Teaching Native
peoples' history focus of seminar - Tuesday, Oct. 18,
2005 By JODI RAVE of
the Missoulian
Education advocates will present their
views on what needs to happen to fulfill Montana's constitutional
mandate to teach others about Native peoples during a daylong
seminar Friday.
The mandate has been enforced recently by a
spate of legal rulings from state courts calling on educators to
embrace the constitution and the Legislature's Indian Education for
All Act.
“One of the challenges in implementing Indian
Education for All is in training new teachers and in the
professional development of the 10,000 teachers in the field,” said
Paul Rowland, dean of the University of Montana's School of
Education. “What is it going to take to make sure we're preparing
teachers who can adequately implement the act?”
Rowland is among a dozen speakers who will attend
the Tribal Leaders Institute and the O'Connor Center for the Rocky
Mountain West seminar this week in the House Chambers at the state
Capitol. Participants will discuss how to bring Indian education
into Montana classrooms, including the need to close the achievement
gap between Native and non-Native students.
“There seems to
be a renewed interest in our Legislature and the general public in
fulfilling the mandate,” said Bob Brown, a senior fellow at UM's
Center for the Rocky Mountain West.
Even though Montanans
voted for a constitutional mandate on Indian education more than
three decades ago, lawmakers and educators continue to flounder on
how to carry out that mandate. The Tribal Leaders Institute seminar
will create a forum for voices in the trenches.
“This
institute provides Montana's Native population one of its few
opportunities to directly influence the interim legislative
committee, both in Indian Education for All and to eliminate the
achievement gap between Indian students and others,” said Pat
Williams, also a senior fellow at the Center for the Rocky Mountain
West. “It is Indian voices we need to listen to.”
Earl
Barlow, a scheduled seminar speaker, was the Indian education
supervisor in the state's Office of Public Instruction in 1970 when
constitutional delegates were chosen to set the course for the new
Montana Constitution.
Barlow, a Blackfeet citizen who lives
in Spokane, Wash., helped provide a Native perspective leading
lawmakers to embrace changes that would improve the quality of
education for Native students and those trying to learn more about
Native history.
“This article in the constitution is your
grand plan, it's your blueprint for government ... the constitution
tells you what your vision is. Now you have to implement that,”
Barlow told lawmakers when he later lobbied them to pass the state's
Indian Studies Law for teachers in 1973.
The Legislature
passed the law, but then dramatically altered it three years later.
“The Legislature took the teeth right out of it,” he
said.
But it's the kind of legislation that's needed today,
Barlow said. “But we have to do a better job of informing teachers.
There needs to be a broader-based approach to sensitizing teachers
to the unique needs of Indian students because teachers are the
solution. They are not the problem.”
Seminar presenter
Maylinn Smith, director of the Indian Law Clinic at the University
of Montana, will provide an overview of the federal trust
responsibility in providing an education to Native
children.
Educators need to have appropriate, accessible
information, she said. Ultimately, accurate education will do much
to strengthen tribal economies and will help eliminate racial
tensions, Smith said. “By educating people, you'll find people more
inclined to work in Indian country.”
If you
go
The second seminar in the series “Montana
Constitution: Progressive Spirit of the Rocky Mountain West” will be
held Friday in Helena.
“Indian Education” will be held from 9
a.m. to 5 p.m. at the state Capitol's House Chambers.
The
seminar, organized by the Tribal Leaders Institute and the O'Connor
Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana,
will address the state's attempts to enact Indian education
requirements of the Montana Constitution.
The seminar is free
for those who attend sessions. Otherwise, $10 will be charged for
lunch or continuing education credits. A complete schedule is
available online at
www.crmw.org/
assets/misc/AgendaForTribalLeadersInstitute.htm.
For more information or to register for the seminar, call (406)
243-7700 or e-mail ThompsonJ@mso.umt.edu.
