Marysville School Board members, MSD Native American Liaisons, Denny Hurtado of WA Office of Native Education and Dr. Kyle Kinoshita the Ex. Dir. of Learning and Teaching, Monday, Dec. 8, 2014, following the passing of Since Time Immemorial curriculum in MSD schools. (Tulalip News/ Brandi N. Montreuil)
MSD adopts Since Time Immemorial curriculum during regular board meeting
By Brandi N. Montreuil, Tulalip News
MARYSVILLE – The work to correct history began long before the Marysville School Board met on December 8, to vote on adopting accurate tribal history and culture via the Since Time Immemorial curriculum into their district schools. The idea was first introduced by then newly elected Rep., John McCoy (D-Tulalip), in HB 1495 on January 26, 2005. The bill proposed requiring school districts to offer tribal history and culture along with Washington State and United States history curriculum. It passed 78-18 in the House on March 9, 2005. However, since then school districts have lagged in offering accurate tribal history on the 29 federally recognized tribes located in Washington state. On December 8, MSD decided to unanimously pass adopting the Since Time Immemorial curriculum as part of required curriculum in all their schools.
“This is awesome. This is a big district and to have a school board adopt it means a lot to us at the Native Office of Education, us as Indian people, and the people who created it. This is a great thing, because they are saying how important it is to start teaching about our history and our culture,” said Denny Hurtado, the outgoing Director of Washington Office of Native Education, following the vote.
STI is the result of partnership between the State of Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, private and public agencies and several of the 29 federal recognized tribes in Washington state. The curriculum provides a basic framework of Indian history and understanding of sovereignty for grades k-12. Aligned with the Common Core standards for English, language and art, STI lessons can be adapted by teachers to reflect the specific histories of tribes in their local area.
Denny Hurtado, outgoing WA Office of Native Education Director speaks to Marysville School Board, Monday, Dec. 8, 2014, on developing Since Time Immemorial curriculum. (Tulalip News/ Brandi N. Montreuil)
Teachers Shana Brown from the Seattle School District who is of Yakima dependency, Jerry Price, a middle school teacher with the Yelm School District and Elese Washines, an educator in the Yakima Nation Tribal schools, developed the curriculum under the leadership of Hurtado. STI was designed not just for non-Native students, but also for Native students. Its purpose, explained Hurtado to MSD board members, is to breakdown Native American stereotypes and misconceptions and to build bridges between tribal communities and non-Native communities.
“All they [students] know about us is what they learned in school, which is very little, and what you see on TV, which is not true, and what you read about during Columbus Day and Halloween,” Hurtado said before the vote. “I didn’t want this curriculum to seem like it was just an Indian thing. This was a true partnership to develop something good for our school to use. The purpose is to build bridges between our community and your community. That is a big point for us Indian people, because we have a lot of mistrust of the education system because our first experience of education was the military boarding schools.”
Over 1,000 teachers have received STI training by the Washington State Office of Native Education and 30 percent of school districts in Washington are using STI curriculum in some shape or form. Montana, Oregon and Alaska have also adopted STI curriculum in their school districts, and currently the Seattle School Board is looking into implementing it into their schools.
Tulalip member and MSD Native Liaison Eliza Davis speaks to Marysville School Board members, Monday, Dec. 8, 2014, on the importance of accurate tribal history in school curriculum. (Tulalip News/ Brandi N. Montreuil)
Matt Remle, a Lakota Native from the Standing Rock Reservation and Native American Liaison with MSD, who was present for the voting, said the change was long overdue. Fellow liaison, Eliza Davis, Tulalip tribal member, said the history of her own Tribe was lacking during her high school education.
“I graduated from Marysville-Pilchuck High School. I remember in Washington State history we watched the movie “Appaloosa.” That is what I remember of Washington State history. I don’t remember learning a whole lot about our Indian people or about Tulalip Tribes. I support the curriculum 100 percent. It is so important for our kids, all of our kids, and the whole community to understand the true history of all Washington Tribes, and also the history of Tulalip, Marysville, and what Tulalip does for this community as a whole. I think adopting this curriculum is the right direction.”
“I am excited for this day. I am excited about this and I am ready to approve this. We should have had this a long time ago,” said MSD board member Chris Nation right before the unanimous vote.
For more information on STI, please visit the website www.indian-ed.org.
Brandi N. Montreuil: 360-913-5402; bmontreuil@tulalipnews.com
They’re rarely seen or heard, but the statistics on the population’s health, education, and happiness speak loud and clear.
15-year-old Rose Gibbs stands before portraits of Chief Seattle and Chief Joseph, among others, painted by Andrew Morrison at the Wilson-Pacific Building. Photo by Joshua Huston
Rose Gibbs is tough. Behind a youthful face and crystal-clear brown eyes resides a person hardened beyond her years. She’s been in foster care for the past five, citing her mother’s alcoholism as the reason she and six of her siblings landed there. At 15, she wears a San Francisco 49ers beanie and a look of unease when talking to a reporter. She says she “had to grow up too fast,” and it’s hard not to agree with her. Rose, who identifies as both Latina and a member of the First Nations Lyackson Tribe, is currently attending Ingraham High School in north Seattle. In the course of her life, including stints in Canada, Rose says she’s gone to “more than 10, maybe 20” schools. She thinks seven of those have been in the Seattle School District, but she’s not sure.
“I guess, I don’t know. I honestly forgot,” she says. “There’s a big blank, between when I was younger and now. I really don’t remember.”
It’s an understated and understandable answer from a girl who seems accustomed to hiding vulnerability with aloof, indifferent distance. But it doesn’t take much to push past Rose’s hardened front.
“It happened in fourth grade,” she says of the moment alcohol and domestic violence collided, altering her life’s trajectory in an instant.
And then tears.
Rose rarely sees her mom these days, she says after a wrenching pause. Since then she’s spent time with five foster families, but hasn’t felt at home with any of them. She’s stubborn, she admits, and looks forward to her last two years “in the system.” She says she misses her siblings, and hopes one day to reunite with them.
Rose started coming to the Urban Native Education Alliance’s Clear Sky Native Youth Council, where I met her, back in April. At this point she’s what UNEA Chair Sarah Sense-Wilson describes as a “regular,” with an “indomitable spirit” —and a good example of exactly the kind of local kid the nonprofit tries to reach. Through Clear Sky, the UNEA offers tutoring, art, a sense of cultural belonging, and—perhaps most anticipated—a solid meal to urban Native American kids who need it. As it turns out, plenty in the Seattle area do.
Rose and I are seated at a round table inside the Seattle School District’s Wilson-Pacific Building. Compared to my previous visit to Clear Sky, where I’d first met Rose three weeks ago, things are considerably more comfortable. There’s heat this time. And bathrooms that work. On my first visit, the urban Native kids who come to Clear Sky gathered in a cafeteria toward the back of the soon-to-be-razed school building. The missing tiles from the ceiling and floor, and the sign on the door reading “RESTROOMS CLOSED/NO WATER” gave the gym an air of abandonment.
But tonight’s different. The meeting has been moved to a new room, and the upgrade is palpable. UNEA Co-Chair Mary Ann Peltier, who is from the Chippewa, Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, spills the details: They struck a deal with the school district, agreeing to pay $18.35 a night for the improved amenities.
A bad building wasn’t keeping Clear Sky from working its magic, however. While jackets were sometimes required, the decrepit, mural-covered cafeteria at the back of the Wilson-Pacific building was enough for Peltier and Sense-Wilson, a straight-shooting member of the Oglala Sioux tribe, to roll up their sleeves and get to work in. The UNEA’s flagship program, Cleark Sky held its first meeting in 2009, and they’ve been at it every week since.
“You donate?” Sense-Wilson drills me, nearly the moment we meet. “I’m just kidding. I know writers don’t make much money. ”
Sense-Wilson smiles as she ribs me. The room is abuzz. Subway sandwiches are on the menu, along with a class called “‘Native Journalism 21st Century.” The Clear Sky mission of promoting “cultural, traditional activities and educational achievement” is alive around us. Though the UNEA also offers a basketball program and various other special events geared toward the urban Native population, the Clear Sky Youth council is the nonprofit’s gem. Sense-Wilson says the program provides academic support for “ensuring the success of Native learners,” and boasts a 100 percent high-school graduation rate.
Outside the walls, however, things get difficult for young urban Natives like Rose, who live off the reservation, a minority among minorities in the city. According to census data, only .8 percent of Seattle identifies as American Indian or Alaska Native alone—a mere blip in a city named after Chief Sealth which was home to Native peoples thousands of years before a white person ever set foot here. It’s a demographic that faces a daunting set of challenges.
“You can turn a corner and see someone you relate to,” Peltier tells this white reporter. “I can turn many corners, and won’t relate to anyone.”
It can be lonely, and worse. And it isn’t getting better. According to information presented in the Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative three-year plan for 2012 to 2014, American Community Surveys over the last 20 years show that the poverty rate for Natives in Seattle has fluctuated, but only slightly. In 1990, 33 percent of Natives lived in poverty; in 2000, it was 29 percent; by 2009, it was back up to 30 percent. That’s higher than the poverty rate for any other ethnic group. Meanwhile, the poverty rate for white Seattleites has stayed steady at just 9 percent.
For urban Native kids, the stats can look even worse. According to the “Community Health Profile” for the Seattle Indian Health Board released in December 2011, in King County 46.6 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native children under age 6 lived below the poverty line between 2005 and 2009, compared to 13.2 percent of children in the general population.
The difficulties only continue from there, and for a population as small, diverse, and historically maligned as this one, even finding a starting point from which to dig out can seem daunting. They include the pronounced education achievement gap between Native students and whites, resulting in historically low graduation rates and high dropout rates for American Indian and Native Alaskan students; numerous health concerns, from asthma to diabetes and obesity; addiction and alcoholism; domestic violence; a disproportionate rate of homelessness; and institutional neglect. And the fact that Natives, 1.5 percent of the overall population, make up 4.4 percent of Washington’s prison population.
There’s also the simple fact that placing an umbrella ethnic classification like “Native American” over a group of city-dwelling people from hundreds of tribes and countless cultural traditions simply doesn’t accurately define it.
As a result, the population often fades into the firmament.
“Sometimes I don’t think they see us,” Rose says. It’s a common sentiment. Changing people’s fortunes—as Clear Sky aims to do—often begins with confronting this sense of aloneness, pounded into Seattle’s Natives by politics, policy, perceptions, and nearly 200 years of history.
“To not have any representation that reflects who you are, or honors your cultural, your tradition, your history, it’s really a profound psychological, oppressive place to be,” Sense-Wilson says.
Clear Sky is a bright spot. Looking around on this Tuesday night, there is hope to be had. There’s Rose and her improved grades and self-worth. There are the other 40 or so kids who have arrived, each equally important. There are Sense-Wilson, Peltier, and the other adult volunteers, filling a need for their community when no one else did. And there are smiles.
You get the feeling that if the uncertain future of Seattle’s urban Native community is to be bright, it will likely start with exactly the kind of thing happening here.
“When we do see each other, we know,” Peltier says of the Native community in Seattle and what happens at Clear Sky. “We know when we connect.”
Mary Ann Peltier, left, and Sarah Sense-Wilson help run Clear Sky Youth Council meetings every Tuesday and Thursday in the Wilson-Pacific Building.
Call it a starting point.
It’s cold outside when the January 17 gathering of the state House’s Community Development, Housing & Tribal Affairs Committee comes to order—the kind of miserable weather Olympia is known for. On the docket is a work session titled “The Urban Indian Experience.”
With only the very occasional yawn, the seven lawmakers who make up the committee have come together this Friday afternoon to learn about the plight of urban Native Americans. For the elected policy-makers, it’s a chance to learn. For those invited to teach them, it’s a chance to have a voice in the halls of power.
Ralph Forquera, a member of the Juaneño Band of California Mission Indians and the executive director of the Seattle Indian Health Board, is first up. The semicircle of seated decision-makers listens as he gets into specifics, trying his best to describe the 29 federally recognized tribes and six unrecognized ones that meld together, along with countless individual Native transplants from across the continent, to make up our state’s remarkably diverse urban Native population. (Nationally, there are 566 federally recognized tribes and hundreds of unrecognized ones.) It’s no easy task, which is part of the larger problem.
The population is mixed, with varying ties to local, national, Canadian, and Alaska Native tribes, Forquera tells them. Some, like the 4,809 Seattle residents who identified as American Indian or Alaska Native alone in 2010, show up on the census. Many more don’t, for reasons both simple and complex. Who is an American Indian these days, and who marks the box when asked? “It’s a very difficult question to answer,” Mark Trahant, a former editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial page and current Atwood Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska Anchorage, tells Seattle Weekly. Trahant, a member of the Shoshone-Bannock tribes and the former president of the Native American Journalists Association, has written extensively on the lack of clear data on the Native population.
Some Natives have long hesitated to identify themselves for statistical purposes, Trahant says by phone from his office in Alaska. Others have unclear or mixed ethnic identities. How much of a connection must one have to identify as Native? What’s required by the tribe? Different ones have different standards, Trahant notes. And what about the growing generations of urban Natives off the reservations? How can we accurately account for them? None of these questions have easy answers, he says.
“Census is not very sensitive to tribe, it’s more sensitive to race,” Forquera later adds, saying “We don’t really know” how many people of American Indian heritage live in Seattle. “There aren’t any really accurate representations of the size of the population.”
But some of the numbers are indicative enough, and Forquera confronts the harsh realities every day. Leading the Seattle Indian Health Board and the Urban Indian Health Institute, he knows the “Community Health Profile” delivered in 2011 states that Natives in King County die of “unintentional injuries” (that is, accidents) more than twice as often as anyone else, at a rate of 79.3 per 100,000 deaths (compared to 32.4 per 100,000 among the general population). They suffer from asthma more than twice as often (17.3 percent vs. 8.1 percent), and diabetes too (12.2 percent vs. 5.9 percent). They’re nearly twice as likely to be obese as the general population (36.3 percent vs. 20.1 percent). The list goes on, and Forquera knows all of it well.
While his expertise is in health, this afternoon Forquera is also a history teacher. In his allotted 10 minutes, he does his best to deliver CliffsNotes on the past 160 years, providing a basis for what’s seen on the ground today. Natives inarguably have been a part of Seattle’s identity since the Denny Party’s arrival at Alki in 1851—and, of course, were the area’s identity for thousands of years before white men tied their boats to Puget Sound shores and pushed them to the side.
Addressing the “Myth of the Vanishing Race”—or, that stuff about Indians being savages and naturally giving way to white guys and their civilizations—William Cronon writes in his preface to Coll Thrush’s 2007 book Native Seattle: “Perhaps in part because Indian peoples have long been associated with ‘nature,’ it has been remarkably easy not to notice their presence in places marked as ‘unnatural’ in American understandings of landscape. Chief among these are urban and metropolitan areas, which for more than a century have provided homes for people of American Indian descent to a much greater degree than most people realize.”
In Washington, as of the 2010 census, 74 percent of those identifying as American Indians or Alaska Natives lived in cities, up from 71 percent in 2000. Statewide, the population of urban Natives is growing. According to data provided by Leslie E. Phillips, Ph.D., the scientific director at the Urban Indian Health Institute, from 2000 to 2010 Washington’s American Indian/Alaska Native population increased 30 percent, from 113,625 to 147,371.
Seattle hasn’t always been very accommodating to its Native population. As Thrush, an assistant professor of history at the University of British Columbia, describes in his book, one of the first ordinances passed in the newly incorporated Seattle back in 1865—Seattle Ordinance No. 5, to be exact—declared that “no Indian or Indians shall be permitted to reside” in the city. A complex dynamic even back then, the ordinance also mandated that those who employed Natives “provide lodgments or suitable residences . . . ” It was, from the very start according to Thrush, an “attempt to codify a middle road between segregation and integration.”
The national move toward reservations goes back even further, to a series Indians Appropriation Acts that started in 1851 and formalized the process of relocating Natives to land set aside for them by the U.S. Government. As Trahant notes in a recent research paper, however, many of the country’s earliest Native American policies have been based on the conquering view that American Indians would one day be extinct. “The assumption had come down from the earliest of times, not always voiced, but implicit, that the native inhabitants of the New World would become extinct. The notion grew stronger as the settlers waxed in numbers and the demand for living room accelerated,” D’Arcy McNickle, a member of the Confederate Salish and Kootenai tribes, wrote in his 1973 book, Native American Tribalism.
The extinction never materialized. Today, according to numbers from the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, approximately 56.2 million acres are held in trust for Indian tribes and individuals, and there are approximately 326 Indian land areas in the U.S. The most recent numbers from the BIA indicates nearly two million enrolled tribal members.
Though local and federal government has done its part to drive Natives from Seattle, it’s also worked to bring them back to the city—for better or worse. A swell created by the federal assimilation policies in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s—like House Concurrent Resolution 108, for example, which officially terminated the federal government’s acknowledgement of tribes from New York to California—pumped Natives into cities. The idea—or the stated one—was to free Native Americans of federal supervision and provide them with the same opportunities as other citizens.
The negative consequences, however, were noticeable. “An awful lot of people just ended up exchanging reservation poverty for urban Indian poverty,” Forquera tells Seattle Weekly of the assimilation movement. “It was a pretty cruel thing, actually.”
Nearly 150 years later, the effects of those early injustices are still felt. According to Chris Stearns—a gregarious state gambling commissioner, attorney and member of the Navajo Nation from Auburn—Natives often don’t trust the government, and things like Seattle’s Ordinance No. 5 have historically given them good reason not to. “You can’t unwind that,” says Stearns, the former chair of Seattle’s Human Rights Commission. “We were literally kicked out. That’s the bedrock of the relationship of Seattle with its Native population.”
The impact is more than psychological. This historical push and pull yields a Seattle urban Indian population that’s difficult to define—a mix of local, regional, national, and international Native people who call the city home. Thanks to small numbers and sheer heterogeneity, they exist without much voice, and often without a tangible connection to their heritages. “It’s a very diverse cultural mix, which makes it difficult to describe who we are and why we have specific needs,” Forquera offers. “As a subset of the total community, we’re very small. There’s very little attention paid to these smaller groups.”
On at least one Friday afternoon in Olympia this session, that wasn’t the case. “Be assured, we’re not just going to let this drop by the side,” Community Development, Housing and Tribal Affairs Chair Sherry Appleton (D-Poulsbo) says for the official record, before closing the meeting.
“It seems like the door was opened a little bit,” Forquera would later say of the work session, “so we’re trying to stick our foot in to keep it open.”
So far during the 2013 and 2014 sessions in Olympia, 40 bills relating to Native issues have been dropped; four have been passed by both chambers and signed by the governor.
As Rose will tell you, the invisibility felt by Natives in the general population shows up in Seattle’s schools. But according to those who’ve been around far longer than she has, this wasn’t always the case.
The District’s Indian Heritage High School, which for years found a home in the very same Wilson-Pacific building where Clear Sky now reserves a room on Tuesday and Thursday nights, was created in 1974. By the mid-’90s, the late Principal Bob Eaglestaff, a Lakota from the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation, was credited for turning the program into a national model for urban Native American education. The innovative school, which provided public education to Native students embracing cultural identity and Native American history, sought—with impressive success—to combat low graduation rates among Native students. District spokesperson Teresa Wippel points to the Seattle Public Schools history books when describing Indian Heritage, noting the 100 percent graduation rate it achieved by 1994.
However, citing low enrollment numbers, the District transitioned the Indian Heritage High School program in 2000, making it one of its then-five middle colleges (or alternative schools) that serve students of all demographics at risk of dropping out. By 2012, the Seattle School District reported that only seven of the school’s 50 students were Native. Preparing for the demolition and replacement of the Wilson-Pacific building in 2015, this year the Indian Heritage middle college program was consolidated with one located at Northgate Mall. As Wippel admits, “The withdrawal of district support and resources resulted in the decline of the program.”
Back at Clear Sky, the Seattle School District’s attempts to serve its Native population directly impact the 15-year-old sitting across from me. And with a few sharp—and obvious—exceptions, the challenges in Rose Gibbs’ life aren’t all that different from those of the children who surround us at the Clear Sky Youth Council, now beginning to line up for dinner.
In school, Rose says she does well in Spanish and history, but struggles in English and science. Sometimes she has trouble getting to school on time, a trip that requires two city buses. She admits to “hanging out with the wrong people” last year, but this year at Ingraham, things have been better, she says. I ask about friends; she tells me she has one. When I ask her whether she thinks the school district cares about her, she says, “Not really.”
The picture painted by the stats for young Native students like Rose isn’t pretty. In the Seattle School District, only about one percent of the roughly 50,000 kids identify as American Indian or Alaska Native. According to the 2013 Seattle Public Schools District Profile, in 2010 and 2011 Native students had the highest drop-out rate and lowest graduation rate of any demographic. While results vary from year to year, the report notes that “The American Indian ethnic group has historically had the highest dropout rates.”
A U.S. Department of Justice Indian Education grant application for the 2013–14 school year provided by the District depicts American Indian students well behind in mathematics, reading, and science. WASL scores in reading and mathematics for American Indian students are also the lowest of any ethnicity. Statewide, a 2008 report from the state Superintendent of Public Instruction’s Office detailed the achievement gap between white students and Native Americans, showing Native fourth-grade boys and girls behind white students in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math and reading scores, among other deficiencies. In King County, the Seattle Indian Health Board “Community Health Profile” released in Dec. 2011 indicates that 18.3 percent of those 25 and older who identified as Native American or Alaska Natives reported not having finished high school or obtained a GED—a rate more than twice that of the general population.
Given these struggles, it’s no surprise that Seattle Schools Superintendent José Banda has made closing the achievement gap between Native and white students a theme of his administration. In his 2013 “State of the District” address, delivered last November, Banda said: “We still have unacceptable achievement gaps between our students of color and our white students, and we’re not making steady progress with our Native American students. We simply must and will do better.”
But how? That depends on who’s answering. Many in the Native community call for more Native-specific curricula, more cultural inclusion, Native language courses, and—primarily—a return of the District’s Indian Heritage High School. This last would be a decision for the School Board, Wippel says.
“Our biggest challenge and our highest priority at Seattle Public Schools is closing the achievement and opportunity gap,” says Wippel, “while at the same time raising expectations for students meeting or exceeding standards. While we truly believe it is possible to eliminate the gap, it will not happen without a focused, well-articulated plan for providing a challenging and rigorous curriculum for each and every student.”
For Native students, according to Shauna Heath, the executive director for curriculum and instruction for Seattle Public Schools, this plan includes targeting resources; utilizing federal grant funding; working to place a liaison for Native students in every school; implementing a Washington Tribal Sovereignty curriculum (which has already started in West Seattle and will continue in 2014–15); and connecting students with Native professionals and role models.
The District also hired Gail Morris as its new Native American Services Manager in October. From the Ahousaht First Nation, and locally having adopted the Muckleshoot tribe, Morris’ job, among other things, is to help ensure that as many Native students as possible qualify for Title III and Title VII federal education funding. Historically, this has been an area of struggle for the District, with funding having been lost in the past and auditors on four occasions finding that Seattle Schools overrepresented the number of Native students who meet these requirements.
District-wide, another area of concern has been Seattle’s special-education program, which hits Native students particularly hard. A December 4, 2013 “Native American Education Board Update” from the district indicates that 29.9 percent of Native students are identified as qualifying for special education—the highest percentage of any demographic in the district. Many of these Native families have voiced complaints.
Especially troubling, says Deborah Sioux Cano-Lee, board president of the nonprofit Washington Indian Civil Rights Commission, are reports from Native families that their special-education students aren’t receiving the support that their student learning plans require under federal law. Sioux Cano-Lee says her agency has received at least 16 such complaints, and they’re being investigated. Unfortunately, this is hardly the first time the Seattle Public Schools’ Special Education department has faced such scrutiny. The state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction has chastised the program, even threatening to withhold federal funding, ordering problems (the failure to update and administer student learning plans and provide consistent special-education services from school to school) to be fixed.
“In all fairness, I’m going to have to say that [Superintendent] Banda inherited a huge mess,” offers Sioux Cano-Lee. “This didn’t start under his administration. This was an ongoing issue.”
Wippel says the District is aware of complaints from Native special-education families and others. She says these concerns go “beyond any one ethnic group,” while also noting that, when it comes to the District’s Native families, Morris frequently sits in on individual education plan meetings “in an effort to ensure that those families’ concerns are being addressed.”
“Our new Executive Director of Special Education, Zakiyyah McWilliams, has gone on record as saying that the Special Education department has experienced a high degree of staff turnover during the years and that instability has contributed to these types of concerns,” Wippel continues. “She has made it her highest priority to address these issues.”
As for the achievement gap, Wippel is blunt in expressing the District’s belief that closing it isn’t something it can do alone. In her words, it will require “intentional and strategic partnerships with our diverse families and community partners.”
Asked to describe Clear Sky’s relationship with the Seattle School District, however, Sense-Wilson offers a vague but telling assessment: “It’s complicated.”
“I’m from Seattle. I grew up here,” she explains. “I went to Seattle public schools, so I know that experience of going to school day in and day out and not being able to relate in the same way, and that constant pressure of conforming and not having your identity honored or recognized.” Rose breaks it down in far simpler terms. “Since we have the lowest scores, no one really cares,” she says, making it apparent that despite the district’s recent efforts, work remains.
“There’s not much to say, not much to tell,” Rose surmises.
If only that were true.
There are places to turn for young Natives in Seattle.
In addition to organizations like the Urban Native Education Alliance, the Clear Sky Youth Council, the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center and the Red Eagle Soaring Native youth theater group, nonprofits like Longhouse Media exist—at least in part—to help create a Native community within the city. Created in 2005 and currently run from a small office in the back of the Northwest Film Forum building on Capitol Hill, Longhouse was developed to “nurture the expression and development of Native artists,” according to Executive Director Tracy Rector.
A 42-year-old who identifies as Choctaw, Seminole, African-American, French, Irish, Scottish, and Hungarian, Rector grew up in Seattle and says many of the stories her 9-year-old Native-run nonprofit helps to tell “specialize in the urban native experience.” Since 2005, Rector says, Longhouse Media has helped make more than 360 short films and worked with 2,200 students—all of them young, all of them Native. She says over 80 percent live at or below the poverty line.
“In my own experience as someone who’s mixed-race and someone who didn’t grow up on a reservation, there are unique challenges in terms of our cultural intelligence and being accepted,” Rector says. “Our self-awareness as a Native person is very unique, because we also have all these other facets of who we are, and challenges and realities. [We’re] living in a big city, and negotiating what that means.”
In some ways, the role reservations have often played for rural natives in creating community and finding a voice is a void filled for urban Natives by local organizations like Longhouse. “Our people need to tell our own stories,” she offers, “and that’s what we’re committed to.”
“Many of our students haven’t been to their reservations before,” Rector says. “Their connection to their people is based on their connection as being identified as urban Native.”
Even with the work of her organization and many others, Rector worries about what the future holds for the small but important slice of Seattle’s population. Much like the ordinance that pushed Native people out of the city shortly after Seattle’s incorporation, she says gentrification and the disappearance of housing for low-wage or working-class Native families is doing the same, forcing them to “Federal Way and beyond.”
It’s a source of growing frustration, and it angers Rector. “Everybody deserves to be impacted by the beauty of Native culture in this city,” she says. “Native history is Seattle’s history.”
If Seattle’s history is Native history, then the city’s future is tied to the struggling urban Natives who call it home. As long as the city’s first peoples suffer, we suffer as a city. And for every kid at the Clear Sky Youth Council on this Tuesday night, the future is of direct consequence.
For Rose Gibbs, plotting a successful course into that future isn’t about census numbers, statistics, or trends. It’s about finding a way to pass English and science and finish the 10th grade at Ingraham. It’s about graduating from high school and, she hopes, making it to college—something Rose wants, but isn’t sure will be possible. Talking about the future elicits an equal mix of defiant self-confidence and uncertainty. She’ll be fine, she promises. She’s just not sure how.
One thing Rose is certain about, however, is that Clear Sky has helped. It speaks to the power of a grassroots movement and the importance of an invested community. It speaks to what people can do, even when it feels as if 98 percent of the population doesn’t see them; to resiliency and hope; to the promise of tomorrow, for Rose and others.
“I feel like I got support here,” Rose says of her time at Clear Sky. “It’s helping me know what it means to be Native.”
With that, she gets up and joins her friends. At this moment, in this warm room with working bathrooms, filled with people who care, Rose is anything but invisible.
UNITED STATES – NOVEMBER 14: Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., talks with reporters outside a meeting of House Republican Steering Committee meeting in Cannon Building, November 14, 2014. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call) | Tom Williams via Getty Images
By Felicia Fonseca, AP
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar’s reference to American Indians as “wards of the federal government” has struck a harsh chord with tribal members and legal experts in the days following a discussion about a controversial Arizona land deal that would make way for the country’s largest copper mine.
The Arizona Republican was responding to concerns from Phil Stago of the White Mountain Apache Tribe when he made the comment that stunned people at the round-table talk.
Stago said the phrase is antiquated and ignores advances made in tribes managing their own affairs and seeking equal representation when it comes to projects proposed on land they consider sacred.
“He kind of revealed the truth — the true deep feeling of the federal government: ‘Tribes, you can call yourselves sovereign nations, but when it comes down to the final test, you’re not really sovereign because we still have plenary authority over you,'” Stago told The Associated Press.
Gosar spokesman Steven Smith said that wasn’t the intent of the congressman, whose constituents in the 4th Congressional District include Apache tribes. He didn’t respond to requests to elaborate further.
“If that’s what he got out of that, I think it’s misconstrued,” Smith said. “If you look at the work the congressman has done, that’s far from the truth.”
Smith said Gosar has been an advocate for strengthening the relationship between tribes and the federal government. He pointed to legislation he sponsored this year that would do so.
Gosar held the discussion Friday in Flagstaff with Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, who grew up with Stago on Arizona’s Fort Apache Reservation.
Dozens of people attended the meeting to discuss land, mining and forest issues with the representatives.
One topic they addressed was a proposal to swap 2,400 acres of southeastern Arizona’s Tonto National Forest for about 5,300 acres of environmentally sensitive land throughout the state controlled by a subsidiary of global mining giant Rio Tinto. Stago said the proposal was disrespectful to tribal sovereignty.
Gosar said: “You’re still wards of the federal government,” according to the Arizona Daily Sun.
While former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall described tribes’ relationship with the federal government as that of a ward to its guardian in the 1830s, that characterization has long been irrelevant, experts in federal Indian law said.
Tribal members once seen as incompetent in the Supreme Court’s eyes became U.S. citizens in 1924, and the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 pushed the concept of tribal sovereignty and self-determination, said Troy Eid, a Republican and former U.S. attorney in Colorado.
Congress maintains control over Indian affairs.
However, the Interior Department is moving away from archaic paternalism when it comes to relationships with tribes, a spokeswoman said. The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ website notes the federal government is a trustee of Indian property — not the guardian of all American Indians and Alaska Natives.
Eid said the language that defines core concepts of Indian law is old and often ethnically offensive. “Wards of the federal government” is no different, he said.
“That’s just not appropriate,” Eid said. “In the heated context of what this represents, it’s especially inappropriate to be resorting to what amounts to race baiting.”
The trend has been for tribes to take more control over their affairs while holding the federal government to promises generally born out of treaties. In exchange for tribal land, the government promised things like health care, education and social services in perpetuity for members of federally recognized tribes.
Some tribes are taking advantage of federal laws that allow them to prosecute felony crimes and assert jurisdiction over non-Natives in limited cases of domestic violence. They also have the authority to approve trust land leases directly, rather than wait for BIA approval.
Sam Deloria, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe who served for 35 years as director of the American Indian Law Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said tribes welcome discussion about policy matters.
But when someone makes a comment like Gosar’s, “it doesn’t contribute much to the debate,” he said.
Cree students at the Anglican-run Lac La Ronge Mission School in Saskatchewan in 1945. (Archives and Library of Canada)
By Michael Bolen, The Huffington Post, Canada
A fresh campaign is underway to push the United Nations to label Canada’s treatment of First Nations people “genocide.”
On Monday, former National Chief Phil Fontaine, elder Fred Kelly, businessman Dr. Michael Dan and human rights activist Bernie Farber sent a letter to James Anaya, UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, arguing that several specific crimes against aboriginal people in Canada qualify as genocide under the post-Second World War Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG)
Article 2 of the Convention states that “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The letter writers assert that at least three actions on the part of Canadian governments constitute genocide under those rules.
3. The forcible removal of aboriginal children from their homes for the purpose of adoption by white families, a practice known as the “Sixties Scoop.” Estimates put the number of children removed between the 1960s and the mid 1980s at around 20,000.
The genocide argument has been criticized by Sun News pundit Ezra Levant, who wrote this summer that “Canada does not and never has had a policy of exterminating Indians. Genocides don’t normally include billions of dollars a year in government grants to the group in question, affirmative action hiring quotas, land reserves and other privileges.”
Levant accuses Dan of hiring Faber to curry favour with First Nations people so his Gemini Power Corp. can get permission to build power plants on reserves.
Farber told HuffPost Canada in an email that Levant’s characterization is inaccurate.
Shipping tote dislodged during the Japanese tsunami washed ashore near Seal Rock, Ore. in late November. It was covered with about 200 blue mussels. | credit: Oregon State University
Winter storms off the Oregon and Washington coastlines are expected to bring a new wave of debris from the 2011 tsunami in Japan. Scientists say objects are already washing ashore – with potentially invasive organisms riding along.
In March, 2011 an earthquake and tsunami devastated a large swath of eastern Japan. The tsunami reached heights of over 100 feet in some places, washing large quantities of manmade materials out to sea. Japanese officials estimate that about 1.5 million tons of debris floated out into the Pacific.
Oregon State University marine scientist John Chapman questions the accuracy of that number, but says current tallies of what’s washed ashore on the U.S. West Coast are much lower than that.
“If we look at the amount of debris that we’ve found on the shore. And we try to estimate the poundage of debris and add it all up, it’s not even close,” he said. “So, where is it?”
Chapman says it very well could still be out in the ocean, waiting on the right combination of currents, winds and other factors to bring it ashore in the Pacific Northwest.
So far the tsunami debris has come over in waves. It started with buoys, polystyrene foam and two massive floating docks. The next winter, it was building materials, like lumber. Last winter, a parade of small boats started washing up.
And now the first large object of the season – a 4-by-5 foot shipping tote – has washed up near Oregon’s Seal Rock.
The common feature of all these items is the presence of coastal marine organisms that hitched a ride over from Asia.
“This is the biggest experiment in marine invasion ecology that’s ever happened. It’s unprecedented,” Chapman said.
He said open oceans are the marine equivalent of deserts: there’s nothing out there. At least, nothing of substance, nutrient-wise that coastal organisms would need to survive. This was the prevailing thought among marine scientists – until that first Japanese dock section washed up in June, 2012 on the Oregon Coast.
“That was the first time that anyone ever considered that marine organisms could drift across the ocean. It wasn’t as if they didn’t think about it, we assumed that it wasn’t possible,” he said.
As the years passed and the debris continued to circulate in the North Pacific, Chapman assumed the amount of living coastal organism would decrease. Again, he’s been proven incorrect.
“We’re still finding species that we haven’t seen before. It doesn’t make sense to us,” he said. “We shouldn’t be doing that, but it seems to be happening.”
The plastic shipping tote that washed up in Oregon in late November was covered in about 200 blue mussels.
Yet, just because non-native marine organisms are washing up on the West Coast doesn’t mean they’re establishing populations here; it doesn’t mean they aren’t, either.
The question is currently being studied by several groups using a variety of methods, from visual surveys to genetic testing.
But the organisms are very tiny and the West Coast is very large. And so far none have been found that can specifically be connected to the tsunami.
“If it was a herd of bison that came across, it would be a no-brainer; we could go out and find it if they got here,” Chapman said.
“But these things aren’t bison. They’re little tiny things – sometimes diseases and parasites. And even if they are here, sometimes we don’t find them for years.”
Despite the challenges facing scientists, Chapman said the waves of tsunami debris present an unprecedented opportunity. Between now and May, he expects to see another round data wash ashore on the coast of the Pacific Northwest.
MSNBC screen shot U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell tells MSNBC host José Díaz-Balart, ‘They know their lands better than we do’ when asked about the Keystone XL pipeline.
By: Indian Country Today
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell invoked not only tribal sovereignty but also environmental expertise when she spoke to MSNBC’s José Díaz-Balart about the Keystone XL pipeline, which many tribes oppose.
“I think the fact that the tribal nations are standing up saying, ‘We are concerned about this. We are concerned about water quality. We’re concerned about tribal sovereignty. We’re concerned about what this pipeline may do for our lands and our rights,’ needs to be heard,” she said when he asked her to put tribal opposition to Keystone in context.
“In my role as secretary of the interior we will make sure that there’s a platform for those tribal voices to be heard,” she said. “And I think they will make a very effective case because they know their lands better than we do.”
In the end it will all come down to the State Department, she said, which will make the pipeline decision “by listening to all of the facts and information they have,” including tribal voices.
Jewell also spoke about Native youth, the centuries of oppression that have led to the current state of affairs regarding mental health, education and poverty, and on how it is time to make things right.
“We have destroyed much of the hope and the pride and the future for a lot of Native youth,” she said. “This is the time to turn that around.”
Her full chat with Díaz-Balart can be seen at MSNBC.com.
The pipeline threatens many tribal lands, especially Sioux territory in South Dakota, given that the proposed route traverses the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. Last month tribal President Cyril Scott said that if the pipeline passes it would be considered “an act of war,” and promised to fight it all the way.
SEATTLE (AP) – The death of an endangered Puget Sound orca found on Vancouver Island in Canada might have been related to pregnancy issues, a research group said Friday.
The 18-year-old female that washed ashore Thursday was a member of the J-pod, one of three families of southern resident killer whales that spend time in the inland waters of Washington state and Canada.
“There were 78. There are now 77. We’re going down, and it’s tragic,” said Ken Balcomb, a senior scientist with the Center for Whale Research, which keeps a census of the animals.
Balcomb planned to travel to British Columbia to assist Canadian authorities in a necropsy Saturday to determine the cause of death.
From photo observations, he said, the whale’s “belly looks low and extended, and it could be that the fetus died in utero.”
Stephen Raverty, a veterinary pathologist with Canada’s Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, will lead the necropsy. He said he has seen two photos of the stranded orca and also believes it was pregnant.
“Based on historical information and clinical observations, the whale’s death may have arisen from pregnancy or complications of birth,” he said.
Balcomb said the death was another blow to the population that was listed as endangered in 2005.
A newborn orca born in early September was recently presumed dead. Two additional whales were confirmed missing and presumed dead earlier this year.
The population numbered more than 140 animals decades ago but declined to a low of 71 in the 1970s when dozens of the mammals were captured to be displayed at marine parks and aquariums.
Despite a decade of research, protection and recovery efforts, the animals continue to struggle primarily due to lack of food, pollution and disturbances from marine vessels.
Scientists will exam the organs and take tissue samples of the whale found dead on Vancouver Island. Along with determining its cause of death, they’re interested in tracking diseases and other issues to understand health implications for the entire population.
The striking black and white whales have come to symbolize the Pacific Northwest.
Individual whales are identified by slight variations in the shape of their dorsal fins and distinctive whitish-gray patch of pigment behind the fins, called a saddle patch.
The whale found Thursday was last seen in Puget Sound in late November and last photographed with her family on Nov. 26 east of Victoria, according to Orca Network.
“We cannot express how tragic this loss is for this struggling, precariously small, family of resident orcas of the Salish Sea,” the group said in a statement.
On March 8, 2013, President Barack Obama this morning signed into law the reauthorized Violence Against Women Act that includes tribal provisions.
Press release, December 3, 2014, National Congress of American Indians
WASHINGTON, DC – Vice President Joe Biden joined over 300 tribal leaders at the sixth annual White House Tribal Nations Conference today. At the opening of the conference, Vice President Biden delivered an impassioned speech about violence against women in Indian Country saying “The most horrific prison on earth is the four walls of an abused woman’s home. For far too many Native American women that is a daily reality.”
The Vice-President, who was the original author of the Violence Against Women Act and has been its most steadfast supporter over the past 20 years, was introduced by Councilwoman from the Tulalip Tribes , “Vice President Biden has led the movement to protect women against rape and domestic violence. Last year he helped pass the much needed protection to help Native women from violence. Mr. Vice President, you are correct when you say no means no — no more abuse.”
Referring to the provisions added to VAWA in 2013 that allow tribal governments to prosecute non-Indian domestic violence offenders in certain cases, the Vice-President apologized that it took so long to give tribal governments the tools to hold offenders accountable in their communities, saying “as long as there is a single place where the abuse of power is excused as a question of jurisdiction or tolerated as a family affair, no one is truly safe, and we cannot define ourselves as a society that is civilized.”
The Vice President delivered a call to action saying, “Tribal governments have an inherent right, as a matter of fact they have an obligation, to protect their people. All people deserve to live free of fear.” He urged all tribal governments to be prepared on March 7 when the law goes into effect to use their authority to aggressively prosecute domestic violence offenders. He stressed the need to change the culture that too often leaves victims asking what they did wrong and instead to focus on sending a strong message that violence against women is always unacceptable.
Vice President Biden also acknowledged that we have much more to do to protect Native women from violence including giving Alaska tribes the same authority and expanding the provision to cover sexual assault and other crimes. Biden called on Congress to appropriate the $25 million in grants authorized in VAWA 2013 to implement the new law.
Attorney General Eric Holder followed Vice President Biden, and strongly stated the Department of Justice’s commitment to improving law enforcement in Indian country, and to institutionalizing that commitment so that it will continue. He announced that he has implemented a Statement of Principles to guide the Department’s work with tribal nations into the future.
Attorney General Holder also announced a new initiative to promote compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act in partnership with the Departments of Interior and Health and Human Services. Holder stated that the initiative is “working to actively identify state-court cases where the United States can file briefs opposing the unnecessary and illegal removal of Indian children from their families and their tribal communities.” Holder went on to explain that DOJ will work with its partners and tribes to “to promote tribes’ authority to make placement decisions affecting tribal children; to gather information about where the Indian Child Welfare Act is being systematically violated; and to take appropriate, targeted action to ensure that the next generation of great tribal leaders can grow up in homes that are not only safe and loving, but also suffused with the proud traditions of Indian cultures.”
In this June 13, 2014 file photo President Barack Obama and Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe David Archambault II, left, watch dancers during a visit to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in Cannon Ball, N.D. Obama on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2014 announced an initiative to improve conditions and opportunities for American Indian youth, more than one-third of whom live in poverty. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)
By Blake Nicholson, AP
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — President Barack Obama announced an initiative Wednesday aimed at improving conditions and opportunities for American Indian youth, more than a third of whom live in poverty.
Obama’s Generation Indigenous initiative calls for programs focused on better preparing young American Indians for college and careers, and developing leadership skills through the Department of Education and the Aspen Institute’s Center for Native American Youth. Members of the president’s staff also plan to visit reservations next year.
The White House did not provide a cost estimate for the initiative, but a spokeswoman said the administration plans to fund it with existing money and the help of nonprofit and philanthropic organizations.
The announcement, made as part of the White House Tribal Nations Conference that Obama is hosting on Wednesday, comes five months after the president and his wife visited the impoverished Standing Rock Indian Reservation in the Dakotas.
The 3,600-square-mile reservation is home to about 8,500 people, many of whom live in run-down homes, and where the unemployment rate runs as high as 20 percent. The suicide rate for American Indians aged 15 to 24 is more than twice the national rate.
Cecilia Munoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said the president and first lady “were deeply moved” after listening to children’s stories about challenges they faced on the reservation, such as depression and alcohol abuse. Vice President Joe Biden said in a morning appearance before the conference that for Obama, helping Indian youth is “something that he came back from his June visit fired up about doing something about.”
Wednesday’s conference involves leaders from 566 federally recognized tribal nations, along with 36 White House Youth Ambassadors chosen from around the country through an essay contest.
“People who grow up in a poverty culture sometimes need guidance, need values, need a little bit of structure,” said Chase Iron Eyes, an attorney and Native American rights activist from Standing Rock who is attending the conference.
“Through some of the things the administration is doing, it looks like they’re trying to do that,” he said. “Youth — they just need the right tools, and maybe they can empower themselves.”
The White House also released a report Wednesday acknowledging failures in federal policy and highlighting the need for more tribal help in the areas of economic development, health and education. Slightly more than two-thirds of Native youth graduate from high school, according to the 2014 Native Youth Report.
One of the report’s recommendations is to strengthen tribal control of the education system on reservations. Officials are working to overhaul the Bureau of Indian Education, which is responsible for educating 48,000 Indian students in 23 states, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said.
Jewell estimated it would cost more than $1 billion to fix schools with crumbling infrastructures. Officials are pursuing money through Congress, existing government programs and philanthropic organizations.
This coming Wednesday December 3, President Barack Obama will be hosting the sixth annual White House Tribal Nations Conference in Washington D.C. In addition to leaders and representatives of the 566 federally recognized tribes who will be attending, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, Deputy Secretary Mike Connor and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin K. Washburn will join President Obama and other cabinet secretaries during the conference.
According to a U.S. Department of the Interior release, “Secretary Jewell will deliver remarks during the opening ceremony of the 6th annual conference and will join panel discussions on Indian education reform and climate change, along with other stakeholder meetings and briefings.”
Additionally, Connor will participate in discussions on protecting natural and cultural resources and Washburn will join sessions on government-to-government relations, economic development and upholding federal trust and treaty responsibilities.
Each year, the annual White House Tribal Nations Conference has provided tribal leaders the opportunity to interact with President Obama as well as with Secretary Jewell and members of the White House Council on Native American Affairs.
In an Executive Order establishing the White House Council on Native American Affairs in June 2013, President Barack Obama made the following assertions:
As we work together to forge a brighter future for all Americans, we cannot ignore a history of mistreatment and destructive policies that have hurt tribal communities. The United States seeks to continue restoring and healing relations with Native Americans and to strengthen its partnership with tribal governments; for our more recent history demonstrates that tribal self-determination – the ability of tribal governments to determine how to build and sustain their own communities – is necessary for successful and prospering communities. We further recognize that restoring tribal lands through appropriate means helps foster tribal self-determination.
This order establishes a national policy to ensure that the Federal Government engages in a true and lasting government-to-government relationship with federally recognized tribes in a more coordinated and effective manner, including by better carrying out its trust responsibilities. This policy is established as a means of promoting and sustaining prosperous and resilient tribal communities. Greater engagement and meaningful consultation with tribes is of paramount importance in developing any policies affecting tribal nations.
According to the Executive Order, the mission of the White House Council on Native American Affairs is to honor treaties, recognize tribal sovereignty and right to self-government in relation to such matters as promoting sustainable economic development, promoting greater control over health and health disparities, improved access to education and supporting tribal justice systems.
The Council which is chaired by Secretary Jewell has convened four times since 2013 and Secretary Jewell has visited over 20 Native communities. The Obama’s have also made efforts to reach out to Native communities including their historic visit to Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Nation earlier this year.
On Wednesday Secretary Jewell will offer her opening remarks at approximately 8:30 a.m. EST with additional panels on Energy and Climate Change at 2 p.m. EST and supporting Native Youth at 2:45 p.m. EST. President Obama is expected to offer closing remarks at the end of the day Wednesday.
