Post by blackcrowheart on May 17, 2007 13:41:14 GMT -5
Graduating to Prison: Native Americans Sue School District
By Mary Annette Pember
Nearly all the motels in Winner, South Dakota, are booked solid as folks make the annual trek back for the high school homecoming celebration. Businesses are festooned with banners lauding the “Warriors” football team. The little main street seems to shiver in anticipation of the big parade. On this weekend, all the restaurants and fraternal halls will be filled to capacity with revelers.
Everyone is coming home. Everyone except the Indians. Most of them are already home, and if they’re not, they seldom return for homecoming. This celebration is for the conquerors, not the conquered.
Birdie Ward is a nicely dressed woman with a warm smile who talks easily with strangers in the lobby of a fine Winner motel. A former homecoming “Indian princess,” she graduated in 1950 from Winner High School and currently lives in Rapid City.
She and her fellow alumni who are gathered in the lobby ruefully lament the loss of the old Indian-themed team mascots. The current Roman Warrior just “isn’t the same,” they declare. The homecoming warrior and princess used to be presented to the community in Plains-style garb as they emerged from their fake tepee on the school stage. The alumni nod in agreement, expressing a note of disgust regarding the Native community’s insistence that the Indian theme be dropped a few years ago. Ward and her friends declare that it was really an honor to the tribe and cannot understand how the Indians could be angry at such a noble gesture.
Ward and her friends sigh. “We’ve tried to help the Indians over the years, but you can’t get them to get an education, and it just breaks your heart to see how they live,” Ward says. While she acknowledges some discrimination, she adds: “I blame the Indians for much of what happens to them; they refuse to blend in. They insist on keeping to their old ways. After all, they are a conquered people.”
Ward also expresses disgust at the numerous government handouts she believes Indian people get. “They all receive checks, you know. Every Indian who has at least 1/8 degree of Indian blood receives a monthly check from the government,” she says.
She seems genuinely shocked and a bit embarrassed when I tell her I have 50 percent Ojibwe tribal blood quantum, and I receive no payments whatsoever from the government. She quickly responds, “Yes, well, you Ojibwe are so much more industrious.”
The racial rift between the Indian and non-Indian communities here in this town bordering the Rosebud Sioux (Lakota) reservation recently emerged in the form of a class action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of the Dakotas and the attorney general of the Rosebud Sioux tribe against the Winner, South Dakota, school district. The suit charges the district with discriminatory disciplinary practices and policies designed to result in unfair criminal prosecution of Native American students. The lawsuit is part of the ACLU’s national challenge to what it calls the “school to prison pipeline.” The organization claims to have identified a disturbing trend in which public schools disproportionately target children of color for criminal prosecution for minor school code violations. About 30 percent of Winner elementary school students are Native American, yet only 1 percent makes it to high school graduation. Native students are three times more likely to be suspended from school and ten times more likely to be referred to law enforcement than white students.
“Living in South Dakota is a very different experience for white people than it is for Indians,” says Jennifer Ring, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the Dakotas. “Discrimination against Indians here is a longstanding, dirty little secret.”
It’s as though the two communities live in completely separate realities, speaking different languages, and in a sense they do.
Beatrice White Buffalo’s adopted son Taylor, fifteen, attends Winner Middle School and is a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit. White Buffalo herself is a 1964 Winner High School graduate and former teacher’s aide with the district. But she now spends much of her day at home sitting in her wheelchair. She lives on the outskirts of town in an enclave of Indian housing unofficially called “the Hill” by Winner residents. These identical 1970s housing styles are found throughout Indian country. They are split-level affairs made of materials that don’t age well, and many of the homes on the Hill are down at the heels. Most of the yards have long since given way to wild prairie plants and bare ground, a stark difference from the tidy lawns in Winner proper.
The White Buffalo home is spartan but well kept, and the kitchen table serves as the family hearth, where Beatrice and her husband, Dale, sit and talk over coffee, field phone calls, and issue household orders. After years of dialysis due to diabetes complications, she received a new kidney in 2003. Beatrice is grateful just to be alive these days. She is in fragile health, however, and needs constant help. After she broke her leg during a fall while in the house alone, Dale had to quit his job as a home health care worker. The period surrounding her surgery was an especially stressful time for the family. Beatrice and Dale were providing foster care for three of Taylor’s siblings (Taylor is Dale’s biological nephew) in an effort to keep the children together.
During part of Beatrice’s hospital stay, the children were left in the care of a relative, who was lax in his duties, allowing the children to be out after curfew, she tells me. Eventually, Beatrice and Dale say they were charged with neglect, and the children were placed in non-Indian homes. Taylor, however, was permitted to remain with them. When Beatrice went back to the hospital in Sioux Falls for several weeks, she and Dale felt they had no choice but to bring Taylor along. He missed a lot of school and fell behind in his class work. Beatrice thinks this and the trauma of losing his siblings contributed to his problems at school.
“The other kids teased him because he was having trouble keeping up,” she says. “His self-esteem went way down.”
Shortly after returning to school in 2004, Taylor hit a Caucasian student after the boy pushed Taylor several times during a disagreement over a basketball. The middle school principal allegedly prevailed upon Taylor, who was eleven at the time, to sign an affidavit confessing to hitting the student. Principal Brian Naasz allegedly notarized the document and handed it over to the Winner police, whom he had summoned. The police then placed Taylor in jail. Beatrice and Dale say they were not notified until after their son was arrested. He was charged and convicted of simple assault and was placed on probation for ninety days and ordered to complete several hours of community service. The Caucasian boy was not disciplined, allegedly because the principal said pushing does not constitute fighting. According to the lawsuit, the principal told the parents it was necessary to send their son to jail because Taylor might “kill someone next.”
Beatrice and Dale had had enough; they agreed to join the ACLU class action lawsuit in which these allegations are stated.
Calls to the principal were referred to Don Knudsen, an attorney with Gunderson, Palmer, Goodsell and Nelson, LLP, of Rapid City. He represents the school district and maintains that it uses an objective “discipline matrix” in all its punitive actions. The matrix is a simple grid indicating responses to first and subsequent violations. He insists that all students at Winner receive exactly the same disciplinary treatment. In response to statistics showing the high rate of suspensions and referrals of Native Americans, he says that one has to look at student behavior. “The evidence will show that students receive the same punishment for the same behavior, regardless of race,” he says. As far as the principal’s reported comment that Taylor might kill someone, Knudsen said, “I have never heard that. I don’t know where that statement is coming from.”
By Mary Annette Pember
Nearly all the motels in Winner, South Dakota, are booked solid as folks make the annual trek back for the high school homecoming celebration. Businesses are festooned with banners lauding the “Warriors” football team. The little main street seems to shiver in anticipation of the big parade. On this weekend, all the restaurants and fraternal halls will be filled to capacity with revelers.
Everyone is coming home. Everyone except the Indians. Most of them are already home, and if they’re not, they seldom return for homecoming. This celebration is for the conquerors, not the conquered.
Birdie Ward is a nicely dressed woman with a warm smile who talks easily with strangers in the lobby of a fine Winner motel. A former homecoming “Indian princess,” she graduated in 1950 from Winner High School and currently lives in Rapid City.
She and her fellow alumni who are gathered in the lobby ruefully lament the loss of the old Indian-themed team mascots. The current Roman Warrior just “isn’t the same,” they declare. The homecoming warrior and princess used to be presented to the community in Plains-style garb as they emerged from their fake tepee on the school stage. The alumni nod in agreement, expressing a note of disgust regarding the Native community’s insistence that the Indian theme be dropped a few years ago. Ward and her friends declare that it was really an honor to the tribe and cannot understand how the Indians could be angry at such a noble gesture.
Ward and her friends sigh. “We’ve tried to help the Indians over the years, but you can’t get them to get an education, and it just breaks your heart to see how they live,” Ward says. While she acknowledges some discrimination, she adds: “I blame the Indians for much of what happens to them; they refuse to blend in. They insist on keeping to their old ways. After all, they are a conquered people.”
Ward also expresses disgust at the numerous government handouts she believes Indian people get. “They all receive checks, you know. Every Indian who has at least 1/8 degree of Indian blood receives a monthly check from the government,” she says.
She seems genuinely shocked and a bit embarrassed when I tell her I have 50 percent Ojibwe tribal blood quantum, and I receive no payments whatsoever from the government. She quickly responds, “Yes, well, you Ojibwe are so much more industrious.”
The racial rift between the Indian and non-Indian communities here in this town bordering the Rosebud Sioux (Lakota) reservation recently emerged in the form of a class action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of the Dakotas and the attorney general of the Rosebud Sioux tribe against the Winner, South Dakota, school district. The suit charges the district with discriminatory disciplinary practices and policies designed to result in unfair criminal prosecution of Native American students. The lawsuit is part of the ACLU’s national challenge to what it calls the “school to prison pipeline.” The organization claims to have identified a disturbing trend in which public schools disproportionately target children of color for criminal prosecution for minor school code violations. About 30 percent of Winner elementary school students are Native American, yet only 1 percent makes it to high school graduation. Native students are three times more likely to be suspended from school and ten times more likely to be referred to law enforcement than white students.
“Living in South Dakota is a very different experience for white people than it is for Indians,” says Jennifer Ring, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the Dakotas. “Discrimination against Indians here is a longstanding, dirty little secret.”
It’s as though the two communities live in completely separate realities, speaking different languages, and in a sense they do.
Beatrice White Buffalo’s adopted son Taylor, fifteen, attends Winner Middle School and is a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit. White Buffalo herself is a 1964 Winner High School graduate and former teacher’s aide with the district. But she now spends much of her day at home sitting in her wheelchair. She lives on the outskirts of town in an enclave of Indian housing unofficially called “the Hill” by Winner residents. These identical 1970s housing styles are found throughout Indian country. They are split-level affairs made of materials that don’t age well, and many of the homes on the Hill are down at the heels. Most of the yards have long since given way to wild prairie plants and bare ground, a stark difference from the tidy lawns in Winner proper.
The White Buffalo home is spartan but well kept, and the kitchen table serves as the family hearth, where Beatrice and her husband, Dale, sit and talk over coffee, field phone calls, and issue household orders. After years of dialysis due to diabetes complications, she received a new kidney in 2003. Beatrice is grateful just to be alive these days. She is in fragile health, however, and needs constant help. After she broke her leg during a fall while in the house alone, Dale had to quit his job as a home health care worker. The period surrounding her surgery was an especially stressful time for the family. Beatrice and Dale were providing foster care for three of Taylor’s siblings (Taylor is Dale’s biological nephew) in an effort to keep the children together.
During part of Beatrice’s hospital stay, the children were left in the care of a relative, who was lax in his duties, allowing the children to be out after curfew, she tells me. Eventually, Beatrice and Dale say they were charged with neglect, and the children were placed in non-Indian homes. Taylor, however, was permitted to remain with them. When Beatrice went back to the hospital in Sioux Falls for several weeks, she and Dale felt they had no choice but to bring Taylor along. He missed a lot of school and fell behind in his class work. Beatrice thinks this and the trauma of losing his siblings contributed to his problems at school.
“The other kids teased him because he was having trouble keeping up,” she says. “His self-esteem went way down.”
Shortly after returning to school in 2004, Taylor hit a Caucasian student after the boy pushed Taylor several times during a disagreement over a basketball. The middle school principal allegedly prevailed upon Taylor, who was eleven at the time, to sign an affidavit confessing to hitting the student. Principal Brian Naasz allegedly notarized the document and handed it over to the Winner police, whom he had summoned. The police then placed Taylor in jail. Beatrice and Dale say they were not notified until after their son was arrested. He was charged and convicted of simple assault and was placed on probation for ninety days and ordered to complete several hours of community service. The Caucasian boy was not disciplined, allegedly because the principal said pushing does not constitute fighting. According to the lawsuit, the principal told the parents it was necessary to send their son to jail because Taylor might “kill someone next.”
Beatrice and Dale had had enough; they agreed to join the ACLU class action lawsuit in which these allegations are stated.
Calls to the principal were referred to Don Knudsen, an attorney with Gunderson, Palmer, Goodsell and Nelson, LLP, of Rapid City. He represents the school district and maintains that it uses an objective “discipline matrix” in all its punitive actions. The matrix is a simple grid indicating responses to first and subsequent violations. He insists that all students at Winner receive exactly the same disciplinary treatment. In response to statistics showing the high rate of suspensions and referrals of Native Americans, he says that one has to look at student behavior. “The evidence will show that students receive the same punishment for the same behavior, regardless of race,” he says. As far as the principal’s reported comment that Taylor might kill someone, Knudsen said, “I have never heard that. I don’t know where that statement is coming from.”