting for hunting and fishing rights. The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde are now recognized as a sovereign nation, but the nation’s reservation is spread out over several parcels of land in multiple counties. The resulting patchwork of tribal lands makes it difficult to retain a sense of community, said , a Native Studies professor at Oregon State University and Grand Ronde member.

“We were so heavily assimilated and modified and changed by the federal government,” he said. “And then termination, 
 so that we don’t really have those sort of long-term structures in place.”

George explains that most Grand Ronde members are spread out, living off the reservation in nearby towns and counties, and that they get their health care elsewhere. It is often difficult for the tribal government to reach members during the pandemic, she said. Members not living on tribal land or employed by the tribal government may not be afforded continued pay after a job loss, or protection from eviction.

That traumatic history “is part of our cultural DNA, but it does not define us,” George said. “We have always been a tribal nation no matter what the federal government thought. And now, we have made that a reality for our people living on our own land, doing business and having a full cultural life.”

Sovereign Nations

Tribal leaders in the Pacific Northwest were able to leverage their sovereignty early in the fight against COVID-19. Recognized tribes are sovereign nations with authority to impose rules and regulations to protect their citizens, regardless of state, federal, or local pandemic restrictions. For example, the Grand Ronde tribal government closed the Spirit Mountain Casino, but was able to by keeping employees on the payroll.

“By exercising their sovereignty, tribes have halted much of their economic activity while limiting entry onto reservations and using additional authority to try and save their people from the ravages of the virus,” Lewis said.

While some reservations in the Pacific Northwest shut their borders, that wasn’t an option for all tribal nations, said Davis Washines, a former chair of Yakama Nation General Council who’s now the government relations liaison for the tribe’s fisheries department. The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, with their land crossed by major highways and abutting a population center in southern Washington, and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, with its patchwork of tribal land, couldn’t shut down their borders.

“So each reservation is different,” Washines said. “We’re pretty much a checkerboard situation. Some reservations, they’re totally isolated, they can control their borders with roadblocks. But in our instance, we’re pretty much a minority population on our own reservation. So that was a challenge for our people.”

Kelly Rowe, executive director of health services at the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, made the decision that the tribe’s health clinic needed to be able to test and isolate COVID-19 cases quickly.

“So we really worked on building up and promoting the clinic,” Rowe said. “We knew we needed to be able to get rapid testing set up, and the rapid tests really gave us a leg up on how we were able to react quickly to isolate and do contact tracing.”

The tribal government imposed its own mask mandates, closed schools, government offices, and casinos; and implemented social distancing measures — all well before similar measures were mandated at the state level. “Masks required” signs were posted along roads cutting through tribal lands.

Early in the pandemic, Yakima County had .

“There was a lot of resistance to wearing the masks in large crowds,” Washines said. “So that was a challenge for our people. Like I said, we were outnumbered, even on our own reservation, but the tribal council, in the very beginning, took on the responsibility that, as a sovereign nation, we establish our own laws within our own borders, and recognized the ability to impose wearing masks, social distancing, no large crowds. And we just kind of hope that other people would understand that.”

Innovating from Lessons Learned

The absence of large group activities and crowds . For Yakama Nation member Carol Craig, it was important to find new means of keeping traditional ways and values alive but safe from COVID-19.

“The most difficult part is that funerals are limited, and tribal people are used to caring for the body and burying the body as soon as they can,” Craig said. “It is almost heartbreaking not being able to attend funerals to pay respect to our loved ones.”

The Yakama people found a new way to honor and mourn the victims of COVID-19 while avoiding large gatherings by displaying “luminaries.” Nettie Dionne of Karlee’s Koffee in Toppenish, Wash., began displaying the lighted tributes in January. Every luminary, a hand-cut and -designed paper-bag lantern, represented a life lost in Yakima County to COVID-19. Many were tribal citizens. The tributes were placed along the road near the tribal office buildings as offerings of remembrance. Dionne said she hopes the luminaries bring “a little bit of strength and healing” to those impacted by the disease.

‍ is a nonprofit collaborative reporting team in Portland focused on investigative reporting and Indian Country coverage. We are supported by foundations, corporate sponsors and donor contributions. Follow on and .