Re Imagining Education: Bring Native Culture back into Native Education

In the past, there was a practice to take Native children from their homes against their will and force them to study American culture in government sponsored boarding schools.

There were many ways the U.S. intended to take advantage of Natives by doing this like gaining more Christians, buffing their population and making them seem more powerful, get more scholars for research and studies and have more citizens to draft into war.

They were taught European history and culture. The children taken from their homes were never given any knowledge of where they were from or about their Native culture.

To Natives, a school based around their culture should teach about Native culture and history. If you go to a Native school simply claims to be about Natives but don’t teach about the history of Natives or teach about the culture. Native schools only teach about European practices and call themselves a Native schools as a hook to get more students to attend the school.

Many Native schools don’t actually have courses to teach Native languages of courses for people that speak Native languages. Native schools should at least have classes for native speakers and should require all staff and teachers to know Native languages.

We can stop this by introducing Native classes, such as drumming, beading, weaving, etc. In addition, we also can stop this by teaching Native history that American textbooks leave out, and lastly we can bring awareness to the community by letting them know about the injustice that occurs in our education system.

Written by Jay Shekhar (Muisca)

Edited by Josiah Vaomu (Northern Arapaho/Samoan), Taleah Vaomu ( Northern Arapaho/Samoan), Chayton Remle (Lakota/Pauite), Sanaia Pili (Warm Springs/Samoan)

Cover photo by Cante Remle (Lakota/Pauite)

*Re-Imaging education is a project of the Seattle Clear Sky Native Youth council. The project worked with Native youth to re-think how education for Native youth could look like, adapt them with critical thinking skills, photo journalism skills and journalism skills. In partnership with Last Real Indians, we will be running a series on essays the youth wrote, edited and took photographs for.