Last week, two of my students were discussing their recent high school graduations. While they are both citizens of separate Native nations and graduated from different districts, the obtuse administrators they encountered were remarkably similar. The first explained that despite Indigenous people accounting for a substantial number of the graduates, a drum group wasn’t permitted to play an honor song. The other’s class had a small Native population, but noted that they were specifically barred from beading their mortarboard hats and she was denied permission to wear her late father’s medallion. In each of these cases, the rationale the schools’ leaders cited was the need for outward conformity. While the aforementioned instances occurred in northeastern Wisconsin, Native students from throughout the country post on social media about similar experiences in their own communities. America’s formative schools are still haunted by the ghosts of cultural oppressors, overtly or unwittingly paying homage to failed educational policies of the boarding school era. While the trauma remains deeply rooted, tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) are facilitating healing by creating spaces where our students can gain a modern education that celebrates their enduring cultural connections.

Many Americans merely cringe at the infamous lines of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School’s founder, but a visit to a TCU classroom shows ways in which his sentiments are being confronted. In 1892, Carlisle superintendent Captain Richard H. Pratt responded to the calls “that the only good Indian is a dead Indian” with “I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” While some may toss Pratt’s words aside as merely racist, doing so overlooks both his attacks on tribal culture and the means to impart restorative justice. Pratt and his disciples sought to dispose of Indigenous lifeways, but their desire to use schools to achieve those ends has come full circle.

TCUs were founded to counter boarding schools’ cultural erasure model of education. As this semester began, new students joined their predecessors in walking down freshly smudged hallways. They took their seats in classrooms that valued Indigenous knowledge and heard the words of tribal languages spoken by their educators. They saw beading, ribbons, and turquoise stones adorning the clothing of their peers, and their course syllabi revealed that the texts they were assigned will privilege the voices of Native people. At their respective TCUs, students heard some of the stories of what previous generations endured and began to recognize that they are positioned to continue the revitalization of their culture.  

One of the great joys of serving as an instructor at a TCU is being a conduit for restorative teaching. This past June, I attended an American Indian College Fund event where the continuing educational and teachings aspirations of TCU faculty were recognized and supported. At that gathering, Ayyu Qassataq, who is Iñupiaq, conveyed that her own son was barred from wearing his seal skin mortarboard hat at his school graduation ceremony. While the offense happened just prior to getting his diploma when Qassataq was unable to intervene, she spoke up after the ceremony and her indignation led to Anchorage schools amending their policy. Qassataq told those of us at the College Fund gathering that too often “people get lost admiring a problem.” Her charge was for all of us in the room to do something about the problems we face, especially those pertaining to Native education.

While no single classroom or even college can be the sole mechanism for cultural renewal, they each can be a space where expressions of Indigeneity are fostered and encouraged. TCU students earn a 21^st century education in schools where they are encouraged to speak their tribe’s language, introduce themselves according to customs, and take part in classrooms conducted similarly to the talking circles too often relegated to weekend cultural immersion camps. They recognize that gatherings often begin with an elder speaking to the Creator on behalf of all assembled and that every graduation ceremony has a drum, an honor song, and a sea of beaded caps and eagle feathers.       

Within the walls of TCUs are faculty, students, and staff committed to vanquishing the ghosts of cultural oppressors. While 19^th and 20^th century Euromericans in positions of power enacted assimilationist education policy out of a sense of cultural superiority, today TCUs thrive because they are the antithesis to that reductionist thinking. Our schools allow Native people to flourish within their tribal teachings, and this semester is another important step forward on the journey of perseverance our students inherited.

Ryan Winn teaches in the Liberal Studies Department at College of Menominee Nation.  

Editor’s note: The opinions expressed in the Inquisitive Academic or any other opinion columns published by the Tribal College Journal (TCJ) do not necessarily reflect the opinions of TCJ or the American Indian Higher Education Consortium.