Born at Standing Rock, Defenders of the Water School will empower Native students with the teachings of Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ By Frank Hopper

For centuries, Western education has been used as a weapon against Native people. Brutal residential schools tore children from their families and communities and sent them to far-off places where they were often physically, sexually and spiritually abused. Echoes of that legacy exist today in what’s been termed the school-to-prison pipeline.

The idea was to reshape their minds to think like white people, to force them to learn facts, figures and skills useful only for becoming cogs in the industrial society. Education was thought of as a largely mechanical process, like installing software on a computer.

But Indian children are not computers. They are members of a community, members of a network of relationships, Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ. Often, the software of Western education just doesn’t fit Native children and the hardware crashes, leading to despair, drug abuse, crime, prison, and even suicide.

That’s why the innovative community-based education model of Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Owáyawa, The Defenders of the Water School, which arose organically 3 years ago at the Oceti Sakowin Camp during the Standing Rock stand-off is so important.

A school that serves the community

In an interview last May, two founders of the school Alayna Eagle Shield and Kimimila Locke, explained how it differs from traditional Western public schools.

“It will be project-based, but the idea is that the project that the students are creating, the project that the students are designing, will meet the needs of the community,” Locke said.

Alayna Eagle Shield, who grew up on the Standing Rock Reservation and had worked for the tribe as a language and culture specialist, described how students will meet their academic needs while at the same time serving their community.

“It’s going to be community education-based where the students are going to figure out what the needs are of the community and create projects or write papers or whatever their strengths are. They’re going to do things that are going to help the community that they’re in,” Eagle Shield explained.

Kimimila Locke, who is Lakota and Ahtna Dene, has been an educator for 20 years and described how she experienced community-based education at her first position years ago teaching at the Santa Fe Indian School. The school there is surrounded by several Indian communities and students become involved with projects those communities need.

“Whatever that community is working on the students are actually out there gathering the data, doing environmental, scientific data gathering and then coming back to class,” Locke said. “As an English teacher my part of the project was to help them create their reports and help them do their research. So they essentially created scientific reports they were then able to return to their tribal communities. And these were things that they were actually able to use in legislation trying to get water rights, for example.”

Locke described how she saw students become excited when they realized what they were learning directly helped the community they lived in.

“These kids are actually meeting the needs of their home communities and they’re excited about going to school, like ‘Oh, Jimmy! I’m going to go home and do this!’ And they’d be stoked about it and they’d jump in the back of the truck and we’re cruising on Rez roads and they’d have galoshes on and we were tromping through swamp areas doing all this and they were in it! They were just about it. So I’ve seen that in action. I know that that can work,” she said.

The guiding principle - Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ

The Lakota principle of Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ, “all my relations” or “we are all related,” was taught at the Oceti Sakowin Camp where the school originated. From August 29, 2016 until the camp was forcibly evacuated in February 2017, children of Water Protectors were taught in The Defenders of the Water School by tribal elders, craftspeople and storytellers.

Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ was the guiding principle of this first version of the school. Eagle Shield and Locke feel this core teaching fits perfectly with the new version of the school they are designing, which they hope to open in 2021.

“We see that as something deeper than just us all being related to each other and our families and our extended families. We see that as we’re related to the stars,” Eagle Shield explained.

Being related to everything in the universe is an understanding that teaches respect for all things and builds self-esteem. Using it as the core principle of the school’s teaching method enables students to build stronger relationships with their community, to give love to the community and receive love from it through learning. This method stands in stark contrast to Western public schools where knowledge is simply transmitted and its use isn’t as connected to the student’s real world experience.

“So we want to focus on, I don’t know what the right word is, but we’ve been saying ‘activating’ our students gifts,” Eagle Shield said.

Just as a plant grows all by itself if you remove the stones from the earth around it and provide water and sunlight, a student’s own natural abilities will emerge when obstacles are removed and the sunlight of praise and encouragement are applied.

The water that ultimately creates student growth comes from connecting them with their community and showing them they are a valuable part of it. The give and take of this relationship is the sacred water that brings life, the water protected at the Oceti Sakowin Camp, and the water defended in the very name of the school, Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Owáyawa, The Defenders of the Water School.

What’s next?

In the summer of 2018 Eagle Shield and Locke received fellowships from the Native American Community Academy in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Since then they’ve been traveling around the country as part of the fellowship, learning about the techniques used in other Native schools who are part of NACA’s Inspired Schools Network.

“We visited schools in New Mexico, Colorado, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York,” Locke said.

The school is struggling to find funding and also to navigate state-imposed regulations and accreditation requirements. Government educational systems do not fit well with the teaching methods of a culture thousands of years old based on the wisdom of generations of ancestors.

Hopefully, in 2021, the new Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Owáyawa, Defenders of the Water School will emerge from its birth at the Oceti Sakowin Camp and begin growing a new generation of wise and powerful warriors.

Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ

By Frank Hopper
Native American Journalist * 4-Time NAJA Award Winner