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.

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.”

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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.” 

So in 1995, he decided to change that, by founding the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program within UAA to support Alaska natives from kindergarten through doctorate in the STEM fields.

“He realized, If there were more Alaska native engineers working, there wouldn’t be people from outside making big decisions,” said Michele Yatchmeneff, an ANSEP alumnus and UAA’s executive director of Alaska education and outreach. “It would actually be our Alaska native students making those decisions for their communities.”

Now, ANSEP’s yearlong Acceleration Academy allows students to attend UAA full-time as high school students, taking regular college courses and earning college credits. They also have the opportunity to experience professional internships in STEM industries, like oil and gas and conservation. The vast majority of their students identify as native Alaskans. 

“One of the main reasons ANSEP was founded was because it was believed that Alaska natives were not smart enough to hold degrees or positions in the STEM field,” said Cody Kapotak, an ANSEP alumnus and a coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service Partnership.

Watch, in the mini documentary above, how ANSEP is changing that perception, empowering Alaska natives, and giving them a seat at the table.