We’ve worked in education long enough to know that idea is not only wrong, it’s dangerous. And if educators let it guide the future of schooling, we’ll hurt the very children we say we’re trying to serve.

For more than two decades, we have led , an Indigenous, community-based public charter school in Northeast Los Angeles. We started this school because we believe education is not just a service — it’s a sacred responsibility that communities carry together. It is how communities sustain themselves, how culture is carried forward and how children learn to protect the world they will inherit. It was never meant to be a marketplace.

Yet the U.S. educational system increasingly treats it as one.

Schools are pressured to compete for students, buy pre-packaged curricula from multibillion-dollar publishing companies and outsource major decisions to consultants with a focus on standardization. Anyone who has sat through those meetings knows how quickly the conversation shifts from students to numbers. We’ve seen teachers, parents and even children reduced to data points.

These aren’t random shifts. They are all part of a growing push to marketize education.

You can see this trend in national politics as well. Recently, President Trump highlighted a meant to set up trust funds for children to invest in the stock market. It was framed as an investment in their future. But it also sends a message: that children’s opportunities will depend not on the strength of their education or the support of their communities, but on their relationship to speculative financial markets.

At the same time, efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education would place schools even more at the mercy of market forces. Yes, schools need funding. Yes, a functioning economy matters. But if schools teach children that their futures begin and end with the stock market, they are failing them. Their creativity, their relationships, their roots in community and their future—those are the things that actually carry them through life.

We know this because we’ve watched it happen at our school.

For 23 years, Anahuacalmecac has drawn from Indigenous knowledge systems, systems that kept communities alive on this land long before California was called California. Our students learn Nahuatl, English and Spanish. They plant gardens and learn where their water comes from. They study their own histories, including the parts of California’s story that don’t make it into mainstream textbooks. They participate in cultural protocols. They learn that they belong to a community and that their choices matter.

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s preparation for the world they’re inheriting.

In parts of Los Angeles, kids grow up breathing unhealthy air and drinking water that isn’t always safe. Their families struggle with rent. Parks and open land disappear to development. The effects of climate change show up in severe weather and devastating wildfires, in asthma rates and in the daily lives of students. These crises aren’t limited to L.A., or even California. This is the reality for many children across the country — and the globe.

Schools can’t pretend these conditions don’t exist. Our job is not simply to help young people navigate crises; it’s to give them the tools and imagination to change them.

That requires something beyond training students for the workforce. It means teaching resilience, curiosity, cultural memory and responsibility to the places they come from. It means helping them recognize that their value is not determined by an economy, but by their ability to strengthen their communities and repair what has been harmed.

This approach isn’t just Indigenous. Denmark’s education system — a model U.S. policymakers often praise — focuses on creativity, collaboration and student well-being. Danish children aren’t pushed into competition at every turn or told that their future hinges on financial speculation. They are taught to think, to create and to care for the world they live in. The U.S. could learn from that.

At our school, we’ve seen firsthand that when students understand who they are and what they carry from previous generations, they don’t run from hard problems. They move toward them with confidence.

So we have to ask: What if our public education system centered on children’s well-being instead of the demands of the market? What if schools invested as much in belonging and culture as they do in standardized tests and outside consultants? What if they trusted communities — and children — to shape solutions that actually address the problems they face?

The crisis in public education isn’t because families or teachers failed. It’s because its roots in colonial missions to civilize our ancestors, factory models of training wage laborers and Native American boarding schools committed to destroying culture and language still embody the illusion of democracy through government schooling.

Educators can choose to transform this reality.

When we all create schools grounded in dignity, culture, connection and care, we prepare young people not just to face the future but to shape it. And if we want a healthy society — one capable of meeting climate, social and economic challenges — there is no better investment than that.

When Cara Romero’s daughter was 11, she became interested in dolls. Romero, who is an enrolled member of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe in Southern California, began to think about doll culture more deeply and what it can convey to the next generation. 

Romero’s husband grew up collecting G.I. Joes, and her mother-in-law had her own Victorian-style porcelain doll collection. For Romero, though, her daughter’s doll phase reminded her of the Native American dolls she grew up seeing at truck stops along I-40.

The dolls were often dressed in plastic pony beads and fake buckskin that parroted the Native American Halloween costumes she knew all too well as dehumanizing stereotypes. So Romero, who is a photographer and artist, set out to create a series of photos that broke down these tropes.

Each photograph in the “First American Doll” series features a life-sized doll box that she designed and crafted, where she poses the women with objects that represent their families, traditions and unique stories. 

She wanted her daughter to be proud of her heritage. “I come from a community where women are allowed to have a voice, allowed to be really strong,” she said. “So [I was] wanting to pass down good self esteem and a strong sense of self and identity,” she said. “That’s what we aim to do as moms.”

She started the series with artist and powwow dancer Wakeah Jhane, who is of Kiowa, Comanche and Blackfeet descent. While the Plains Tribes that she is from are the models for stereotypical dolls and costumes, Romero’s photograph captures her intricate buckskin regalia, which was made by her family. Also on display are her moccasins and a fan.

“You can see the stark contrast between what she’s wearing and the Halloween costumes that people portray Plains people as,” she said. “I really wanted to kind of own it and be like, “You guys even have this wrong.’” 

She has since published nine photographs for the series, the most recent featuring Fawn Douglas, an artist, activist and enrolled member of the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, who is posed with handcrafted baskets and a gourd rattle made by her family. The box is bordered by a Las Vegas playing card motif. 

The current day symbolism and high fashion lighting communicates that these women are also contemporary, Romero said. “When artwork, and specifically photography, is devoid of modern context, it does something psychologically, it perpetuates [this idea] that we’re gone and only living in history.”  

Naming each of the pieces after the models was also meant to humanize Indigenous women in a way that they weren’t in historical photos. “A lot of times in the ethnographic photographs, they didn’t even say their name,” she said. “We don’t know who they were.”

Some of the photographs from the series are currently traveling the country as part of Romero’s first solo museum exhibition, titled: “Panûpünüwügai (Living Light).” They will be on display next at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona starting in February.

was originally reported by Jessica Kutz of ..

The South Dakota district has already frozen new classified hires, slashed travel and cut overall spending. But without an expected $18 million in federal Impact Aid funding, she warns, “I have no viable path forward to maintain school operations.” Unwilling to furlough or lay off essential staff — a move that would simultaneously derail educational continuity and destabilize a community where the school system is a key employer — the district is attempting to secure a loan to bridge the gap until Impact Aid arrives.

In upstate New York near the U.S. Army’s Fort Drum, Indian River Central School District Superintendent Troy Decker is dealing with similar problems. The “withholding of Impact Aid, together with military and civilian pay reductions, furloughs and outright job losses has created a noticeable anxiety in our community,” he says. All that, combined with uncertainty around state and federal education budgets, could lead to serious cuts in next year’s programs and increased class sizes.

The districts are among about 1,100 nationwide, serving 8 million students, that rely on Impact Aid to offset the lost local revenue and increased costs associated with nontaxable federal land, such as military installations; Indian Trust, Treaty, and Alaska Native lands; national parks; and other federal sites. The initial payments typically go out in October, after the start of the federal fiscal year. But the shutdown has stalled all payments and closed the office supporting these districts.

The National Association of Federally Impacted Schools (NAFIS) recently surveyed its members on the effects of the federal government shutdown, now in its fifth week. The response is clear: The situation is urgent, with districts across the country scrambling to meet payroll, maintain programs, and keep schools open.

Unlike most districts, these schools cannot rely on local property taxes for funding. For some, Impact Aid makes up more than half of the budget, covering teacher salaries, special education services, utilities and essential classroom programs.

Delays in federal payments can force these districts — many serving Native, military-connected, and rural students already facing inequities — to make difficult decisions. Across the country, districts are drawing on reserves, implementing spending and hiring freezes, and putting infrastructure projects on hold. 

A Wyoming district has eliminated tutoring services, while one in Wisconsin is considering cuts to after-school programming and an Oklahoma district warns that paraprofessionals will be the first to go if payments do not arrive soon. Lonnie Morin, district clerk at Arlee Joint School District in Montana, said her district has stopped all discretionary spending — including supplies, maintenance and repairs — and “anything else that is not absolutely necessary to run the school.”

Making matters worse, most staff members in the U.S. Department of Education’s Impact Aid Program Office have received reduction-in-force notices. These analysts manage payments and provide technical guidance. While the RIF is currently blocked by court order, if it moves forward, their absence could further delay funding once the shutdown ends.

Marking its 75^th anniversary this year, Impact Aid is the nation’s oldest K-12 federal education program and has earned strong bipartisan support. It is a cornerstone of the federal government’s responsibility to the communities where it holds land.

 As Jerrod Wheeler, Superintendent of Knob Noster Public Schools in Missouri says, “Impact Aid absolutely must be protected for the sake of our military connected students and for the sake of military readiness and retention.” Bryce Anderson, Superintendent of Page Unified School District in Arizona adds, “My strongest desire is that political division does not negatively impact communities like ours, [reliant on] the federal government’s promise to pay its fair share for untaxed treaty land.”

Every day of delay forces districts to make impossible choices: cutting programs, laying off staff and leaving children without the resources they need. The federal government must act now to reinstate Impact Aid payments and staff, honoring its promise to support the districts that serve our nation’s military, tribal, and federal lands — and the students whose futures depend on it.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 .

Graduation season is typically a time for celebrating the success of students making it through their education programs.

For some Indigenous students, part of that celebration includes having tribal regalia or objects of cultural significance as part of their cap and gown during the graduation ceremony.

In Arizona, Indigenous students are protected under state law. In 2021, then-Gov. Doug Ducey signed  into law, barring public schools from preventing Indigenous students from wearing traditional tribal regalia or objects of cultural significance at graduation ceremonies.

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Not all states have similar laws to protect Indigenous students. , but it’s now unclear if that applies to a case garnering attention in Farmington, New Mexico.

On May 13, Genesis White Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, was standing for the national anthem alongside her graduating class at the Farmington High School graduation ceremony when two unidentified school faculty members approached her to confiscate her graduation cap.

, White Bull is seen being instructed to remove her graduation cap, which was embellished with an eagle plume and beaded around the rim.

Brenda White Bull, Genesis’ mother, shared the experience with the Navajo Nation Council and reported that school officials later cut the plume from her daughter’s cap using scissors.

The Navajo Nation Council stated in a press release that Brenda emphasized the sacred significance of the plume, which symbolizes achievement and cultural identity, marking Genesis’ transition into new phases of her life.

The Arizona Mirror contacted the family for an interview, but the family did not respond before publication.

Navajo Nation Council Speaker Crystalyne Curley called Farmington High School’s actions “belittling, humiliating, and demeaning to the student and her family.

“There is no place for this type of behavior in our educational systems,” Curley said in a press release. “The school officials owe an apology to the student and her family.”

Farmington Municipal Schools, which oversees Farmington High School,  in response to the incident.

“During the event, a student’s beaded cap was exchanged for a plain one. The feather was returned intact to the family during the ceremony,” Farmington Municipal Schools wrote in the statement. “The beaded cap was returned after graduation concluded.”

Farmington Municipal Schools referred to the district’s protocols, which state that graduation caps and gowns can not be altered, per the .

The handbook does not contain policy language stating any exceptions to these rules. However, the school’s statement noted that students could choose their clothing attire, which included traditional attire to be worn under the graduation cap and gown, regalia, stoles, and feathers in their tassels.

“Students were informed throughout the school year and immediately before graduation of the protocol, including that beaded caps were not allowed,” the statement read. “This standard process helps us set student attire during graduations.”

“While the staff involved were following district guidelines, we acknowledge this could have been handled differently and better,” the statement read. “Moving forward, we will work to refine our processes at the school level.”

Farmington Municipal Schools stated that the district is also committed to exploring policies that allow for additional appropriate cultural elements in student attire. Indigenous students comprise nearly 34% of the school district’s population.

“School officials across the country need to be reminded who the first Americans are and whose land they inhabit,” Curley said in a press release. “No student in any school should be prohibited from wearing regalia that signifies their cultural and spiritual beliefs.”

New Mexico passed that might protect students against the Farmington schools district policy.

However, the legal pathway is unclear according to responses from spokespeople in the governor’s offices, state education department, and even lawmakers who wrote the recent law.

Each acknowledged that they were reviewing the law and could only give an official opinion once that was completed. Requests for comment were made to the New Mexico Department of Justice but were not returned in time for publication.

 (D-Albuquerque), who co-sponsored the law, said the legislation stemmed from the national Crown Act push that targeted to stop policies that discriminate against hair style and texture, with a significant tilt against African Americans.

New Mexico’s version was written from the views of the Native American cultures present throughout the state, Pope said, and the bill included .

“We wanted to make sure that we included cultural and religious headdresses to be even more inclusive than your hair alone,” he said. “And what I think is important in that language, when we look at Indigenous cultures, feathers are so cherished and protected and it is part of who they are.”

It’s unclear now if the law will provide White Bull support for any legal action she could take against Farmington Municipal Schools District.

‘It broke my heart’

After footage of White Bull’s graduation experience spread on social media, it sparked an outpouring of support from Indigenous people and communities across the country.

Navajo Nation leaders have voiced their support for White Bull and called for schools to support an Indigenous student’s right to wear regalia during their graduation ceremonies, saying denying it is a violation of their rights.

“It broke my heart,” Navajo Nation Council Delegate Amber Crotty told the Arizona Mirror when she learned what happened to the student.

Crotty said graduations are meant to be one of the happiest moments of a student’s life, and White Bull’s experience was tarnished by having something so important taken away from her.

“That’s so traumatic and not the best way to approach these situations when it comes to our Native students,” Crotty said. “In a day of celebration, just for her to be attacked like that.”

Crotty said the incident has been reported to the Nation Human Rights Commission, which investigates discrimination within border towns.

Farmington borders the Navajo Nation, and there is against Indigenous people living or visiting the city.

In April 1974, three white Farmington High School students brutally murdered four Navajo men as part of a practice locals called “Indian rolling.”

In response to the murders, Navajo and other Indigenous people held protests in the city of Farmington denouncing the pervasive racism and bigotry of the community.

Due to escalating tensions in Farmington, the New Mexico Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights launched a study of the relationships between the city, San Juan County and the Navajos living in the community and on the Navajo Nation.

The committee concluded that Indigenous people in almost every area suffer from injustice and maltreatment, . They recommended that city officials and San Juan County officials, in conjunction with Navajo leaders, work together to develop a plan of action to improve the treatment of Navajos living in the border areas of northwestern New Mexico.

The advisory committee conducted another report 30 years later and found that, while race relations may have somewhat improved in the area, racism is still an issue within the city of Farmington.

“There is a lack of understanding of how Native students identify themselves and celebrate themselves,” Crotty said.

She said that it is time to move beyond having conversations about cultural sensitivity for Native students, mainly because incidents like this keep occurring.

“That’s why we want to support mom and the family,” Crotty said. “She does want the school to be accountable, and she does want some sort of apology.”

Crotty said the staff’s actions at Farmington High School were inappropriate, and immediate action is needed rather than the school trying to justify what happened.

“The cultural identity of all Native American students attending Farmington High School are protected under the ,” she said, adding that what happened was a clear violation of the student’s rights.

“As we move forward in addressing this issue, we will be meeting with the school board and administration,” Crotty added.

In New Mexico, the law passed in 2021 is directed specifically to local school districts, but it does not allow the New Mexico Public Education Department to issue any statewide order on local issues, such as what students can wear at graduation ceremonies.

New Mexico’s 89 school districts decide on those policies, which is why other Indigenous students across the state have different experiences with graduation attire.

New Mexico’s Public Education Secretary, Dr. Aresenio Romero, offered support for White Bull but noted that the issue is the responsibility of the local district.

“I expect the Farmington Superintendent and school district to reevaluate their graduation policies,” Romero said. “I remain committed to promulgating tribal sovereignty and to respecting tribal cultural customs and practices.”

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a statement Friday saying that it was unacceptable that a student was reprimanded for representing their culture during a time of celebration.

“I appreciate that the Farmington schools acknowledge that they could have handled this situation better and that their policy may be too restrictive,” she added. “However, it shouldn’t have required the student raising this issue for a school to recognize its lack of inclusivity.”

Navajo Nation First Lady Jasmine Blackwater-Nygren released a statement supporting Indigenous graduating students who wear their cultural and traditional regalia during graduation.

“We stand with our Native graduates this graduation season and their decision to wear their traditional tribal regalia or objects of cultural significance, including eagle feathers, eagle plumes, and beaded graduation caps,” Blackwater-Nygren said in . “Our graduates and families take immense pride in what they choose to wear on graduation day.”

Blackwater Nygren was a guest speaker at the Farmington High School graduation, but she said she was unaware of what occurred until after the graduation.

“I am deeply disappointed that this happened at a school where we have many Navajo and Native graduates,” she said. “I hope the school learns from this experience and can take corrective measures.”

Blackwater-Nygren said that, for many Indigenous students, deciding what to wear goes far beyond simply deciding what color dress or shoes to wear. For some Indigenous students, it is a day for them to wear their traditional regalia proudly.

“Our regalia reminds us of how far we’ve come as a people; it shows our pride in our culture and how we chose to identify ourselves as Native people,” she said. “Some graduates are the first in their families to graduate or are only one of a few high school graduates in the family. A beaded cap further signifies this symbol of achievement, accomplishment and Native resilience.”

Blackwater-Nygren is familiar with this issue because, as an Arizona State Representative, she helped pass  through the legislature.

“As graduation season continues, I hope all schools will respect the decision of our Native students to wear their traditional regalia and objects of cultural significance,” Blackwater-Nygren said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network 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 .

The University of Wisconsin-Madison announced a program on Monday that would cover all of the costs for students who are members of one of Wisconsin’s 11 federally recognized Native American tribes.

Any enrolled member of one of the tribes will be eligible for the program and eligibility will not depend on a student’s financial need. The program was announced less than a week after the UW System Board of Regents a deal with the Republican-controlled state Legislature to freeze hiring for positions focused on diversity, equity and inclusion in exchange for the release of pay raises for thousands of UW employees and funds for capital projects — including a new engineering building on UW-Madison’s campus.

UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, who supported the deal with the Legislature, said the program for Native American students has been in the works for more than a year so its announcement is not related but added that it shows the university remains committed to diversity.

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“I have said and will continue to say that diversity is a core value for us as an institution here at UW Madison,” Mnookin said at a press conference announcing the program. “And this program is another example of the ways that that is and will continue to be true.”

The undergraduate program will cover the full costs of getting a degree at UW-Madison, including tuition and fees, housing, meals, books and other educational expenses. A separate five-year pilot program will cover in-state tuition and fees for students in the medical and law schools. The annual in-state cost for an undergraduate student is $28,916, according to the university. The cost of tuition and fees for law students is $35,197 annually and $42,198 annually for medical students.

Students will not need to apply for funding under the program. At the press conference Monday, university officials said students would just need to provide proof of tribal membership when they submit their annual financial aid forms.

Officials said there are about 650 students at UW-Madison who self-identify as Native American, however that self-identification doesn’t require proof of tribal affiliation and includes Native students from tribes outside of Wisconsin.

Mnookin said the program will be funded with money from private donations and “other institutional resources.” She wouldn’t say where specifically the other resources are coming from, but noted that none of the money will come from state funding.

The chancellor added that creating the program “felt like the right thing to do” to continue improving the partnership between the university — which sits on traditional Ho-Chunk Nation land — and the state’s 11 tribes.

“The tribal nations of Wisconsin, dating from the 1700s and into the 21st century, have always believed education to be the equalizer,” Shannon Holsey, president of the Stockbridge-Munsee band of Mohican Indians, said. “The truth is, if it were not for the loss of land by indigenous peoples, American colleges and universities would not exist. Institutions must challenge themselves to move away from encouraging acts that are performative into communities of transformative change. I believe today represents just that, the creation of this program marks a significant step in the partnership between American Indian tribes in Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While several other states have programs with similar goals, we are not aware of any other effort that goes this far beyond financially helping Native students afford higher education.”

Officials said they don’t yet know how popular the program will be, noting that the application deadline for incoming students for the fall of 2024, when the programs will begin, is Feb. 1. Mnookin said it would be unrealistic to expect a large increase in Native American applicants within six weeks of announcing the program, but that she hopes the number of tribal members at UW-Madison will continue to increase once the program is more established.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner 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 (Diné) 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 .

Draped on a solitary tree nearby were orange tapestries, part of a community-built memorial dedicated to the gravesite near the former site of the Albuquerque Indian School. It went up after someone noticed a plaque missing that commemorated the cemetery for Zuni, Navajo and Apache students buried there between 1882 and 1933.

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How the plaque went missing is a mystery, and its absence might have escaped notice a few years ago.

But a discovery in May of 215 unmarked graves at an Indian boarding school in southern British Columbia has sparked heightened awareness of the history and legacy of boarding schools in the United States.

U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced in late June the agency would investigate the extent to which there was loss of human life in this country and the lasting consequences of boarding schools. The federal government, beginning in the late 1800s, took Indian children from their families in an effort to strip them of their cultures and language. It’s unknown how many Native children were affected over the decades, but, at a minimum, the numbers are .

In her announcement, Haaland described boarding school legacies of intergenerational trauma, cycles of violence and abuse, and disappearance and premature deaths.

What Haaland didn’t include was that the government never returned the right to educate their children back to tribes. Or that Native students continue to lag their peers in educational outcomes.

While the era of boarding schools eventually waned, Native students were largely shifted to state public schools, where tribes didn’t create the curriculum or oversee what their children learned in the classroom.

But in recent years tribes and Native American experts in Haaland’s home state have been demanding more control, saying they know best how to educate their children. They’re supported by the 2018 Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico court ruling that referenced the Indian boarding school system as an underlying factor in poor educational outcomes among Native students.

In 2018, then-chairman of the All Pueblo Council of Governors, Edward Paul Torres, bluntly described the importance of the moment to a joint session of the New Mexico Legislature.

Calling Yazzie/Martinez a “landmark decision of monumental proportions,” Torres said, “Not since 1890 when the first Indian education policy was unveiled focused on assimilation have we had such an opportunity as we have today to redefine education that does not destroy who we are as a people.”

Excavating History

Haaland announced the Interior Department boarding school initiative during the National Congress of American Indians Summit during which Chairman Wilfred Herrera (Laguna) described in detail how the schools “ripped our Pueblo children – some as young as four years old – from the arms of their mothers, stripping them of tender parental care and compassion; many unable to return home until the completion of their studies.”

A member of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico whose own grandparents were subjected to the U.S. residential boarding school system, Haaland, is in the history and legacy of boarding schools.

But for anyone who wanted to know, that history is well documented. The federal government opened the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania in 1879, the first of many boarding schools that became home to Indian children taken from their families. Two years later, the Presbyterian Church opened the Albuquerque Indian School for Navajo, Pueblo and Apache students, transferring control to the federal government in 1884. It was one of many boarding schools that would open in New Mexico.

The goal was to force Native people to shed their cultural identities, language, and spiritual traditions.

Over the past century government reports sounded the alarm about boarding schools. criticized their inadequate facilities and the removal of children from their homes, stressing repeatedly the need for relevant curriculum adapted to the culture of the children.

Over the following decade, the federal government mostly shifted responsibility for educating Native children to state public schools.

But that didn’t herald an embrace of Indian culture

“There is not one Indian child who has not come home in shame and tears after one of those sessions in which he is taught that his people were dirty, animal-like, something less than a human being,” the said of public schools when speaking before the U.S. Senate subcommittee on Indian Education that produced the of 1969.

Nor did public schools empower tribes to share control of education, despite precedents of successful tribal programs in the 1800s.

The Choctaw of Mississippi and Oklahoma , sending numerous graduates to eastern colleges, the Kennedy Report noted. And during the same period, the Cherokee tribe controlled a school system that produced 100% literacy. “Anthropologists have determined that as a result of this school system, the literacy level in English of western Oklahoma Cherokees was higher than the white populations of either Texas or Arkansas,” the authors of the reports observed. But those Cherokee and Choctaw school systems were abolished in 1906 when Oklahoma became a state.

More recently, the late state Judge Sarah Singleton cited boarding school history in the Yazzie/Martinez court decision. And undergirding the Yazzie/Martinez decision implicate them as a key factor in poor educational outcomes today.

The document describes a sufficient education as one in which Native students are able to effectively participate in both their tribal cultures as well as non-Native settings. Essential to that is language.

“Language is the necessary means that provides for the full understanding of the indigenous customs and laws of the Pueblo people,” the document states, drawing from testimony of Regis Pecos, a former governor of Cochiti Pueblo and co-director of the Santa Fe Leadership Institute at the Santa Fe Indian School.

The current public school system is a continued effort at assimilation, one that makes for a fragile existence for tribes today, Pecos said in an interview.

“… our identity, that comes with language and culture and the knowledge of our history and governance and our music, our connections to since the time of origin or creation or emergence, you know, those are all fragile today because of the intentionality of the policies and laws, conceived to assimilate us, to disconnect us from our homelands,” he said.

Today, New Mexico’s 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 suggests those outcomes mostly stem from decades of underspending and neglect by New Mexico, shattering the perception that blame rests on children and their families and instead on a systemic failure.

The ruling “exposed that Native children attend systemically under-resourced schools that fail to provide essential educational programs and services and ignore students’ diverse strengths and needs,” noted the authors of the Pathways to Education Sovereignty: Taking a Stand for Native Children.

A way forward

The Yazzie/Martinez decision has brought into sharp focus a long simmering debate about how best to educate Native American children.

New Mexico has passed laws since the 1970s intent on providing culturally relevant education and language programs to Native children, most notably the Bilingual Multicultural Education Act of 1973, and the of 2003. It’s these laws that Singleton pointed to as an existing state blueprint for adequate education, if only they were followed.

The decision described as ideal an educational framework that draws on decades of Native scholarship about the needs of Indigenous students: a culturally relevant curriculum that centers the knowledge, perspectives, and lived realities of a student’s ethnic or racial group; Native language instruction; recruitment of Native educators and a collaborative relationship between state and tribal governments.

Native leaders would go a step further, urging that tribes be empowered to control the education of Native students.

“…there is still the need for that change of mind, and that is to give deference to the Indian leaders,” Pecos said, “… who have built their own programs and systems based on what they know to be in their best interest of their children and their people.”

Models for successful Native-led education exist, Pecos said, like the Keres Children’s Learning Center, which teaches traditional language courses to kids in Cochiti Pueblo; college readiness programs for Native Americans such as the Summer Policy Institute; and K-12 schools such as the Santa Fe Indian School, which under Pueblo leadership was established when the Albuquerque Indian School was closed in the 1980s.

“These are all Indigenous knowledge-based programs, not built by the universities but built by our own Native faculty,” Pecos said.

The has been offered up by Native American leaders and endorsed by tribes as a blueprint on how to move the state into compliance with the Yazzie/Martinez court order. The blueprint calls for increased tribal control and consultation over education, community-based education created by tribal communities, commitment to culturally relevant and Native language education, and development of a Native teacher pipeline. And it for permanent, year-over-year funding for Native students, language programs and tribal education.

Native leaders the framework is a long-overdue comprehensive approach, but so far, state leaders continue a practice of piecemeal reform, at most.

At the advent of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration, the Legislature in 2019 took up how to respond to the Yazzie/Martinez court order that the state rectify the poor education provided to so many of its kids. Lawmakers pumped enormous amounts of new funds into education. But gave short shrift to legislation that would shift resources to Native-led education.

Then, just a year later, in March 2020 just as the COVID-19 pandemic roared to life, the state unsuccessfully petitioned the court to agree the problem had been remedied, a move roundly condemned by the plaintiffs in the case, who say there’s still a long way to go.

The change of mind Pecos and others speak of — — is made more likely when powerful people show proper respect to the country’s history, starting with investigating boarding schools and their legacy in tribal communities. That pushes those stories into the public’s consciousness. Like Haaland’s high-profile initiative to identify isolated and forgotten burial grounds for children, which has already spurred the City of Albuquerque to action.

In the wake of renewed scrutiny of the 4-H park, Albuquerque’s volunteer Commission on American Indian and Alaska Native Affairs launched an investigation into the history of the park and what should be done today to care for the burial ground.

City officials are reaching out to tribal communities to gather their input and make recommendations.

While the gravesite was discovered in the course of building the park, its existence wasn’t a secret.

When the Albuquerque Journal reported a baby’s skull had been found during construction of the park, an area resident, Rudy Martinez, told the Journal he’d found bones there when he was a kid in the early 1950s. The newspaper ran a large photograph of Martinez examining bones.

And Ed Tsyitee told the Journal he’d been the caretaker for the cemetery for thirty years, until he retired in 1964. Tsyitee, a member of Zuni Pueblo who lived in Albuquerque, said the burials would have been made because “there was no way to take them home in those days.” Most would have been students, he believed, buried in military style clothing.

The newspaper later of the Albuquerque Indian School to put a fence around the burial ground.

Why that didn’t occur is unknown. A plaque was laid in the ground instead.

Now that plaque is missing. A separate marker at a nearby public art sculpture, laid in 1995, and tapestries hung in a tree are the only evidence of a little-known burial ground.

Commissioner Lorenzo Jim (Dine/Navajo) would like to see a designation for the site that could potentially limit access to honor its history. Jim said at a commission meeting on July 16 that the task requires care. “It’s a piece of land, and again, involving our children, so making it sacred is important.”

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