Have you or your friends ever experienced racism? How do systems of inequality affect your life and what changes would you like to see?
Come to Structural Racism 101 for Youth at SCHOOL’S OUT WASHINGTON on Saturday, December 7, to learn what structural racism is and what you can do about it!
This training will be led by youth and is an opportunity to talk about race and your experiences, learn what youth can do about racism, and provide input about how adults can support you in this process.
This is a FREE workshop, and there’s FREE breakfast and lunch!
Email Pang Chang at pchang@schoolsoutwashington.org to RSVP
Learning about Native history and culture doesn’t need to be relegated to one month of the year. Though the Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF) thought Native American Heritage Month would be a good time to release its Native American land curriculum website for pre-K and K-12 classrooms.
“The launch of this website in November coincides with National Native American Heritage Month and the approach of Thanksgiving—for many public school teachers, the only time during the school year they will discuss Native American history in their classroom,” said ILTF President Cris Stainbrook in a November 18 press release. “We would invite all of them to look through the curriculum and choose at least one grade-appropriate lesson to replace the old worn out story of the Pilgrims, and perhaps think about adding one other lesson the week after Thanksgiving.”
The Lessons of Our Land curriculum is designed to be incorporated into a number of subjects and is adaptable to include the history and culture of a region’s Indian nations. The curriculum has so far been successfully implemented in 105 tribal schools, public schools and colleges in eight states.
Lessons of Our Land’s components meet state standards in many core areas, such as history, art, civics, mathematics, science, geography and language arts. To see what lessons are available, visit LessonsofOurLand.org.
Only 6,000 people speak the Lakota language, few of them under 65, but people are working to keep it alive
In Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, teacher Gloria Two Crow conducts a Lakota language session.Kayla Gahagan
PINE RIDGE INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D. — Dodge tumbleweeds and stray dogs. Venture down a deeply rutted dirt road. Walk into the warmth of a home heated by a wood-burning stove. There’ll be a deer roast marinating on the kitchen counter.
It is here, in a snug home that sits on the edge of nearly 3 million acres of South Dakota prairie, that you’ll find the heart of a culture. It’s here, at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where Joe and Randi Boucher make dinner for their two young daughters. The smaller one squirms and is gently admonished: “Ayustan,” she is told — leave it alone.
It’s here where the Lakota language is spoken, taught and absorbed in day-to-day life.
That makes the Boucher home a rare find. According to the UCLA Language Materials Project, only 6,000 fluent speakers of the Lakota language remain in the world, and few of those are under the age of 65. Of the nearly 30,000 people who live on Pine Ridge, between 5 and 10 percent speak Lakota.
For the past four decades, the race to save the language has started and stuttered, taken on by well-meaning individuals and organizations whose efforts were often snuffed out by lack of funding, community support or organizational issues.
Some days, saving the language “seems like an insurmountable challenge,” said Bob Brave Heart, executive vice president of Red Cloud Indian School on the reservation.
The reason, some say, is a number of serious socioeconomic issues that overwhelm the Pine Ridge communities and make it difficult to successfully revive the dying language. The reservation has an 80 percent unemployment rate, and half the residents live below the federal poverty line, making it the second poorest county in the United States. Next to Haiti, it has the lowest life expectancy in the Western Hemisphere. Men live an average of 48 years; women, 52.
But those aren’t hurdles to learning the language, Randi Boucher said. Instead, they should stand as the very reason to perpetuate it.
“It is our language and our life way that will make change,” she said. “We have a loss of self-identity. We’re trying to exist without that. The language, that’s where the healing starts.”
‘Time to do it right’
Language signs at Red Cloud Indian School, which plans to publish the first comprehensive Lakota language K-12 curriculum by the end of this year. Kayla Gahagan
Brave Heart agreed.
“If you lose the language, you lose the culture,” he said. “When students are informed and part of their culture and their language, they have a better sense of self-worth.”
From Joe Boucher’s point of view, they face a much more serious hurdle.
“The biggest enemy we’re battling is apathy,” he said. “Our young people don’t care. They’d rather live in the now.”
They aren’t the only generation resisting the past. Cultural assimilation practices in the U.S. in the 19th century — sometimes in the form of verbal and physical punishment — forced many natives to speak English.
Elders here relive stories of having their mouths washed with soap or their tongues snapped with rubber bands by boarding school staff for speaking their native language.
“We were persecuted; it was dehumanizing,” said high school language teacher Philomine Lakota. “I was completely brainwashed into thinking English was the only way.”
And yet, Brave Heart said, now is the time to move forward.
“We’ve been teaching the language for 40 years, and we’ve been very ineffective,” he said. “It’s time to do it right.”
The school, alongside the American Indian Studies Research Institute at Indiana University, is about to publish the first comprehensive K-12 Lakota language curriculum. The private Catholic school embarked on the project six years ago, developing, testing and revising the curriculum, with the goal to publish by the end of this year.
Starting next year, students will be required to take Lakota language classes through elementary, middle and the first three years of high school. The final year is optional.
“This year’s first graders will be the first group to go through the entire curriculum,” said Melissa Strickland, who serves as the Lakota language project assistant at Red Cloud. She works with the six Lakota language teachers and trains staff across campus to use the language when conversing with the 575-member student body.
An immersion school
The Boucher family lives on the edge of the nearly 3 million acres that make up the reservation. Here, a shelter, constructed with a view of the scenic Badlands, that is used by Native American artists during the summer to create and sell their artwork. Kayla Gahagan
And is it working?
Last year, language test scores at Red Cloud jumped by 84 percent, and this year more than 70 percent of students reported using Lakota at home, in school and in their communities.
Teacher Philomine Lakota is encouraged, but is also aware that many students do not have family members speaking the language at home, and that many will leave the reservation and enter a world where it is not used.
“I realize I will not turn them into fluent speakers,” she said, but her desire is that they become proficient and eventually teach others. “There is hope.”
The $2.2 million project has not been without its hiccups, including personnel changes and disagreements among staff over which materials to use.
“Many programs for language revitalization are immersion,” Brave Heart said. “We’re not. We’re trying to do it within the confines of the educational system.”
Others have taken a road less traveled.
Peter Hill taught Lakota at Red Cloud before embarking on what he calls an exhausting journey to create the reservation’s first successful Lakota language immersion program, one that promises to fill two major gaps for families — language learning and quality, affordable child care.
“Child care out here is horrible. There’s no day care,” he said. “People just kind of get by with family members.”
After months of often unfruitful fundraising and research, the Lakota Language Immersion School opened a year ago with five babies and toddlers, including one of Hill’s daughters.
“At some point, you feel like it’s now or never,” Hill said. “There’s never going to be enough money or the ideal situation.”
The word has since spread, he said, and things are looking up. Today the program has 10 kids and three full-time staff members.
“We literally have kids on a wait list a couple years into the future, for kids not even born yet,” Hill said.
‘Love’ in two languages
The program was almost derailed last month when a severe South Dakota blizzard forced it out of its building. It was given another building in Oglala and recently moved in, but Hill knows the clock is ticking.
“The oldest kids are between 2 and 3 and starting to talk,” he said. “Eventually our feet will get held to the fire. If we say we’re an immersion program, we need to produce fluent kids.”
Finding qualified staff and enforcing 100 percent spoken Lakota remains the biggest hurdle.
“Even fluent speakers aren’t used to avoiding English,” he said. “People aren’t used to speaking Lakota to children. If they were, the language would be in much better shape. It’s a steep learning curve.”
If the language is to survive, the greater movement to save it will have to center on two things, Hill said — kids learning it as a first language and people like himself learning and teaching it as a second language.
Randi and Joe Boucher, who both studied the language in college and learned it from relatives, say they are encouraged by the new efforts.
They speak in Lakota half the time, gently pushing their kids to learn more than names of household objects. They want conversation:
Le aŋpetu kiŋ owayawa ekta takuku uŋspenič’ičhiya he? (Has the dog been fed?)
Wana wakȟaŋyeža kiŋ iyuŋgwičhuŋkhiyiŋ kta iyečheča. (We should put the kids to bed.)
And: thečhiȟila (I love you), a sentiment now mastered by both girls.
Randi is pursuing a master’s degree in language revitalization and hopes to someday open a school focused on a holistic approach to culture and language.
She is expecting another child next summer, and said that even with her aspirations to start a school, the heart of language learning should be in the home.
In their home, their daughters’ traditional native cradleboards — built, sewn and beaded by family — are out on display, a visible reminder of the couple’s insistence on raising their children with ties to their native blood.
“The day we have grandchildren and they can speak to us in Lakota, then we’ll know we did it right,” Randi said. “Then we can die happy.”
Days before the government shutdown ended in October, Cheryl Crazy Bull calmly recounted some of the steps already taken by tribal colleges to cope with funding cuts.
“Over the years, they’ve never had enough [resources],” says Crazy Bull, who became president of the American Indian College Fund last year. “They operate with frugality and worst-case-scenario behavior.”
Cheryl Crazy Bull was president of Northwest Indian College near Bellingham, Wash., for nearly 10 years before joining the American Indian College Fund.
Crazy Bull knows this firsthand. She was president of Northwest Indian College near Bellingham, Wash., for nearly 10 years before joining the college fund.
“I remember as college president literally looking at cash flow every day to see what bills we could pay,” she recalls.
Crazy Bull, 58, who takes to heart her Lakota name, which means “They depend on her,” brings to her latest job persistence, business know-how, passion for the tribal college’s mission, and a willingness to take on unfamiliar challenges.
Growing up on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota, Crazy Bull was one of five children. Her parents ran a grocery store until her father joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Her parents, whom she describes as “well-educated public servants,” stressed education. But it took Crazy Bull a couple of tries to get on the right track.
She first enrolled at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. — and left after one quarter. Academics weren’t a problem, but she had a sheltered life and the social scene was a “huge shock,” Crazy Bull says.
She transferred twice — to Northern State University in Aberdeen, S.D., then finally settling in at the University of South Dakota, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in business management. She later earned a master’s degree in education administration from South Dakota State University.
After graduating, Crazy Bull taught business and Native studies and held administrative positions at Sinte Gleska University, the tribal college that serves Rosebud. After 15 years at the school, she left to oversee an agency that assisted local home-based businesses, including auto mechanics, quilting and food catering.
At this point, Crazy Bull was the single parent of three children and did some consulting on the side to help support her family.
Crazy Bull then became the equivalent of a superintendent at St. Francis Indian School, which enrolled Rosebud children in kindergarten through 12th grade.
After nearly five years at the school, Crazy Bull moved to the northwest to be near her daughter and take a post that she had always wanted — president of a tribal college.
While at Northwest Indian College, she resolved issues with financing and accreditation before taking the school from a two-year to a four-year institution, something she said the community wanted badly. The college had to identify and recruit students who wanted to get their bachelor’s degrees, ensure the facility had the requisite advanced degrees, and build its curriculum and facilities. Much of the campus was rebuilt.
Crazy Bull was new to many of the tasks.
“I find myself in situations where I don’t know anything, but something needs to be done,” she says.
Sharon Kinley, director of the college’s Coast Salish Institute, which Crazy Bull established, says she brought a good mix to the school. “[Crazy Bull] is a visionary, but not just that, she has the practical, deliberate background with which visions become real,” says Kinley.
After almost 10 years at Northwest, Crazy Bull felt she should move on. She was appointed president of the American Indian College Fund, based in Denver, after her predecessor retired.
Crazy Bull’s accomplishments at Northwest helped her get the job, says Dr. Elmer Guy, chairman of the College Fund’s board of trustees.
But Crazy Bull has more mountains to climb in heading an organization that gives financial support to the nation’s 37 tribal colleges and to students who come from more than 250 tribes around the country.
The college fund is pushing for legislation to fully fund the schools, which are authorized to receive $8,000 per student per year but get more like $5,500.
Next year, to mark its 25th anniversary, the college fund will mount a $25 million fundraising campaign that Crazy Bull wants to follow with a bigger campaign for scholarships and endowments.
When she is not working on behalf of the college fund, Crazy Bull makes quilts as gifts and for traditional ceremonies. She also writes poems, stories and essays and is currently writing her memoirs.
Students made hand trees as the craft activity for the night as plans were made for future Family Nights. Photo by Monica Brown
By Monica Brown, Tulalip News Writer
Lushootseed Family Nights are back for the next eight weeks and the language department is inviting anyone with the desire to learn the Lushootseed language to attend. This season’s first meeting took place at the Tulalip administration building on Wednesday, Nov 20th and was organized to gaing ideas from students for the upcoming activities and lessons.
“We call ourselves language warriors and anyone who comes to help out is a language warrior too,” said Natosha Gobin during Wednesday’s family night. Family night events have been taking place since the early 90’s and are gaining momentum as more children and adults become dedicated to learning the language.
Lushootseed Family Nights provide the opportunity to learn the language in a comfortable and open environment. Photo by Monica Brown
Lessons teach basic phrases, words, songs and prayers that can be used in everyday conversations. All lessons and materials are provided at no charge and are open to anyone interested in attending. At the first two meetings, dinner is provided by the department but the following meetings will be potluck dinners. Future Family Nights will be held at Tulalip Hibulb on Wednesdays from 5:00pm to 7:00pm, regular attendance is not required.
Fall Lushootseed Family Nights Schedule
November 20, 27
December 4, 11, 18
January 8, 15, 22, 29
Tulalip Hibulb Cultural Center is located at 6410 23rd Ave NE, Tulalip, WA 98271. For more information, please contact: Natosha Gobin ngobin@tulaliptribes-.gov 360-716-4499.
Simple words, phrases, songs, prayers that can be used in everyday conversation are taught during Lushootseed Family Nights. Photo by Monica Brown
Just like our Native American culture is not a Halloween costume or a sports mascot, we are also not a cute construction paper project for Thanksgiving. You are not doing our rich culture any justice when you make brown paper bag vests or paper feather headbands.
Hopefully you’ve read some of the articles recently posted on PowWows.com to know that what we typically learned about Thanksgiving was a romanticized myth. How I wish we could sugar coat history, and make it easier for our children to understand, but we can not and should not. Instead I think the focus at Thanksgiving time, should shift away from reenacting the myth of the First Thanksgiving and decorating the classroom with Pilgrims and Indians. We should instead focus on things the children can be thankful for in their own lives. Teaching about Native Americans only at Thanksgiving from a historical perspective will reinforce the idea that they only existed in the past.
Since thanks and giving are in the name of the holiday, it only makes sense to teach the children the meaning of thankfulness and gratitude. Here are several projects that can help them be grateful.
Multicultural Thanksgiving Wreath : This would be great if you want to incorporate some Native American words into the tree such as the Navajo word for Thank You = Ahéhee’
There are many cultures around the world that celebrate autumn harvest. Why not focus on the season for a craft?
Corn Husk Dolls – On the Native Tech website there is a great story that goes along with the doll instruction if you would like to incorporate some Native American culture.
Hopefully I’ve provided you with some fun activities you can do with your children this season. However you choose to celebrate I hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving!
In the beginning was Inyan and Inyan was surrounded in total darkness. Inyan began creation by draining its blood creating a massive disk around itself. Inyan called this disk Maka, the earth, which was half of the disk. The other half was Mni, water. Inyan continued to drain its blood creating Mahpiya, the sky, Anpetu Wi, the sun and daytime, Hanhepi Wi, the moon and nighttime. As Inyan continued to drain its blood life began on Maka with the grasses, plants, flowers, trees and so on.
The last of Inyan’s creation was Winyan and Wicasa, woman and man. Winyan, woman, was created first and created to be like Maka, the earth, to give and nourish life. Wicasa, man, was created to be like the universe to protect and provide nourishment. After creating Winyan and Wicasa, and creation was complete, Inyan became dry and brittle and broke and scattered all over Maka.
The base word of Mni, one of Inyan’s first creations, is ni. The word ni means “to be alive”. Water is life.
Great Pacific garbage patch
Located in the Northern Pacific Ocean lies the Great Pacific garbage patch, also referred to as the Pacific Trash Vortex, and it is a massive patch that is described as a highly concentrated mixture of plastics, chemical sludge and other debris that has become stuck in the currents of the Northern Pacific Gyre. The toxic stew comes from a mixture of trash and debris coming from the coasts of Asia and North America, as well as, debris from cargo ships crossing the Pacific. While the exact size of the garbage patch is hard to determine, estimates range from 5,800,000 sq miles to up to being twice the size of the United States.
The impacts from this toxic debris are especially harsh on marine life as debris from the patch is found in the stomachs of fish, birds, turtles and other aquatic life. The Great Pacific garbage patch also works to block sunlight from reaching algae and phytoplankton, of which the entire marine food web is based on.
The decline in phytoplankton is particularly worry some, in that not only do they help provide the base of the marine food web, but they are responsible for producing half of the world’s oxygen supply. It is estimated by researchers that since the Industrial revolution phytoplankton populations have decreased by 40%.
A similar vortex of trapped garbage debris has also been found in the Atlantic ocean.
Map by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Dead Zones
A dead zone occurs in the world’s oceans, mainly coast lines, and lakes when oxygen is depleted in those waters to the point that the marine life in those areas dies-off. Dead zones are caused by excessive human pollution. Dead zone’s are particularly prevalent on the Eastern coast of the United States, as well as, the coasts of Europe, China, Japan, New Zealand and South America.
The Gulf of Mexico, off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, hosts the world’s largest dead zone with estimates ranging to being larger than the state of Connecticut.
Dead zones have also been found off the coast of Oregon, St. Lawrence River and Lake Erie.
Map of Aquatic Dead Zones
KXL Pipeline
If constructed, the Keystone XL pipeline would cross two major aquifers, the Ogallala and the Texas Carrizo-Wilcox. The Ogallala aquifer is the largest in the western North America region. The Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer provides drinking water to roughly twelve-million people in Easter Texas. Construction of the KXL pipeline threatens the possibility of water contamination in these regions due to possible leaks, ruptures, or other activity.
Tar Sands
Fresh water plays an essential role in the development of the oil sands process. In 2010, averages of 3.1 barrels of fresh water were needed to produce 1 barrel of oil sands. Over the course of a year the amount of fresh water used averages 170 million m3 per year2, which is roughly over 40% of the City of Toronto’s total fresh water consumption per year.
Fresh water used for Tar Sands operations comes mainly from the Athabasca River, home to the Dene and Cree First Nations. In addition to drying up fresh water sources tar sands mining causes massive amounts of toxins to be released in the water supply.
Syncrude Aurora Oil Sands Mine, near Fort McMurray, Canada. (SOURCE: goodcanadiankid.com)
Fracking
Like the tar sands production process, fracking uses huge quantities of fresh water. Highly pressurized water, mixed with chemicals, is injected into shale formations to break up and release oil and natural gases. Once used, the now contaminated water is left in massive open air pits.
In the small town of Barnhart, Texas the double impact of climate change and fracking has literally dried out the town’s water supply. In less than two years fracking companies used over 8 million gallons of fresh water leaving the town dry.
It is estimated that by year’s end another 30 small Texan towns will see their water wells go dry due to fracking.
Coal Exports
The proposed coal exports seek to bring coal from the Powder River basin via rail to the Pacific Northwest where it will be exported primarily to China. The trains will cross numerous rivers, creeks, streams, and lakes where the uncapped coal has the potential to spill and pollute. The largest of the export terminals is proposed for Cherry Point, WA sacred grounds to the Lummi Nation. If built, the massive export terminal would threaten not only sacred sites, but also threaten the entire ecosystem of sea life in the area.
Know water know life, No water no life
Above is but a snapshot of just a few of the ways in which Mni, life, is under assault and or threatened. On a global scale Mni has been under assault due to militarism, corporate activity, toxic waste facilities, nuclear power plants (tens of millions of gallons of nuclear waste has seeped into the ground water at the Hanford Nuclear Power Plant in WA State) and other forms of pollution. It is no cliché to say that water is life and the impacts from its desecration are real. It would seem that of all the issues we, as children on Maka, could agree on is that Mni, water, is sacred and its protection in essential.
We have moved into a time where we must remember who and what we are as children of Maka, as relatives to All Our Relations. The children of profit are stepping up their assault on all life and it is essential that we collectively stand together with our first mother and all our relatives to fulfill our responsibilities to give, nourish and protect all life.
Have you or your friends ever experienced racism? How do systems of inequality affect your life and what changes would you like to see?
