 - Several local residents re-emphasized the need for broader implementation of Wyoming’s Indian Education for All Act during a meeting of the legislature’s Select Committee on Tribal Relations this week. ){kind=link}
(Riverton, WY) – Several local residents re-emphasized the need for broader implementation of Wyoming’s Indian Education for All Act during a meeting of the legislature’s Select Committee on Tribal Relations this week.
The 2017 law requires the Wyoming Department of Education to “ensure the cultural heritage, history and contemporary contributions of American Indians are addressed in the Wyoming social studies content and performance standards.”
Those elements were incorporated “more fully” into the state social studies standards the year after the law was passed, WDE Native American Liaison Rob Black said this week, and the standards are now in the process of being reviewed and updated – an undertaking that is required to take place every nine years, according to the IEA Act.
The IEA also required the WDE to make “materials and resources” available on the department’s official website “to assist school districts in meeting social studies benchmarks … relating to the study of American Indian tribes.”
The agency’s new Native American Education Cabinet recently reviewed those resources, which have since been re-shared with school districts throughout the state “as a reminder and for consideration,” according to a memo from the WDE.
The Native American Education Cabinet is also developing an “essential understandings framework” for Wyoming teachers that contains information about the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes and other tribes from the region, Black said.
But Scott Ratliff – a member of the Native American Education Cabinet – said educators throughout the state need even more resources at their disposal to help them teach students about “what the Indian reservation here is about” and “what the two tribes are about.”
For example, he said the WDE could provide teachers with more tangible curriculum resources, as opposed to just overarching standards.
“I think we need to focus a little bit on what we, as a system, need to do to make it more available to those schools that don’t have the resources of the reservation at their fingertips,” he said.
WDE Chief Policy Officer Nish Goicolea agreed that “we could do more” to promote Indian Education for All, but she also pointed out that “there are so many other things (on) educators’ plates as well.”
Regardless, she said the WDE has invited the Native Education Cabinet to participate in the agency’s peer-review process this fall and “have a member attend these visits to the schools and give feedback.”
“I think that’s a really great opportunity to be able to say, ‘Here’s where more could be done and here’s how you could do it,’” she said. “Because I do think (it) is a challenge sometimes when you’re just not sure how to do it or how to implement it, and we want to support that as well.”
‘Coloring tipis’
Fremont County School District 14 Superintendent Blakke Bertram weighed in on the IEA discussion later in the meeting, offering his view that full implementation of the law would be realized only when there are “questions on our state assessment that are geared towards Indian Education for All.”
At that point, “I’ll know we’ve taken it seriously,” he said – but “I’ve yet to see that.”
For comparison, Bertram contrasted the implementation of the IEA Act over the past nine years to the current effort to establish a K-12 language and literacy program in the state – a process that has moved much more quickly and involved substantially more funding.
“When we put support and money behind (an initiative), we’re saying it’s important,” Bertram said. “Have we really done that for Indian Education for All? I mean, can we look honestly in the mirror and say (that) we made it that important? …
“If we’re serious about Indian Education for all and we’re not just going to make that lip service, let’s put some support towards it. Let’s put some money towards it.”
Without that support from the state, Bertram said off-reservation schools – like the ones his children attend – will continue to fall short of teaching students the concepts outlined in the IEA Act, or “what it means to be a Northern Arapaho or Eastern Shoshone tribal member on our reservation.”
“(Their school) doesn’t give them any of that,” Bertram said, referring to his children. “We’re talking coloring tipis. That’s the kind of stuff we’re seeing on our off-reservation schools when it comes to Indian Education for All – and that’s a border school. That’s a school that has access to these reservation materials. … We’re not talking Gillette and Sheridan.”
FCSD 21 Superintendent Deb Smith said the situation was similar when she was growing up as a Native American student attending an off-reservation school in Wyoming.
“There was never a priority about learning about either tribe, and I still see that today,” she said. “So I think we need to push more – not just from the reservation schools, knowing who we are and where we come from, but across the state, knowing which tribes are here and have been here before time immemorial and what those tribes have contributed to our great state of Wyoming. … People that are Wyomingites should know. They should be sharing that great history.”