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One Teacher’s Story: CREATING A NEW FUTURE OR LIVING UP TO OUR OWN HISTORY? For those who might question whether a law such as Indian Education for All is necessary, Ms. Warren offers her own story as a perfect example of why it is. BY WENDY ZAGRAY WARREN OMETIME during my 14 years of teaching in Montana, I became vaguely aware of a Montana law known as Indian Education for All (IEFA). I teach junior high language arts in a school far from a reservation, and few of my students identify themselves as Native American. So, because of the many other things clamoring for my attention every day, I felt no pressing need to learn more about the law or how it might apply to my school or to me. If it did have something to do with me, I reassured myself, someone would tell me. And if it had anything to do with the students at my school, it must already be a part of the social studies curriculum. About a year ago, I heard Montana’s legislators debating school funding for IEFA, and I began to grow curious. So I did a little research and discovered that the state legislature had passed the Indian Education for All Act in 1999. Written to support Montana’s new state constitution, enacted in 1972, the law directs schools to teach all students about the cultural heritage and contemporary contributions of Montana’s American Indians. According to the law, all school personnel are also expected to “gain an understanding of and appreciation for the American Indian people.” “School personnel?” I thought. “That’s me.” With the nagging suspicion that IEFA might, in fact, have implications

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WENDY ZAGRAY WARREN is co-founder of Full Circle Curriculum and Materials, a nonprofit organization supporting implementation of Montana’s Indian Education for All. She teaches at Columbia Falls, Mont., and is on the leadership team of the Montana Writing Project. 198

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for me and my school, I finally read the law. It is impressive, for it is deeply rooted in democracy and reflects so much of what I believe about the roles and responsibilities of education in our society. As I’ve learned more about IEFA, I’ve come to feel proud that my state is taking the lead in what I hope will become a national movement in American education. Perhaps most important, I now realize that I have a clear responsibility to my students and to myself. And that means I have a lot of work to do. WHY DIDN’T I KNOW? A year ago, I knew very little about American Indian history, and what I did know about Montana’s tribes could have been gleaned from a tourism brochure. That’s because I — like most other Americans — am a product of a system of education that simply does not include Indians. In my high school class in Ohio history, for example, I learned matter-of-factly how the Shawnee, Wyandot, and Erie tribes disappeared when Mad Anthony Wayne killed them off to clear the way for “settlers” to move west. Today, I would call that ethnic cleansing. But the authors of my textbook didn’t even hint that it might represent some injustice. Instead, this process was celebrated as “Manifest Destiny.” However, at least some Ohio Indians must have escaped Wayne’s slaughter and the later removal to “Indian Territory” because I saw Indians once a year when my parents took me to an Ohio Indian festival. I must have been aware that Indians lived somewhere in the state, but I never wondered where or how they lived. I don’t know why it has taken me so long to notice my

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ignorance. Nearly 30 years ago, I lived and studied in Otorohanga, New Zealand. While in school there, I learned the history, language, and culture of the Maori, New Zealand’s indigenous people. I attended school and played basketball with Maori kids. They were a visible part of every community. You would think that I might have made a connection. I might have wondered where the indigenous people in my country were. I didn’t see them in my high school. No class existed to teach me their language and culture. It was as if Indians weren’t even there — weren’t even a part of our society. And yet they were there, and I could have seen them if I’d known to look. With the support of IEFA, perhaps today’s students in Montana schools will notice, both while they’re in school and when they reach adulthood. American Indians live in all parts of Montana, where I now live. But I honestly can’t say that I have been any more aware of them or of their histories and cultures than I was years ago in Ohio. Nor have I been aware of any expectation that, as a teacher and citizen of a state where Native Americans are so prominent, I should know. That has to change, not only because of the law, but because it will make our state stronger and a better place to live. In the end, though, it was my students, as usual, who made the most convincing case for IEFA. Last year, I took my first small, tentative step to share with them some information about Montana’s Native peoples. In preparation for writing magazine articles of their own, my class studied several well-written articles. One was about a boy’s experience in an Indian boarding school. A student in my class, a popular seventh-grader, told me that his grandpa went to boarding school. It turns out his grandfather is Blackfeet. I hadn’t even realized this student was American Indian, and he had never mentioned it until this moment: the moment when he saw himself in my classroom for the first time. I should have known this, too. I learned a long time ago about the correlation between students’ academic success and whether they were able to see themselves in schools. That was the reason leaders of the women’s movement demanded that textbook companies begin to write stories with girls as protagonists, to include pictures of girls, and to acknowledge that women have played a role in this country’s history. Soon after, people of non-European cultures also began to appear in classroom texts. Yet American Indians still haven’t made a serious appearance, except as stereotypes in war bonnets and moccasins. Even a growing emphasis on multicultural education often overlooks Native voices and perspectives. For example, turn to the authors’ page of any textbook, and you NOVEMBER 2006

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are likely to see people of many different colors and cultures. Rarely will you see an American Indian. Simply by reading one article and sharing it with my students, I had come to realize that some of them were truly seeing themselves in school for the first time. In this way, my own students led me to the most compelling reason to learn about Montana’s Indians. Indian children are participants in my classroom; they live in my town, just as they are a part of classrooms and towns all over this country. You can’t tell who is Native American and who is not just by looking. “They” are a part of “us.” I have just been blind to their presence. But I’ve finally learned enough to decide to take off the blinders. THE HARD WORK BEGINS I’m so appalled at my own ignorance that I have begun to learn eagerly — indeed, almost defiantly. And what I’m learning is interesting, exciting, and thought-provoking. When I think about it, it seems logical that, when the first Europeans came to this land, there were things they could learn only from the people who already lived here. Those new ideas and ways of doing things have become a part of a collective American culture. But I never knew what they were. For example, when our Founding Fathers wanted to create a new form of government, different from the familiar models they knew in Europe, they looked to the Iroquois Confederacy. Yet I knew nothing about the Iroquois Great Law of Peace and had no idea that this document influenced the writing of the U.S. Constitution. I’m also beginning to understand why social studies textbooks have avoided the topics of Native American history and contemporary life — or have watered them down so much as to be almost unrecognizable. It is easier not to know. The history of our government’s relations with Indian peoples is not something that makes me proud to be American, and creating proud citizens is a primary goal of these textbooks. There is a difference, however, between creating informed, proud citizens and fostering blind patriotism. My hope is that we are now ready to face even our toughest issues by teaching the truth about them and using our collective wisdom to work toward solutions. Teaching a more accurate history, however, and introducing contemporary topics and cultures will be fraught with problems. Many of the ugly and embarrassing episodes that in the past were largely omitted are difficult to address and make us uncomfortable. Yet we teach other difficult subjects as a matter of course. Most students, for example, learn about the Holocaust and the Middle Passage. Yet we do not routinely teach that our nation’s first slaves 200

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were Indians or that the Sand Creek Massacre falls within the legal definition of genocide. And it will be just as difficult to teach about contemporary issues facing Native peoples. Historic treaties continue to go unrecognized. Money kept “in trust” for the tribes is still “unaccounted for,” and it seems that even today some lobbyists feel free to simply steal tribal money. Traditional sacred sites are constantly in danger of disappearing in the name of “progress.” Some tribes are now minorities on their own reservations, as the devastating effects of failed government policies grow more significant with each generation. TOWARD INCLUSION I’ll admit that at first I didn’t see the connections between IEFA and the language arts curriculum that I’m responsible for. “I have enough to do as it is,” I thought. “And, really, isn’t teaching about Native Americans part of social studies?” Then I reminded myself — again — that this law is not only about history. Schools divide a vast sea of intertwined and overlapping knowledge into separate disciplines because each provides us a lens with a different focus as we struggle to understand our world. Acknowledged or not, the cultures of American Indian peoples are, and have always been, a part of the culture of our country. There are Native American scientists, mathematicians, artists, musicians, sociologists, teachers, authors, and poets. So I asked myself why these authors, poets, and storytellers haven’t been included in my language arts curriculum. And for the first time I began to think about ways to bring them in. When I did, the ideas came quickly, which made me realize this might not be as hard as I’d feared. I could read

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from the work of Native American authors as part of any genre study. We could discuss the traditions behind the stories my students and I often tell before we write. When I taught about stereotyping, I could include images of Indian mascots among the examples. No one is asking me to rewrite my entire curriculum. Instead, I need to slowly develop a new habit of mind so that the Essential Understandings (see the sidebar on page 189) become an automatic part of my planning. And, with the right materials, I’ll be able to find ways to incorporate information about Montana’s Indians into my lessons, both to enrich everyone’s understandings of the world and to finally welcome my Native American students into the classroom. Not only is that my responsibility, it is also my pleasure and my honor. So this is how I came to understand the need for a law like IEFA. Its very purpose is to break this cycle of ignorance that grips me — and many other good but naive people. The framers of Montana’s constitution had enough foresight to know that educating the next generation of citizens is the only way to bring about lasting change. My heart fills with hope when I see the potential for this law to bring so much good to the world. Then I start to worry. My biggest fear is that we might live up (or should

I say down?) to our own dismal history. It lurks silently in that dark, wide chasm between American “ideals” and the American way of life. It is in this chasm that blind patriotism is spawned. We proclaim our ideals loudly to the world — equality, justice for all — these truths that we hold to be self-evident. Yet we turn our heads and look away from the inequities inherent in our way of life. Once in a while, something prompts us to stop for a moment and look up, allowing us to take a wider view: the Civil War, the civil rights movement, the recent immigration demonstrations. Then, to our own detriment, we stubbornly refuse to allow ourselves to face the inequities, injustices, and blatant prejudice in our dealings with American Indians. If we are successful, the Indian Education for All Act will force us to take the time to stop and look up, and do something about what we see. SHOW US IT MATTERS Like many others teachers, I have learned that IEFA is, indeed, about us, our schools, and our students. And we want to do the right thing. But our already challenging jobs have recently been overwhelmed with the new re-

Indian Education for All: THROUGH OUR OWN EYES

Why IEFA? BY DOROTHEA SUSAG Education has the power to change the story of your life. — Debra Magpie Earling, Bitterroot Salish novelist and essayist

F THE experiences in our public schools have the power to change the stories of children’s lives, what happens to those who don’t hear the stories of their own people? And if children do learn stories about their lives, what happens when their teachers and texts regard those stories as inferior or obsolete, representing wrong values of property and government, and representing inadequate means for survival? What happens to children whose public education is rooted in an alien culture? How do the stories of their lives change?

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DOROTHEA SUSAG is the author of Roots and Branches: A Resource of Native American Literature — Themes, Lessons, and Bibliographies (National Council of Teachers of English, 1998). She lives in Fairfield, Mont.

What do they learn to value, what do they learn to reject, and what do they learn about survival when they don’t ever hear or read about the suffering, loss, and endurance of their own people? How do they establish positive identities for themselves when voices within their culture are ignored, twisted, and suppressed, and when voices outside their culture decide who these young people are and who they should become? What happens to the relationships among children from differing cultures within classrooms? Do the children from the dominant culture develop an understanding of and respect for the similarities that unite all peoples as well as the differences that distinguish them? Or do they learn to practice discrimination against cultures different from their own? Essential questions such as these prompted the creation of the seven “Essential Understandings” (see the sidebar on page 189). In turn, that document shaped the fundamental nature of Indian Education for All in Montana. K

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quirements of No Child Left Behind and more and more standardized testing. And as is so often the case with school reform, teachers must be the primary players in bringing change to the classroom. But no matter how committed we are to IEFA or how easy anybody tries to make it for us, we can’t do this work alone. If we are to meet these new challenges, we’ll need to feel strong and steady support from the governor’s office, from the school principal’s office, and from each tribal office. This work will require some unusual kinds of collaborations: school leaders communicating with tribal representatives, tribal members working together as well as with people from other tribal nations, Indian and non-Indian people interacting with the deepest respect. Montana’s Office of Public Instruction will have to coordinate these efforts so that we are all working together to implement change. We will need to feel the commitment and support of our superintendents, principals, and school board members. This support will show up in what they say and do to keep this issue on the front burner. Perhaps the most telling decision they make will involve spending the money allocated by the legislature to implement IEFA in all of Montana’s schools. Because teachers are responsible for bringing these changes to the classroom, it will be important to include us in deciding how this money can best meet our needs

and those of our students. And because this work cannot be accomplished in a year — or even a decade — the commitment by all stakeholders will need to be for the long term. Two needs in particular must be met if teachers are even to begin to implement the law: we must have meaningful professional development for all school personnel and classroom-ready teaching materials. Ongoing professional development. Providing funding does not magically change people’s hearts and minds, but if we use additional funding wisely, it can help us change what we know and what we do. The learning will not be easy, and the kinds of information and skills we need will be varied. Moreover, most of this information will be new to many of us, and we certainly won’t feel confident in the classroom until we feel comfortable with our own level of knowledge. Two separate kinds of professional development will be necessary. The first will help us learn the information that will gradually create new habits of mind, and the second will increase our ability to infuse our practice with rich content about Montana’s Indian peoples. One-shot guest speakers or brief attendance at institutions that specialize in Indian education may provide us with a starting point. But what we learn from such brief and infrequent experiences will not get the job done. In order to bring about lasting

Indian Education for All: THROUGH OUR OWN EYES

An Opportunity for All BY BRUCE K. MESSINGER MPLEMENTATION of Indian Education for All (IEFA) is long overdue, and it must be a priority for Montana schools. In response to the ruling of the Montana Supreme Court, the Montana legislature provided the funding needed to initiate a full-scale implementation of the constitutional provision. The heritage of the American Indian is an essential part of Montana’s history, but students, parents, and teachers know little or nothing about the American Indian tribes and how Indian culture has influenced the history of our state. Indians and non-Indians live together in the same communities, yet many of us lack an understanding and appreciation of American Indian culture. The public

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BRUCE K. MESSINGER is the superintendent of the Helena (Mont.) Public Schools.

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schools must incorporate lessons and enriching programs to foster increased understanding and appreciation on the part of the entire school community. Students also need to appreciate how the future of Montana will embrace the unique contributions of American Indian beliefs, customs, and quality of life so that the lessons can be passed on to future generations. Indian Education for All should be integrated into all content areas and grade levels in K-12 school systems. It should become an active part of learning in all classrooms across the state throughout the school year. Through effective curriculum integration, the essential learning outcomes associated with IEFA will be embedded into instruction along with the other Montana content standards. Age-appropriate lessons incorporating the heritage of

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change, professional development must be ongoing and accessible to everyone in a professional community. Obviously, developing this process will take time. And teachers are as diverse as any other group of learners, so these learning experiences can’t be standardized if they are to be effective. Professional development must offer teachers various points of entry and enable them to progress at different speeds. There should also be a variety of ways to learn, from reading groups to seminars, that allow for our professional growth over time. As classroom teachers well know, one type of learning will never fit all. Reliable, classroom-ready materials. Once teachers feel confident enough to begin actually teaching about Montana’s Indians, we will need reliable, classroom-ready materials. Nothing would cause greater panic than for IEFA to be viewed as a curricular add-on — something else for teachers to fit into their already overloaded schedules. Instead, we need materials that can be used flexibly, to match different teaching styles and situations, and that can be easily integrated into different subject areas. The information used to develop these materials must originate with the tribes themselves, and most tribes have already begun gathering the information needed to write their own histories. Then educational experts with plenty of classroom experience will need to “translate” this inforAmerican Indians will add relevance and value to instruction in the different content areas. High-quality professional development for Montana educators must be one of the top priorities if we are to implement IEFA effectively. Teachers are eager to learn about American Indian history and culture so that they can incorporate the curricular expectations into their units of study. To oversee the implementation of the law in the Helena Public Schools district, we have formed an advisory committee that includes educators, representatives from the Helena Indian Alliance, and members of the Helena community. The advisory committee will take the lead in identifying culturally appropriate materials and instructional units that will be incorporated into the classrooms. Members of the advisory committee will actively solicit the input of individuals who have expertise and resource materials to help with the implementation strategies. The Helena Public Schools district was recently awarded a state grant from the Montana Office of Public Instruction to develop an integrated approach across multiple content areas for high school students. Once this approach has been implemented, Helena educators will share their experience with other Montana educators.

mation into materials that will be useful in the classroom. Meeting the challenge of IEFA is not without risk, and many teachers express concern about “doing something wrong.” Some feel they might unknowingly pass along the same misinformation that was taught to them. Others worry that, as outsiders largely ignorant of our Native American neighbors, we may teach something in a way that trivializes the culture or might be seen as disrespectful. We will need to be patient with ourselves and with one another, because there is no doubt we will make mistakes. But the largest mistake of all would be to allow our fears to paralyze us into inaction. HOPES, FEARS, AND DREAMS Like most teachers, each summer I become filled once again with hope for the coming school year. I feel that hope now, as Montana attempts to blaze this new trail. This is an exciting time to be an educator in this state. Indian Education for All could have a huge impact on our students’ educations and our state’s future. The vision of the democratic ideal of a community that truly includes everyone sparks renewed hope within me. Maybe as we blaze this new trail, rather than living up to our history, we will create a new future — one that lives up to America’s ideals. K Another high priority is to supply classrooms and library media centers with high-quality instructional materials and resources related to IEFA. This educational venture provides a great opportunity to use different technologies to present information and experiences to students. Such technologies could include streaming audio and video presentations from American Indian tribal experts. The techniques of distance learning will help deliver lessons across the state. I serve on the board of directors for the Montana Schools E-Learning Consortium, and we are actively pursuing the possibility of offering professional development to Montana educators via the Internet. The training will be customized to target specific areas of need. To stretch scarce resources, the consortium will develop enrichment units for teachers to use in their classrooms. Indian Education for All will benefit public school students and staff members, and the diffusion of information and increased understanding of American Indian culture will have a positive and lasting impact on communities large and small across the state. IEFA is an incredible opportunity to add meaningful historical context to the curriculum and build stronger relationships and a deeper understanding among all Montana citizens. K

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