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.

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma technology university announced it has formed a partnership with the Caddo Nation to give its members enhanced training in the renewable energy and construction fields.

Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology, which is based in Okmulgee, said it will work with the Caddo Nation Economic Development Authority to have the new program operational by fall.

The partnership will offer programs focused on renewable energy development, construction and infrastructure, environmental remediation and utility development to create more career opportunities and support nation building by assisting in orphan well cleanup and solar energy initiatives.

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Brandon Dinsmore, tribal outreach and workforce program specialist, said the university does not know how many students will participate in the skills programs and are still determining tuition rates. The training will primarily take place at the Caddo Nation campus in Binger.

“This partnership represents a transformative moment for our Nation,” said Bobby Gonzalez, Caddo Nation chairperson in a statement. “By joining forces with OSUIT, we’re not just creating jobs – we’re building the foundation for generational prosperity and economic sovereignty that will benefit our people for decades to come.”

Participants in the program can earn micro credentials, a program focused in a small area of study that upon completion, demonstrates the understanding of specific skills that are required in a workforce. If a participant decides they would like to obtain a degree toward a specific program, they convert those into college credit. Participants will also be able to earn industry certifications in non-credit training programs.

“This agreement exemplifies OSUIT’s commitment to serving Oklahoma’s diverse communities,” said Trey Hill, vice provost at Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology, in a statement. “Our industry-aligned programs and state-of-the-art facilities provide the perfect foundation for preparing Caddo citizens for high- paying careers in these rapidly growing sectors.”

Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology has previously pursued partnerships with other tribes, including Cherokee Nation Career Services and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation to develop a program. They have also partnered with the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma Division of Commerce to develop a program.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

A coalition of tribal nations and students is suing the federal government over major cuts to a pair of colleges and a federal agency serving Native American students.

The staffing cuts, part of President Donald Trump’s effort to reduce the federal workforce, have slashed basic services on the campuses of ​​Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, known as SIPI, in New Mexico. The lawsuit says the feds failed to notify or consult with tribal nations prior to making the cuts.

notes that those schools — as well as the federal Bureau of Indian Education — are part of a system that fulfills the federal government’s legal obligation to provide education for Native people. Tribal nations secured that right in a series of treaties in exchange for conceding land.

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“The United States government has legal obligations to Tribal Nations that they agreed to in treaties and have been written into federal law,” Jacqueline De León, staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, the legal group leading the lawsuit, said in a announcing the case. “The abrupt and drastic changes that happened since February, without consultation or even pre-notification, are completely illegal.”

Three tribal nations and five Native students have joined the lawsuit. Asked about the case, federal officials told media outlets they do not comment on pending litigation.

According to Haskell student Ella Bowen, cuts to custodial staff have left bathrooms with overflowing trash cans and no toilet paper. SIPI student Kaiya Jade Brown said that school’s campus has suffered from power outages because of a lack of maintenance workers.

Both schools lost roughly a quarter of their staff last month after Trump and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency task force ordered major cuts across a slew of federal agencies. While the schools have since been able to hire back some instructional staff, “[i]t is not even close to enough,” Native American Rights Fund Deputy Director Matthew Campbell said in the statement.

Thirty-four courses at Haskell lost their instructors in February, according to the statement.

Some students have reported delays in their financial aid, and SIPI students are dealing with brown, unsafe tap water, with repairs put on hold due to the cuts, the statement said. And the school did not have enough faculty to administer midterm exams.

The Pueblo of Isleta; the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation; and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes are suing the feds.

“Despite having a treaty obligation to provide educational opportunities to Tribal students, the federal government has long failed to offer adequate services,” Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes Lieutenant Governor Hershel Gorham said in the statement. “Just when the Bureau of Indian Education was taking steps to fix the situation, these cuts undermined all those efforts. These institutions are precious to our communities, we won’t sit by and watch them fail.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

North Dakota tribal schools need better support — especially when it comes to serving low-income students, Shayla Davis, a member of Superintendent Kirsten Baesler’s Student Cabinet, told a crowd of tribal educators Friday.

“There should be no gaps in education,” Davis, a 2023 graduate of Devils Lake High School and member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, said.

Davis and other advocates for Native education gathered at the North Dakota Capitol on Thursday and Friday for the Department of Public Instruction’s 10th annual Indian Education Summit.

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The two-day conference — which included speeches, presentations and breakout sessions — drew about 200 attendees, according to the Department of Public Instruction. The goal is to strengthen tribal education in North Dakota, according to the agency’s website.

For Davis, that means giving all students the opportunities they need to succeed. She said she could name more than 50 teachers that positively impacted her. But not all Native students in North Dakota have been as lucky, she said.

“I realized the socioeconomic challenges that were keeping other students just miles away from the same important educational opportunities we receive at Devils Lake High School — the same opportunities that truly made me the person that I am today,” Davis said.

She encouraged schools to find creative ways to serve students in need. She pointed to a Cass County nonprofit started in 2019 that created a school food and supply pantry for students.

“I believe that this can be done in tribal schools,” Davis said.

Davis also urged teachers to provide more opportunities for education on tribal history and culture.

“We must know who we are and where we come from,” she said.

Teachers and administrators that work in Native communities had similar feedback for the state, Ellie Shockley, a researcher for the North Dakota University System, said at a Friday breakout session.

Shockley worked with the Department of Public Instruction’s Indian and Multicultural Education Office to conduct the state’s 2023 survey on Native student needs.

The survey was taken by teachers and administrators at 35 North Dakota public schools with high Native populations, Shockley said. Overall, schools reported making an effort to engage with Native communities and to integrate tribal culture into the classroom, but still felt there was still considerable room for improvement.

“A number of respondents advocated for adding classes that enhance understanding of Native American culture,” Shockley said. She said the responses also highlighted issues faced by Native students, like school attendance and poverty.

“One bright spot is that respondents agree that Native American language instruction is commonly incorporated into daily and weekly activities,” Shockley said.

Schools seemed to be less familiar with state resources related to Native education, however.

The survey found just 50% of teachers and 72% of administrators were aware of the Department of Public Instructions’ Native American Essential Understandings project. The project, , works with Native elders to develop educational resources on Native history and culture in North Dakota.

The results also indicate schools may be struggling to implement a new requirement for K-12 schools to teach Native history adopted by the state Legislature in 2021. Shockley said just 75% of teachers and 89% of administrators were aware of the legislation. Much fewer — 57% of teachers and 67% of administrators — said they were aware of educational resources published by the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction related to the bill.

In a separate presentation, representatives from the Department of Public Instruction shared updates about an ongoing project to update a series of five ’90s-era textbooks on the history of North Dakota tribes.

Four of the textbooks focus on the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Spirit Lake Nation, respectively. Another provides an introduction to the history of North Dakota Tribes. The series was authored by representatives of the tribes and published by the state roughly 30 years ago.

Lucy Fredericks, director of Indian and Multicultural Education for the Department of Public Instruction, is leading the effort to reprint the books in partnership with groups including the Indian Education Coalition, United Tribes Technical College, North Dakota State University and the University of North Dakota.

The Indian Education Coalition is currently working on making revisions to the textbooks, as well as writing about 30 pages of new material detailing the last three decades of each tribe’s history, Fredericks said. She said the books will be free to teachers and schools across the state.

“This definitely will be authentic, because it’s coming exactly from the tribes,” she said.

The project is funded by a grant through the federal CARES Act, said Fredericks.

The original textbooks did not include a history of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate. Nick Asbury of the Department of Public Instruction said the agency would be open to adding another textbook dedicated to the tribe.

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. Follow North Dakota Monitor on and .

Three years ago, Valeria Atanacio urged state lawmakers to pass a bill aiming to increase Indigenous families’ access to early learning and child care programs.

When the Oregon Legislature embraced the proposal — called the Tribal Early Learning Hub — she considered it a victory.

“That was really impactful because it was delivering on a promise,” said Atanacio, who was the tribal affairs manager for Oregon’s Early Learning Division in 2021. The promise, she said, was to empower tribes to shape how those state resources and services would be delivered.

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The Legislature tasked a tribal advisory committee, composed of representatives from all nine of the state’s federally recognized tribes, with designing the hub. Oregon already has 10 such hubs, which are regional subagencies of the early learning department that shape early learning strategies in their local communities. The tribal hub would focus solely on tribal communities instead. Lawmakers allocated $601,000 to , with another $626,000 in 2023. Atanacio was promoted to tribal affairs director in 2022, ran the meetings and served as a key liaison between state officials and the tribal committee members.

But in October — after 14 months of meetings and nearly $2 million in state and federal funds allocated — the committee scrapped plans for the early learning hub entirely, saying it had found no way to structure it in a way that would honor each tribe’s sovereignty. The committee put its funding toward grants distributed among the tribes, but those decisions were made in meetings that were not open to the public, possibly in violation of Oregon’s open-meetings laws, InvestigateWest found. And Atanacio, who said she received little support in her role leading the early learning division’s work with tribes, was demoted suddenly in July 2023 and then resigned. For six months after, all three of the early learning department’s tribal affairs positions remained vacant.

“It was getting to that point where it felt my values no longer aligned with this system,” Atanacio said. “I felt like I was being put in the position to pacify the Native community.”

However, the Tribal Early Learning Hub remains required under the law passed in 2021, and Alyssa Chatterjee, director of the Department of Early Learning and Care, said the statute must be amended to allow the committee to permanently stop working on it. But the department is bringing no proposed fix forward during the 2024 Legislative session, saying tribes need more time to work out an alternate plan.

“We have to remember we’re talking about nine individual nations, and so it takes time to coalesce around a shared idea,” Chatterjee said. “As the work evolved over time and over the last six months, there was a lot more clarity about which direction to go.”

The lawmakers who created the early learning hub haven’t publicly expressed much interest in the committee’s progress or how the money was spent. When InvestigateWest reached out to the 10 members of the legislative committee overseeing the early learning department, only one, Rep. Anna Scharf, responded, saying that she was “basically unaware” that the tribal committee even existed.

Meanwhile, tribal representatives on the committee said their rejection of the hub doesn’t mean they’re not fulfilling their mission — they’re just approaching the same goals a different way.

“I think that’s OK if there has to be a change in direction,” said Sandy Henry, education director for the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians and co-chair of the tribal advisory committee. “We just keep our eye on the prize and keep walking forward.”

Others, however, have some lingering doubt that tribes will be able to get what they need from the early learning department without the hub that tribal leaders fought for for years.

“We’ve got to wait and find out if that’s true or not, and if not, hold people’s feet to the fire,” said Julie Siestreem, who represents the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw on the committee. “I’m in a constant state of prayer, a constant state of alertness. The primary concern is that our children are served, and that’s the bottom line.”

Addressing entrenched struggles

Education leaders from several Oregon tribes have argued for years that the state’s rules sometimes prevented Indigenous providers from caring for children according to their own cultural knowledge. For example, Oregon required an exemption with a physician’s signoff for a licensed child care provider to use a cradleboard as an infant sleep setting, as is common in some tribal cultures.

And though the state increased its investments in child care and early learning, tribes haven’t had clear pathways to access those funds while honoring their government sovereignty, Atanacio said.

The Tribal Early Learning Hub was supposed to be the entity to bring all the tribes and the state together to solve those obstacles.

The brain develops most rapidly during the first few years of life, research has shown. The ethos of early learning is to set children up to thrive as they enter the K-12 system.

Although Oregon has little data on Indigenous families’ access to early learning and child care, as children grow up, data lays bare the educational inequities they face.

About 21% of all American Indian and Alaska Native third graders were proficient in English language arts in 2023, compared with 39% of third graders statewide, according to state assessment data. In 2023, 68% of American Indian and Alaska Native seniors graduated from high school, compared with 81% of all Oregon students.

“We continue to see trends with Native American youth that they’re just not as successful in those Eurocentric environments as they could be,” said Henry. “That starts in early childhood education. That starts with our babies.”

Boosting support for tribes’ early learning programs is about more than academic achievement, however, Henry said.

“The other thing that’s important is that culture and language are incorporated into the early learning environment for our kids,” she said. “That’s an important piece for their identity, and it’s important that we recognize that and honor that.”

Tribes nationwide don’t receive much federal money to support their early learning and child care programs — less than $600 per child on average each year through the federal child care subsidy, according to by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Some also receive Head Start funding and run home visiting programs for at-risk families. In Oregon, only a handful of the nine federally recognized tribes participate in state-subsidized programs, such as Preschool Promise.

As part of a broader goal to make early learning more accessible statewide, lawmakers created regional early learning hubs in 2013. They bring together local educators, physical and mental health providers, and other professionals to form strategies to serve families with children under 5 in their own community. The hubs also manage enrollment in early learning and child care programs.

However, not all tribes have a good relationship with their respective regional early learning hubs, Henry said. That’s what prompted some to push for a hub that would serve tribes exclusively.

“My particular tribe has enjoyed a really solid relationship with our early learning hub,” she said. “My understanding is that has not been the case throughout the state.”

During the tribal advisory committee’s first two years, it tackled some of the barriers that interfered with their cultural practices, such as the cradleboard issue. At the advisory committee’s recommendation, the Early Learning Council, which sets early learning system rules, removed the exemption requirement. State-licensed child care providers can now use cradleboards if a parent prefers without having to seek an exemption.

Yet, despite being a public body subject to public meetings law, the tribal advisory committee didn’t often operate as one, including when it decided in 2022 how to allocate the funding it received. As with most of the tribal advisory committee meetings, the department did not make the agenda, minutes and recording public until more than a year later.

The Early Learning Division combined the state funding with another $650,000 in federal funds, bringing the total that the committee allocated to $1.2 million.

The committee agreed to split the money evenly between the tribes in $190,000 grants, with broad allowable uses. Tribes spent the money in various ways, including training for early childhood educators, a youth needs assessment, and cultural items and Indigenous literature for preschool classes, according to the early learning department.

It’s not clear how much of the funds, if any, has gone back into the committee’s work to structure the hub.

Bumps on the road

Personnel conflicts and prolonged vacancies also factored into the committee’s struggle to make the early learning hub work.

Atanacio was not renewed in her position as tribal affairs director in July, a decision she said was conveyed to her without warning or explanation. Because she had been in a probationary period as the director, she was returned to her previous position of liaison to the committee members.

A member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde with an educational and professional background in early childhood education, Atanacio had first joined the Early Learning Division in 2020, when it was still part of the Oregon Department of Education. She was its first tribal affairs manager. After she was made director in 2022, she helped oversee the distribution of the early learning grants to tribes, serving as a point of communication and coordination for the committee’s work.

It’s not clear what led to Atancio’s removal as director in July. Chatterjee declined to discuss the action, citing personnel confidentiality. While Chatterjee did say that the committee’s failure to comply with public meetings law happened on Atanacio’s watch, Atanacio said she was never notified about it. Her personnel record, which InvestigateWest reviewed, contained no indication that she was disciplined or put on an improvement plan before her supervisors determined she was “unwilling or unable” to perform the necessary functions of the tribal affairs director role.

Atanacio said she received little feedback from Chatterjee while in the role. Without clear answers, she has speculated that her demotion was related to her defense of tribes’ rights to self-govern, which put her at odds with the state’s priorities at times.

“As one of the only Native American people employed by the agency, there wasn’t any support. There wasn’t a safe space for me as a person,” she said. What disappointed her was “just the disposability piece of it.”

Atanacio left the department in August, resigning from the liaison position. She continues to work on early learning issues through other channels.

“I feel very much validated in my decision to leave when I did,” she said. “I still am in this work, and I want to keep moving progress toward more tribally inclusive services and programming.”

After her departure, all three positions within the early learning department’s newly created Tribal Affairs Office remained vacant for the next five months. In January, Paulina Whitehat, a Navajo educator and researcher with expertise in special education, started as the new tribal affairs director. She declined to comment on this story.

Success plan

The tribal advisory committee is now crafting an Indigenous student success plan, similar to one created by the Oregon Department of Education in 2020. The Education Department’s plan lays out goals such as increasing accurate data on Indigenous youth, improving graduation rates and reducing overrepresentation in school discipline.

The committee has not specified how long it will take to create its own student success plan or to approach the Legislature about changing its role in statute.

“I think a really common theme is (tribes) don’t want to be pressured into a timeline,” Chatterjee said.

The months since the committee set aside its work on the Tribal Early Learning Hub is “not enough time to have a legislative concept that each tribe could have vetted through their government structure,” she said.

In the Legislature, the House Early Childhood and Human Services committee is new to dealing with the early learning department, said Scharf, the Republican lawmaker from Amity who serves as one of the committee’s vice chairs.

In the 2023 session, legislators were concerned with bigger changes as the Early Learning Division became the Department of Early Learning and Care. Primarily, they focused on the state’s employment-related child care subsidy, which moved from the Oregon Department of Human Services to the new early learning department last July.

“I can’t think of any reports or information we have received, and was basically unaware of there even being a Tribal Advisory Committee,” Scharf said.

Scharf said she believes that the early learning department should be assigned its own House committee separate from human services so that both can get enough attention from legislators.

Tribal committee members, meanwhile, said they are keeping their focus where it belongs as they make new plans.

“I feel like a lot of really good work has been done,” said Henry. “Would we have liked to be further down the road than we are now? Yeah, we would. But it’s also important that we stay true to our goal and true to the tribal citizens that we serve.”

InvestigateWest () is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reach reporter Kaylee Tornay at kaylee@invw.org. This story was produced with support from the Investigative Reporters & Editors’ .

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on and .

Lawmakers are trying once again to create a trust fund that would give New Mexico tribes more money and control to run their own .

The proposed legislation is sponsored by Rep. Derrick Lente (D-Sandia Pueblo). It would create a $100 million  that would disburse money directly to tribes over time to help build sustainable programs.

Randall Vicente, governor of the Pueblo of Acoma, said this proposed bill can help sustain the Keres language in his community.

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“During COVID, we lost a lot of our elderly, our fluent speakers, and our community members which were teaching the Acoma Keres language,” he said.

Vicente said the funds could help pay community members to teach Keres.

“To teach as an elder or as an uncle or an aunt, or maybe as a mentor into classrooms to the students,” he said.

The problem is finding a way to certify them as licensed language teachers.

“How do we qualify our Keres teachers?” said Vicente. “So while they speak Keres, yeah, they’re from the college of hard knocks. They learned from our elders, they know they can speak our language.”

The Pueblo of Acoma has a variety of schools that fall under Bureau of Indian Education, Grants/Cibola County schools and private schools, all of which have limited funds.

Vicente said additional funds could help bring more teachers and tutors to help aid students. The need for transportation is also crucial for students living in rural areas who stay behind for after school programs.

Rep. Lente and advocates pulled back on a similar effort last year to push for more money in this session.

The Legislative Finance Committee’s  has $50 million set aside for the fund. The proposed bill must pass both chambers and be signed by the governor to become law.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Shaun Griswold for questions: info@sourcenm.com. Follow Source New Mexico on and .

Miranda Lopez remembers when she first learned about local Indigenous activist and athlete Rosalie Fish. Fish, a University of Washington runner from the Cowlitz Tribe, is for dedicating her races to Indigenous women who are missing or murdered, including her aunt.

Lopez is from the same part of eastern Washington where Fish’s aunt is from.

“It was eye-opening. I didn’t realize that this really big issue is happening right where I grew up,” Lopez said. “It breaks my heart.”

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The class Lopez took where she learned about Fish is part of a decades-long effort in Washington to implement a K-12 Native studies and history curriculum known as , which requires districts to create Native studies curricula in partnership with the tribes around them. It’s endorsed by all 29 federally-recognized tribes in the state.

When Lopez entered her senior year, she had no idea what she wanted to do next. So she spent a lot of time thinking about what she cared about, and what came to mind was her Native history class. Now 19, Lopez plans to become a Native studies teacher.

“From that point forward, that was my purpose for my future,” Lopez said.

Since Time Immemorial is important to students like Lopez — but non-Native students, too, should be learning about the communities they live among, said Willard Bill Jr., assistant director of the state’s Office of Native Education within the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

“It’s primarily to educate the broader
public school kid, so that when they graduate, they have a better understanding of what sovereignty is, what a reservation is, what does that mean, all the intricacies,” Bill said.

Although the Legislature mandated the curriculum in 2015, no deadline has been set for implementation. And while some districts are partnering with tribes to implement the curriculum, other tribal leaders told state officials they’ve struggled to get their school boards to comply.

Legislation sponsored by state Rep. Debra Lekanoff, would set minimum standards, a deadline for implementation of Since Time Immemorial and clear the way for state grants to help develop curricula. It failed to pass in this year’s legislative session. State officials say they’re optimistic about its chances in the upcoming session, which begins Jan. 8.

Efforts to implement

According to a from the State Board of Education, around 80% to 90% of school districts are incorporating tribal history and culture in their social studies programs. That’s a big jump from the last report from the 2021-2022 school year when 44% of districts reported having yet to implement tribal history and culture into their social studies curricula.

But without minimum standards, Henry Strom, executive director of the state’s Office of Native Education, said it’s difficult to know how many schools are providing quality Since Time Immemorial curricula because the original 2015 legislation did not set minimum standards. That’s why HB 1332 is important, he said.

At a meeting last month between tribal and state governments, Gov. Jay Inslee asked Suquamish Tribe chair Leonard Forsman how many districts were “cutting the mustard” when it came to implementing Since Time Immemorial.

“I think we’re probably under a third,” said Forsman, also a University of Washington board of regents member. He said the actual statistic may be lower.

“So that’s not exactly a success,” Inslee responded.

In the 2022 report, some officials in districts that had not yet implemented Since Time Immemorial reported that their districts had not updated their overall social studies curriculums.

“A district could, in theory, choose to delay the onset of a social studies [curriculum] adoption if they weren’t inclined to support Since Time Immemorial,” Strom said at the meeting where Forsman and Inslee spoke.

The work to create and implement Since Time Immemorial began in 1989, said Bill, whose father was one of the first tribal leaders to work on the curriculum. Tribes started funding the work in 2003, and the first legislation “strongly encouraging” implementing the curriculum came in 2005.

“This is some legacy work for us that we’re carrying on,” said Bill, a member of the Muckleshoot Tribe.

‘Place-based’ curriculum

indicate that teaching Native history to Native students often improves their educational outcomes. Native students have compared to other races and ethnicities.

Lopez said she wasn’t that interested in school before taking the Native history class.

“I didn’t see myself in stories and books,” Lopez said. “So when you put something like this in front of students, especially Native American students
and you tell stories of successful people, it opens up a sea of opportunities for a child. It changes the way they look at life.”

Today, 16-year-old Francheska Helton is taking the class Lopez first took: Alison McCartan’s 11th grade Native history class, taught at River Ridge High School. When asked what stories resonated with her, Helton, too, pointed to Rosalie Fish.

“I’m like, ‘I didn’t know that. How did I not know that? That’s someone from my tribe,’” said Helton, who is Cowlitz, like Fish.

Helton and Lopez learned about Fish because Since Time Immemorial is a “place-based curriculum,” meaning the focus is on the local indigenous communities who live on the land.

Since Time Immemorial also seeks to teach contemporary Native issues; found 86% of American schools teach Native studies in a pre-1900 context.

In McCartan’s class, students learned about in response to the plight of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Then they talked about why many of them didn’t know about the app, and what could be done to both increase awareness and make it better.

McCartan said the issues they talk about vary within classes, but the main concept — teaching critical thinking about Native history and issues — remains the same.

In McCartan’s class, students also start the week sitting “in circle” and having a class discussion. It’s a traditional Indigenous way of learning that , and it’s not very common in an American high school environment, where learning is often more passive and lecture-based.

“Kids were resistant to it. They were like, ‘this is awkward,’” McCartan said. “But once they got used to it, the switch flips.”

McCartan said students open up to her and their peers in ways they never did before circle, and conversations in circle have led to Native students choosing to share about their own experiences and culture. One quiet Native student, McCartan said, even chose to speak at the school’s multicultural assembly because of conversations and support from his peers in circle.

“This is more than just a history class. It’s a community,” Helton said.

Tribal and school district relationships

The idea of Since Time Immemorial is that both Native and non-Native students will learn about who came before them, and who still lives on the land today, said Jerad Koepp, who runs River Ridge’s Native program. But Koepp said that many districts don’t ask the tribes around them, despite it being state law, leaving it up to tribes to appeal to school boards.

The relationship between North Thurston Public Schools, where River Ridge is located, and the nearby Nisqually Tribe is decades-long, said Bill Kallappa II, education liaison for the Nisqually Tribe and Washington State Board of Education member. However, the Native studies program at River Ridge began in 2019. Kallappa said having the tribal government-to-local government relationship is integral to the program’s success.

“Tribes aren’t in it just for tribal students,” Kallappa said. “Of course we want our kids to do well in the system. One way our kids can do well in the system is if we help improve the entire system for all students.”

Students in McCartan’s class said they knew “zero” about Native history before taking McCartan’s class, aside from the brief mention of what tribes exist in Washington in their middle school history textbooks.

“I think this [curriculum] should be taught in more schools,” said a non-Native student, 18-year-old Isaiah Kauhaihao-Derowin.

Obstacles and progress

McCartan, who is not Native, said she realized almost immediately that she didn’t have the knowledge to teach a Native studies program. She said she had to get used to saying “I don’t know.” In the beginning, Koepp was in her classroom almost every day, she said, and she leaned on his expertise.

McCartan’s situation was not unique. Strom says one of the biggest challenges to implementing Since Time Immemorial is a “respectful fear” among educators about getting it wrong.

Other obstacles have to do with bandwidth within schools, at the state level and among tribes.

The Office of Native Education has seen a surge in interest in its Since Time Immemorial teacher training, but only has 10 people on staff. Six years ago, there were just two people working for the office. Tribal leaders also say the financial burden to implement Since Time Immemorial shouldn’t be on the tribes. Currently, tribes often provide the funding and staff for curriculum development. Many smaller tribes aren’t able to do that, Kallappa said.

HB 1332 is meant to relieve some of that strain.

Koepp said non-Native educators can always turn to books, videos and other resources from their Native peers. “Just remember: we’re here and we’ve probably answered that question before,” Koepp said.

The outcomes of Since Time Immemorial at schools like River Ridge may be hard to quantify, but they’re visible through students like Lopez, who plans to return to St. Martin’s University in Lacey next fall to study secondary education focused on history, with a minor in Native perspectives.

Right now, she’s taking a break from school to search for scholarships and save up for the fall semester. After she graduates, she hopes to teach at River Ridge, within the Native studies program. And one day, Lopez wants to venture out to a school district elsewhere in Washington and create another Native studies program, just like the one at River Ridge.

“Native Americans are still here,” Lopez said. “Using a curriculum like this isn’t trying to remember them. We’re acknowledging them — as they are with us now.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com. Follow Washington State Standard on and .

Although the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended affirmative action in college admission decisions with its June 29 decision, the ruling will not affect tribal colleges and universities, administrators said.

The Supreme Court effectively ruled 6-3 in the case Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.

The ruling means most colleges and universities can no longer consider race when it comes to the admission process.

However, that won’t affect tribal institutions.

“Nothing is going to change at tribal colleges, and tribal colleges are open-door institutions. They’ve always been open-door institutions. That’s going to stay their policy,” said president and CEO of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium Carrie Billy, DinĂ©. “They are place-based institutions, culturally grounded, chartered by their tribes or the federal government, but serving the local community, and they’re going to continue serving that community regardless of this decision.”

It’s difficult to compare Native student enrollment at tribal colleges and universities to mainstream institutions, Billy said.

“TCUs are required to collect information based on a student’s enrollment in a federally recognized Indian tribe,” she said. “Only a handful of other institutions are required to collect this type of data, and no institutions except TCUs are required by the federal government to verify that they are only counting as ‘American Indian/Alaska Native’ those students who can document their enrollment status.”

Most, if not all, mainstream colleges and universities rely entirely on self-reporting when it comes to determining tribal identity of students. This means if a Native student doesn’t indicate they are a tribal citizen, then they are not counted as such. This policy can be flawed, Billy said.

Nonetheless, the high court’s decision will impact Native students attending mainstream institutions, which concerns Billy.

“Our concern is for those students, you know, our children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters, parents, who attend other institutions of higher education and also for you know, just for all people of color, and underserved communities. Everyone deserves an equal access to affordable higher education,” she said. “So we’re very concerned about that.”

Data from 2016 from the American Indian Higher Education Consortium showed that tribal colleges and universities accounted for 67 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native student enrollment in higher education compared to mainstream universities that collected similar data.

Billy added that she has not heard much from Native students, which she attributes to the decision having been handed down during the summer, and she expects to hear more after the school year starts.

At the time of the decision, national Native organizations shared their disapproval. The American Indian Higher Education Consortium said the court essentially attempted to “slam doors of higher education shut” but promised that its advocacy on behalf of Native students would not stop.

“We were here before affirmative action, and we will be here – strong, resilient, and sovereign – after the Supreme Court’s decision this week,” a  from the organization said.

Fawn Sharp, National Congress of American Indian president, Quinault, echoed that sentiment, calling the decision “exceptionally disappointing.”

“While everyone deserves to be considered on their merits, it does more harm than good to ignore the fact that Native people were subject to genocide, colonization, and assimilation,” Sharp said in a June 30 . “Only when these realities are confronted head-on will meaningful progress be made, which is why the National Congress of American Indians will continue to fight to bring visibility to these issues and look for solutions to ensure future generations have access to the education so many of our past generations did not.”

The decision comes closely after a trend in the last couple of years in which universities or states adopted tuition waiver policies directed specifically at enrolled tribal citizens. Billy said these waivers are tailored specifically to Native Americans not as a racial group, but as a nod to the political relationship between the states and the tribes.

A number of states and higher education institutions have long offered some type of tuition waiver for Native students. Both the  and  university systems offer a waiver.

The University of Maine has had one in place since the 1930s, and more recently, the University of Arizona offered free tuition to Native students enrolled in a federally recognized tribe in Arizona. Oregon State University offers in-state tuition to any student of a federally recognized tribe.

“The tuition discounts that state governments enact are for members of either federally recognized tribes or state-recognized tribes in their state that’s, again, a political relationship. It’s not a race-based program,” Billy said. “So this decision should have no effect on them.”

Partnerships between public institutions and tribes are going to be important moving forward. Appearing on  in early July to discuss the decision, Julia Wakeford, policy director for the National Indian Education Association, said the ruling will show how serious colleges and universities are about ensuring diversity on their campuses.

“A number of these universities and colleges have come out saying that they stand by and will do whatever they can within the letter of the law, to make sure that there remains diversity on their campuses,” said Wakeford, who is Mvskoke and Yuchi.

This story was originally published at .

Minnesota teachers renewing their license must now undergo training about Native American history and culture.

The Legislature passed a law this year requiring training for K-12 teachers about the “cultural heritage and contemporary contributions of American Indians, with particular emphasis on Minnesota Tribal Nations,” in order to renew their license.

The requirement goes into effect for less-experienced teachers Tuesday and the remainder of the teaching corps Jan. 1.

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Teachers already must fulfill to renew their licenses, including training on suicide prevention and reading preparation.

In addition, they are required to undergo cultural competency training — which includes instruction on how to best serve Native American students — to renew their licenses, but Native American-specific training will eventually be its own requirement.

The Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board is working on the Native American history rollout and exactly what the training will include. Until then, teachers can fulfill the new requirement under the existing cultural competency training.

In his Gov. Tim Walz recommended Native American history renewal requirement for teachers and argued the current cultural competency requirements for teachers didn’t dedicate enough time specifically to Native American history.

“Given the rich history of American Indians and their contemporary contributions, more time and resources should be provided to Minnesota educators,” Walz’s budget proposal stated.

Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union, said in a statement that it supports the new training requirement, but noted it adds an additional burden for teachers.

“Minnesota’s Indigenous history is complex, rich and long, and it has been far too often ignored in both U.S. and Minnesota history lessons,” said Education Minnesota President Denise Specht. “At the same time, we have to be aware of the extra time and effort each new requirement adds to the plates of educators, and give them the adequate time and training they need to address these important pieces of delivering a well-rounded education.”

The state licensing board said it will release more information about the requirement’s specifics in the coming weeks.

Minnesota’s academic standards for students include material about the cultural heritage and contributions of Native Americans and the tribal nations with which Minnesota shares borders. The Legislature this past session also mandated school districts offer curriculum on the Holocaust, the genocide of Indigenous people and the removal of Native Americans from Minnesota.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com. Follow Minnesota Reformer on and .

The plan is still a draft, but New Mexico leaders say it’s one step closer to meeting a judge’s order to reform public education across the state.

But advocates want a greater balance than the back-and-forth, top-down approach they say goes in creating the education plan. And lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit that prompted reform continue to argue their case by deposing top state leaders.

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in response to the 2018 Yazzie-Martinez judgment that unveiled a history of failures by state government in providing adequate education for a majority of public school students. The case resulted in the court ordering New Mexico to fix the system.

Last week, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham presented highlights from the proposal to Native American leaders during the 2022 State Tribal Leadership Summit at Sandia Casino, stressing every facet of government must acknowledge failures and have a role in fixing the broken system.

“To recognize that we were not investing in educational opportunities that begin in each of your sovereign nations, that if we don’t do that, we’re discriminating against the very educators who will make a difference,” she said. “Not just in the classroom, but in every opportunity for every single student and family member statewide.”

The state is looking at a substantial overhaul after “decades of neglect and underfunding” that affected young people with disabilities, those learning English, Native Americans, and students from families with low incomes, the action report summarizes.

While the state’s 55-page follow up outlines several efforts by the state to adhere to the court order, advocates want more voices included, saying this process is an opportunity to bring in more stakeholders to help shape education now and in the future.

Regis Pecos is the former governor of Cochiti Pueblo and a staunch advocate for tribal education reform. He said he is optimistic with the state’s plan and sees this as a positive path forward, but he noticed gaps in the process to create the plan, exacerbating the very problems the state is trying to fix.

What sticks out to Pecos in the state’s plan is the , a possible solution to Yazzie-Martinez prepared by the University of New Mexico’s Native American Budget and Policy Institute that was authored by Indigenous educators.

“We’re still fighting the pushback” from the Public Education Department and the Legislative Finance Committee, he said. “If there was a better alignment, then we shouldn’t be having the kind of pushback in the process so that we all are aligned.”

How the Tribal Remedy Framework is included in the state’s education reform plan is already ongoing, due in part to multiple pieces of legislation pushed by advocates and signed into law.

Judy Robinson, a spokesperson with PED listed several initiatives in the action plan that are directly from the framework: funding for traditional language preservation, revised social studies standards, curriculum development that is culturally relevant, more money for the Indian Education Fund and tribal libraries.

However, many of those initiatives, especially the funding for programs and libraries, required people like Pecos and Rep. Derrick Lente (D-Sandia Pueblo) to fight for legislation and appropriation at the Roundhouse.

During the 2022 legislative session Lente, another prominent advocate for the framework, sponsored and passed bills like the one that boosted pay for traditional language teachers. He said he understands the role that the Legislature must have in reforming education but does not understand why commonly accepted norms, such as making school better for children, is still politically contentious.

“It’s a long process. It’s a much more political process than I thought I was going to get into,” he said. “I thought it was gonna be a slam dunk with a Democratic-majority House, Democratic-majority Senate, Democratic governor. But it has been much more of a battle. That’s just politics.”

No authors of the Tribal Remedy Framework took part in writing the state’s plan.

“I think more local control is extremely important— local control where we are the creators, we are the authors, we are the founders of the education that’s going to help improve our students’ outcome,” he said. “​​It’s got to be balanced between Western ideas and our traditional teachings, and so I think the only people that are best suited to do that is our own people.”

Lujan Grisham’s office asserted that tribal viewpoints were brought into crafting the state’s plan, saying members of the Indian Affairs Department and the Department of Cultural Affairs took part in the process. “The drafting also came after robust outreach to and input from tribal leaders, educators and communities,” said Maddy Hayden, a spokesperson for the governor.

One thing Pecos wants to see included in the state’s action plan is hardline investments into teacher programs at UNM and tribal colleges that are creating a pipeline to bring more Native American teachers into schools with a high population of Native students.

“That’s where this plan is still not fundamentally connecting,” he said, “Navajo, Apache, Mescalero and the 19 pueblos develop very specific recommendations on policy changes, program development, statutory changes, appropriations. And then we’ve transformed those into what is now the tribal remedy framework.”

The state’s plan makes it clear why this teacher pipeline is necessary, writing that students perform better when educators have ties to the community where they work and live.

Teacher vacancies doubled in just a year — with over 1,000 last year — according to the Southwest Outreach Academic Research Evaluation and Policy Center at New Mexico State University.

Major gaps in teacher diversity mean there’s also a push to recruit new teachers who better represent the students they serve.

Depositions and turnover

Lashawna Tso (DinĂ©) was the assistant secretary of the state’s Indian Education Department during the process and oversaw parts of the report, according to PED.

Tso recently left her position to be the executive director Navajo Nation’s Washington D.C. office.

Tso’s departure is significant because the turnover in leadership at PED is a cause of concern, says Melissa Candelaria, a lawyer with the New Mexico Center for Law and Poverty that represents the Yazzie group in the lawsuit.

Candeleria (San Felipe) said her office has recently deposed six top-level employees at PED as part of the lawsuit, she couldn’t share much about the depositions but said many of those individuals have left for other jobs.

Pecos is encouraged by the commitment to stay for the long haul by PED Secretary Kurt Steinhaus, but he expressed concern that the turnover at the department could hamper the reform efforts, because it causes leadership to start from step one when new employees take over.

“The question now becomes, who's going to lead the effort to implement (the state plan) when all of the top-ranking deputy secretaries are now gone? And now coming into their roles will be a whole new team that is now going to result in us going back to the table to try and educate those who are going to replace those who have left,” he said. “There's no stable leadership in PED. That's the fundamental problem there.”

Steinhaus is now pitching the plan to communities. Last week he presented the plan to tribal leaders for the first time and will host another listening session next week. Public education leaders are seeking input on the plan from any community leaders and will take comments until June 17.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Marisa Demarco for questions: info@sourcenm.com. Follow Source New Mexico on and .

The House Education Committee’s passage of House Bills ,  and , sponsored by Democratic Rep. Derrick Lente of Sandia Pueblo, never was much in doubt.

With a little over two weeks left in the 30-day session, the question is whether beefed-up money for tribal education contained in the bills will make it into the $8.5 billion state budget. 

And whether the Legislature will change how New Mexico distributes money to tribes from one-off grants that require applying for the money each year to an automatic year-over-year appropriation — called recurring in statehouse lingo.

Lente explained to his legislative colleagues during Monday’s committee meeting that the legislation before them was foundational to the , which details  education reform priorities sought by the state’s 23 tribal nations. 

In recent years tribes have demanded more control over educating their own children. They’re supported by the 2018 landmark Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico court ruling that found New Mexico negligent in providing a sufficient education to at-risk students, which includes Indigenous students.

Indigenous students, who make up about 34,000, or 11% of New Mexico’s K-12 student population, lag behind their New Mexico peers in reading, math, high school graduation and college enrollment. The Yazzie/Martinez decision suggested those outcomes mostly stem from decades of underspending and neglect by New Mexico, shattering the perception that blame rests on children and their families instead of on a systemic failure.

The court ruling wasn’t the first to name systemic or institutional causes for low educational outcomes for Indigenous students. From the 1960s on, report after report has documented the dismal education afforded to the state’s Native American communities. 

The of 1969, a federal review of indigenous education, acknowledged the classroom was a tool of assimilation for indigenous children for much of this country’s history.

Then there was 1991’s Indian Nations at Risk report by the U.S. Department of Education. And a 2006 New Mexico  that identified challenges and recommended solutions, followed by a 2010 report commissioned by the state Public Education Department titled .  

Conroy Chino, lobbyist for the Pueblos of Acoma and Taos, echoed Lente in emphasizing the bills’ importance during the portion of the meeting when lawmakers sought comments from the public.

The three measures would build up tribal education departments. “And this can’t happen without funding,” Chino said.

According to HB 87 would appropriate $20 million into the state’s Indian Education Fund — more than the $5.25 million appropriated in fiscal year 2022 — and would require at least 70% of that money to go directly to tribes.  Equally important, Lente said, was changing how money is distributed from one-off annual grants that require extra work to automatic funding year-in, year-out.

Jeremy Oyenque, the tribal education director for Santa Clara Pueblo, spoke from first-hand experience of how “cumbersome” it is to apply for grants each year for educational dollars and to do it again the next year.

What happens in many cases, Lente said Tuesday in an interview with New Mexico In Depth, is that the grants aren’t received by the tribes until well into the state’s fiscal year, giving too little time to spend all the money. Whatever is unspent returns to the state, and tribes have to apply again for the education dollars for the next fiscal year. 

Chino and Oyenque were just two of more than a dozen people who spoke in favor of the bills, many of them representing the state’s tribal nations.

Bettina Sandoval, Director of the Education/Training Vision for the Taos Pueblo, told lawmakers the legislation, if passed, would allow tribes to “better target those funds for student needs.”

“This will narrow the achievement gap because it will better provide us with resources so we’re equipped to address needs of our children at the community level,” she told the lawmakers during the virtual meeting. “Staff know our students the best. They have the experience of working in tribal communities.”

According to a fiscal impact report from the Legislative Finance Committee, the Legislature’s budget arm,  would appropriate an additional $21.5 million from the general fund to the Indian Education Fund, with specific spending directed as such:

‱ $5.75 million for tribal education departments to build capacity and develop plans;

‱ $5.75 million for tribal libraries’ educational operations; 

‱ $10 million for tribal education departments to provide extended learning and Native language programs. 

A t for HB90 says it would appropriate $29.6 million from the general fund to four state colleges and three tribal colleges for 53 initiatives in eight areas to comply with the court’s rulings in the consolidated landmark 2018 education lawsuit.

One of the speakers in support of the legislation during the committee hearing Monday, Glenabah Martinez, a University of New Mexico professor and director of the Institute for American Indian Education, said the state is one of the first two states to have an . That law was passed in 2003 and updated in 2019.

“We have stood as an example” for others looking to create their own Indian Education Acts, she told the committee.  “Now we should take a step forward and let’s fully implement it.”

A longstanding critique by New Mexico’s tribal representatives is that the state has never fully funded the Indian Education Act or tried to achieve its goals.

Between House bills 87 and 88, Lente was asking for $41.5 million in the state budget. The state  that emerged Tuesday out of the House budget committee included $28 million for the Indian Education Fund.“It’s better than we’ve been in the past,” Lente said. “Personally, I am good to see the needle moving”.

He was less pleased, however, with the language about how $15 million of that total would be divvied up. The language calls for distribution to more recipients than his bills contemplate and which he worries will dilute the impact of that education money on tribes. 

He’ll try to change that language as the budget bill moves through the Legislature and ensure the $28 million earmarked for the Indian Education Fund stays at that level, he said. 

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Lente said.

This story was by New Mexico In Depth