Native Education Cabinet members raise concerns about Indian Education for All Act implementation

(Riverton, WY) – The Wyoming Department of Education has taken steps to address some concerns local Tribal members raised last month about the ongoing implementation of the Indian Education for All Act.

The 2017 law requires the WDE to “ensure the cultural heritage, history and contemporary contributions of American Indians are addressed in the Wyoming social studies content and performance standards” and to “make available materials and resources on the department’s official web site to assist school districts in meeting social studies benchmarks … relating to the study of American Indian tribes.”

In the years since the law was passed, the WDE has implemented the IEA Act by creating an “online repository with links to 22 resources, including nine directly tied to Wyoming’s tribes,” according to a report presented to the Wyoming Legislature’s Select Committee on Tribal Relations last month.

But when the agency reached out to Wyoming’s 48 school districts for feedback about the resources last fall, only 18 replied, the WDE report states.

The 37.5 percent response rate is “not ideal” but also “not unprecedented,” according to the WDE – but Scotty Ratliff, a local member of the agency’s Native Education Cabinet, said the WDE report indicates that the IEA “hasn’t been working.”

“Most of the districts did not respond to (the survey),” Veronica Miller, the Director of Federal Programs & Indian Education at Arapahoe Schools and another local member of the WDE’s Native Education Cabinet, said during the Tribal Relations committee meeting. “And a lot of them were … reluctant, waiting for the comments (about) what does DEI look like?”

Miller was referring to a new state law that was passed in 2025 “prohibiting governmental entities from engaging in any diversity, equity or inclusion program, activity or policy.”

Federally recognized Indian tribes were explicitly excluded from that rule, with the statute noting that “as a political class, classification or identity, federally recognized Indian tribes and programs, trainings, degrees, classes or endowments related to federally recognized Indian tribes or Indian history, culture, language and traditions, are not diversity, equity and inclusion as defined by this section.”

Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder failed to highlight that language in a Dec. 15 memo on the legislation, however, Miller said, asking the WDE to do more to “acknowledge” the exemption of federally recognized Indian tribes so that “there’s an understanding with the rest of the state and the other districts (that) the work we’re doing will continue.”

The WDE updated Degenfelder’s memo Feb. 3 – less than a week after the Tribal Relations Committee meeting – to include a reference to the exemption for federally recognized Indian tribes.

In an email to County 10 this week, WDE Chief Communications Officer Linda Finnerty said the original memo “did not reiterate the federally recognized Indian tribes exclusion because it is in statute and unambiguous. However, a member of the Superintendent’s Native Education Cabinet (the cabinet which she established) felt the memo needed to explicitly reference the exclusion, so we updated it to do just that.”

Finnerty said the WDE has also addressed a concern that Ratliff raised during the Tribal Relations Committee meeting, when he testified that the WDE had failed to facilitate the distribution of free, updated books about tribal government to state school districts.

“The Humanities Council bought three of those for every school district, (but) we couldn’t get the names to send them to out of the state Department of Education,” Ratliff said during the meeting.

Finnerty said the WDE’s Native American Education Liaison, Rob Black, has since “contacted Mr. Ratliff with a list of all principals and curriculum directors in the state for him to send his book to.”

That episode wasn’t the only instance in which the WDE didn’t seem “interested” in promoting the IEA Act, however, Ratliff said last month.

For example, when the Wyoming Humanities Council allocated funding to send elders and other reservation residents to present in school districts throughout the state, Ratliff said the effort “didn’t get publicized – or if it did, I couldn’t ever find any, and in talking to school districts, they didn’t know about it.”

“It just seems like that kind of blockage goes on, and it just feels like, from the very beginning, there’s been a reluctance on the Department of Education’s (part) to see if this thing could work,” he said. 

Twelve of the 18 school districts that replied to the WDE survey last fall “identified a need for more resources to address the Indian education social studies standards,” including “materials on tribal sovereignty and government as well as more professional development,” like “teacher training and guest speakers from the reservation or from the native community,” Black said during the meeting. 

With plenty of online resources now available to support the IEA Act, Miller said the WDE could respond to those survey results by shifting its focus to providing more in-person outreach to school districts throughout the state, perhaps through a newly designated Office of Indian Education staffed by “our own people who have the education, who have the experience, who are able to talk about curriculum development, who are able to talk about standards (and) assessments.

“We’re able to go to other districts and do trainings,” Miller said. “(We could) develop a list of consultants to develop a website that would have the resources of, ‘Here’s a video that you could pull up and here’s a lesson that would go along with it.’ 

“There’s so much that we can do if we’re given the opportunity to do that.” 

Asked to comment on the discussion, Finnerty said Degenfelder “has shown continuous support for tribal students and districts on the Wind River Reservation during her term in office,” highlighting the CTE initiative Degenfelder started several years ago as well as the “many other grants, programs, and systems of support” the WDE has provided “to assist Native students and districts during her tenure.”

For more information, contact the WDE at (307) 777-7675.