S7E10 – An Overdue Reckoning on Indigenous Education

An Overdue Reckoning on Indigenous Education

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrate Schools podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver.

Val: I'm Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And this is An Overdue Reckoning on Indigenous Education.

I'm very excited to share this conversation today, Val. Dr. Susan Faircloth, who is a professor at Colorado State University brings us a lot of information that we probably should've known already.

Val: Absolutely. And I keep thinking about it. I just want to pinch myself every time I learn something new about Indigenous history or Indigenous current reality. Like, I should know this already and I'm frustrated that I don't all the time.

Andrew: Yeah. But I'm very glad that Dr. Faircloth was willing to come on and share some of it with us. And it certainly enlightened me, hopefully enlighten the audience on some of these, uh, unheard stories. They're not untold stories, but they are unheard.

Val: Yeah. I think it's also the place where we say listening as Dr. Faircloth just brings such a sense of peace. Even though the conversation was difficult and a lot of the topics she talks about are difficult. I just, I just need to shout out! We love you, Dr. Faircloth!

Andrew: Yes. Yeah. It's even possible to miss some of the power in some of what she says, because she just brings this real sense of peace and calm to it. And yet, as you said, the topics are difficult.

Val: All right. Well, I really want to listen to this.

Andrew: Let's do it.

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Dr. Susan Faircloth: Hi, my name is Susan Faircloth. I'm a professor and Director of the School of Education at Colorado State University. I'm also an enrolled member of the Coharie Tribe of North Carolina.

And before we start the conversation, I think it's really important to acknowledge the land from which I'm joining this podcast today. Which is the original homelands of the Cheyenne, the Ute and the Arapaho peoples.

There are also a number of other tribal nations and tribal peoples who traveled across these lands and lived on these lands at some time. And it's also important to acknowledge that past history, but in addition to that past history, the fact that there are still Native peoples who inhabit these lands.

So it's just critically important to situate, particularly this conversation, within that context of the existence of Indigenous peoples.

Andrew: Thank you so much for that, for that grounding. That is, that is very powerful and important. Speaking of the importance of grounding, I'm wondering if we can, before we go any further to sort of ground in a little bit on language. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about Native, Indigenous, American Indian, Alaska Native. Kind of, what, what language do you prefer? What makes you feel the most seen? And give us some context on that.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Right. So I think that's a great question. For me, I grew up in North Carolina, hence my, my deeply Southern accent. My tribe is Coharie. It’s C-O-H-A-R-I-E, and it's one of eight tribes in North Carolina. Um, growing up, I was always an Indian. American Indian or Indian. And I think I identify with that more closely than I identified with being Coharie.

But it was interesting, I went to college as an undergraduate at Appalachian State up in the mountains of North Carolina. And when I came back home, my parents were calling themselves Native American. And I said to them, what happened? I didn't get that memo. Like, when I left to go to college? Yeah. We were Indians, we were American Indians, and now we're Natives. And I think that was during a time in the late eighties, early nineties, when there was a shift amongst many Native peoples in terms of identification.

And so, you know, when you ask, what do I prefer to be referred to? I flip back and forth to be honest between, um, American Indian, Native, Native American, Indigenous, Coharie. It really depends on who I'm talking with, what I'm talking about. How I'm feeling that day.

And so I really encourage people to ask. If you're talking with a Native person to ask us, because there could be five of us in a room and you won't necessarily get the same response.

Andrew: Mmm. Yeah, thank you, that is, that is very helpful. Like, depending on the person, Native, Indigenous, Indian, they all work for someone. But there, I guess, are times and situations where you might really want to identify beyond just your, sort of, Native identity with your specific tribal or Native nation identity.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: That's also an important distinction because there are more than 600 different state and federally recognized tribes and Alaska Native groups across the United States. There are more than 200 different Indigenous languages still spoken to some extent across the United States. Now there are some that only have a handful of fluent speakers, right?

And so there's a real issue that we're dealing with around language loss. And in many cases, I think a better way to refer to it as the theft of language, like, the forceful stealing and theft of Indigenous language. In the case of my own tribe, our language was stolen or lost. And so, over the years we've been able to recover a few words, but we don't have any fluent speakers. And it's not, uh, not a written language. And so, it's been a real act for our tribe and for many others to rediscover those words.

And some would argue that if you've lost or had your language stolen, then there's a loss of culture and cultural identity. And so that, that's a real challenge, right? Like, I know I'm native, I know I'm American Indian, and yet I don't speak my language. So what does that mean for me as a Native person? And I think many of us struggle with that. What does it mean?

And yet I don't know how to be anything other than Native. I know how to be a professor! But I don't know how to be a cultural person other than being Native. And yet I don't have my language.

Val: Mmm. You mentioned, Dr. Faircloth, about “If you have a room full of Native people, why don't you ask us?” And Indigenous folks, Native folks, come in all varieties. Um, and so can you speak a little bit about that? Because I think there is an assumption, and there are stereotypical images out there around who Native people are and how they look.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Right. And I think that's a great question Val, and you're welcome to call me Susan as well. But I don't, I don't think that it is that easy to just walk into a room and know who's Native or Indigenous. American Indian, Native American, a tribal person. For example, in my own family, I'm married to a very White man, um, from Pennsylvania. And we have a daughter, Journey, who I talk and I write a lot about, um, who just turned 12, um, over the weekend and we adopted her. And her biological father is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation of Oklahoma. And she has wavy, long black hair. I have curly, frizzy, unruly hair. My husband has blonde hair. So when you see our family, you don't know what's going on, right? Like, like we're the UN. Who are we together? You know, all these, all these kinds of questions.

And then when people find out that I'm Native, “Well, you don't have high cheekbones. You have a Southern accent, you have curly hair.” And I've grappled with that. Particularly growing up, as I said, in Southeastern North Carolina, like, I always knew that I was Indian. Right? I grew up on Indiantown Road in Clinton, North Carolina. Um, I went to an all American Indian church. When I went to school, it was really racially segregated, except for, like, football and band, right? Like, or when we hung out, like there was a table for the Indian kids. There was a table for the Black African-American kids. There's tables for White kids. And then we had a very migratory population at that time of Latinx kids. And so, you saw those separations, right?

But I knew, I knew that when I went to Indiantown road, and I went to my home, and I went to my church, and I hung out with my friends, I was Native. But I remember, uh, going to college and the question that I always got is “Where are you from?” And I knew what that question meant. It was “Who are you? What are you?”

And I don't think that that's necessarily gone away as an adult. Right? I think when I'm with other Native people, and I've spent more than 20 years working on, um, issues related to Indian education, so everybody knows that's the work that I do. But there's still those questions, right?

So, I don't know that you can just walk in the room and just say “Based on these phenotypes, I'm in a room of Native people.”

And so, I think it's our level of comfortability. Part of that’s relationship building, can we get to a place where we can ask people. And not in a rude way, right? Like some things are none of your business. Um, I think part of it is that relationship building and trust. And, I also think it's about vulnerability, like being vulnerable enough to ask the questions so that you can engage in those real relational and authentic conversations.

Val: I was facilitating once and we were watching a quick video about blood quantum and one of the participants, blonde, just started sobbing.

And she talked about how her father always said, “You can't let anybody know that we're Indigenous,” right? And so, she just felt the weight of that. Because it was something that she was told she had to hide and to finally be able to release that.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Right. I mean, we have that in my own family. And again, if you look at the history of North Carolina, which is one of the states with the largest Native Indigenous population in the nation, right?

I think about in my family, and I write about this some, that my parents went to and graduated from East Carolina Indian School. And they went to that school, in the 1940s. And from what was then called “low first,” um, would now be like a kindergarten, but low first until I graduated from high school. And it was all American Indian school. And that school was started by our tribe in the early 1940s because up until that time, if you were Native, living in that Southeastern part of North Carolina, you could not go to school past grade eight. Unless you could pass as White or Black and go to a White school or a Black school. Or you could be boarded out and go live with a family.

And so, before the 1940s and the establishment of our school, East Carolina, Indian School, we didn't have opportunities for high school. So my parents were part of those first groups that went there. But they talk about that.

There were people in the community, and I see it in my own family, who were light-skinned enough that they could pass as White. Or they intermarried with African-Americans and they passed as Black. And they had those opportunities to go to school. But what that meant was a fracturing of those family relationships. Because once you passed, then there was no coming back. Right?

Andrew: Mmm,

Dr. Susan Faircloth: And, I mean, I think about the legacy of that. I mean, I have distant cousins and aunts and uncles that we’re just reconnected with, you know, in my adult years. Because of doing what you needed to do in order to have educational opportunities.

Val: Yeah. My grandmother just told me of some family members who have passed, and I always wonder, like, if they even want to know! If they even want to reconnect, you know?

Dr. Susan Faircloth: I think there's a legacy with that. That, I mean, you have to understand what was going on at that time in history, right? And to contextualize it, that those certainly couldn't have been easy decisions.

Val: Right.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: But I think a lot of it was about survival. I mean, you know, we started out talking about language. I think, you know, part of the reason that so many of the Native people in North Carolina don't speak our Native languages, I think is it's an act of resistance and survival.

Like, we had to be able to take on some of those Western ways in order to survive.

Val: Absolutely.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: And there was a high cost that came with that.

Andrew: It's obviously a tragic for, for the Native peoples who lost this, sort of, sense of culture. But I think, I just think about how tragic it is for all the rest of us as well. This sort of wealth of knowledge and, and history and context, and way of understanding the world that now we can't tap into as a broader society, because we kind of forced it under the covers.

We forced people to reject it in order to assimilate.

Val: So you talked a little bit about your parents' schooling experience. Can you talk a little bit about how that is similar or different to yours and your child’s at this point?

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Right, right. So, I think, you know, my parents' experience is, so different than my experience because they went to the same school building throughout their educational experience.

And so, you know, one of the things that I've done over the last several years is to go back and collect oral histories from members of my tribe who went to school at East Carolina Indian School, as well as people who taught there.

And the two people that I've not been able to interview are my parents. Um, and I can't bring the project to a close until I can interview them. And every time I go home, they want to talk to me about it. I can't! And I think that I'm not emotionally ready to field their stories.

One of the interviews that I did was with a group of elders. And one of them was a cousin of mine who grew up with my dad. And went to school with my dad. And, as he told me his story about going to school there, he just cried. And then he started to share stories about my dad. Not just about schooling. But, you know, my dad grew up, his parents were divorced. He was raised by his grandmother. My dad was light skinned, my mom was a little darker. If they went to a restaurant, my dad could go in and sit down. My mom had to stand at the window. Um, and my dad could go in the movie theater. My mom couldn't. You know, so there was a lot of, a lot of those kinds of things.

And so, you know, there were, there was education and there was a sense of community? Like, that community took care of those children and it provided, not only an educational space, but it provided a sense of culture and belonging and identity. Right? And so, there's a lot of heartache in turmoil in that, but there was also that strong sense of community that I don't know that I necessarily had had in my educational experience or that my daughter has.

I mean, my parents talked to me, and some of the teachers that I've talked to, talk about going through school and never having the first run of a textbook. Because the textbooks went to the White schools, the Black schools, and then they went to the Native schools. And by the time they got there, they were marked in, pages torn out.

They never had a cafeteria. It was later on in the existence of the school, which closed down in the sixties in the midst of integration, that they had indoor toilets.

For me, I went to public school. You know, as I said, it was integrated.

I was always identified as academically gifted. I was in band, I did other things. But, um, but my mother worked for almost 40 years in a hog slaughtering factory. Um, my dad, uh, went in the Marines, went to Vietnam. Came back home, eventually became the first American Indian police officer in our community. But we were still on the fringe, right?

Like, I didn't realize I was poor until, like, I went to college! People were skiing.

Val: Exactly!

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Like, yeah. I thought everybody lived like I did! You know, um, yeah, I mean, we were poor in terms of economics, but we also had a wealth. I mean, we had grandmas and we had a community. And so I never viewed myself as being poor until later.

So I had, I had that community. But when I went to school, I think that many people in the school viewed me from that lens of “Well, your mom, graduated and went to work at the hogs slaughtering factory. So, even though you may be academically gifted, if we graduate you and you go work where she worked, then we've been successful, um, with you.”

And I mean, nobody ever said that, but I think that was the expectation. And, I didn't get the nominations for colleges that I wanted or that I needed, or the help, financial aid. And I don't think that was specific to me, right? I think it, I think it happens with many people of color. Today, it still happens.

But, you know, my parents knew what that school didn't know. And that was, there was not a question of was I going to college, it was a question of where I was going to college. And you know, my parents paid for college off credit cards that they're probably still paying for and loans and everything else, because they were determined that I and my sister would have those opportunities that they didn't have.

Right? Um, and so I went on to Appalachian State and then I received a fellowship to earn my master's degree at Penn State in special education.

Then I went back to Penn State for my doctoral degree in educational leadership through the American Indian Leadership Program. Eventually went back to Penn State as a faculty member and the co-director and director of that program. That started my path, um, to higher ed.

And so I think, you know, what was different for me than for my parents was my parents had those expectations and made sure that their dreams for me came true. But, you know, I also credit my mentors. My greatest mentor has been a man named John Tippeconnic, who was a faculty member and then we went on to work together, um, and to write together, um, a Comanche man at Penn State, who always tells me that I can swim with the big fish.

Like he, he sees something in me that I still don't see in myself today. And so, um, and all he's ever asked is that you provide that same support and mentor the next generation of Native people. That's all he's ever asked. Right?

And I think he saw that, like, I, I had the opportunities to go to school, but even going to graduate school, I questioned “Do I belong here? Do I fit in? Am I going to make it?”

Andrew: That’s fascinating. Your parents had this, kind of, fully Indian experience, fully immersed in the Indian community, that was maybe resource-poor, but full of this sort of strong sense of affirming identity. And then it sounds like you had some sort of mixture in there. There was not maybe the same level of community, but still some connection to your community, and also these increased resources that gave you access to more opportunities. And then these relationships to Native folks to kind of rely on. What about your daughter?

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Our daughter, Journey, has a somewhat interesting experience in that, you know, we, we adopted her, we were in Pennsylvania. She started school in North Carolina. She was the only Native child. In her kindergarten class, went into first grade, there were two of them.

And I did what every good parent researcher does. I looked on social media to see how the school was going to treat the teaching of American Indians. And what did I find but people dressing up as Pilgrims in Indians. Right? Um, and so that was, I mean, that was our, kindergarten, first grade experience was having to go into the school and educate them about that not being right.

That experience ended up being so culturally and personally, uh, disconnected that we ended up taking her out of public school and putting her into a private school, a Friends school, where she flourished. Um, and then we moved here to Colorado and we experienced the same thing again. Only Native child in her school. The “dressing up” as Pilgrims and Indians. And, you know, we explained to the school why that was inappropriate. They didn't get it.

They eventually agreed not to do that particular activity. but our child struggled. Until her fourth grade year, she's now in sixth, and we got a wonderful teacher who was able to travel with her to fourth and fifth grade because of the pandemic? And that teacher saw her for this beautiful, intelligent, um, irritating, right? Like, child that she is. And she flourished. And went from the bottom of her class to the top because she had that teacher who saw in her the possibility and the promise.

And so, something that will always haunt me is that because of the virtue of my job. Um, my husband works for NASA. He can work anywhere as long as he has a computer. I'm a professor, I'm mobile. Um, and because of my job, I've moved us to places where my child has been one of, or the only Native child. And so she hasn't had that opportunity to go to school and to be in community with Native people the way that I did. Um, and I think that will always be something that I regret, right? Is not having that exposure.

She's also Cheyenne Arapaho. I'm Coharie. I struggle with what does it mean to teach her to be a strong Cheyenne and Arapaho person?

Um, and I don't know how to do that. Even though I'm Native, I'm not of her tribe. Um, and as she gets older, I grapple with that. Like how do we do that? How do we give her that access to her cultural capital and heritage and language.

I think what I've given you is those three somewhat related, but very different experiences. One in an all Indian school, one where there were certainly Indians or Natives and one where there's one or two, um, and very different experiences.

Val: Yeah. Thank you.

Andrew: I'm wondering if we can, if we can take sort of a step back and talk more broadly about history and, kind of, um. So I mean, I think this is, it's like paint three really specific pictures of educational opportunities for Native kids from your own family.

But I'm wondering if you can kind of take us one level higher to, the kind of Native boarding school experience, and maybe a little more broader history of that, because it's certainly something that I never, was never taught in school. And I feel like is a gap in my knowledge.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Right. I mean, I think you have to situate education within the context of the fact that there's currently 574 federally recognized tribes and Alaska Native groups. And those tribes have a government to government relationship with the government of the United States. So they are sovereign nations. 570+ sovereign independent nations.

Right? That have the right to have a relationship with the federal government, just as Canada, Mexico, Japan, China, any other nation would have.

That's complicated there, right? Because those 574 nations are situated geopolitically within the confines of the United States. Right? The United States is probably never going to relinquish, right, it's sovereignty. Um, but they have that, that nation to nation relationship.

The other tribes, including mine, are either recognized by the state or they're in a process of recognition. So in that process of recognition, for federal recognition, you have to be able to prove that you've had a dedicated landmass, that you've had a language, a culture, a history, all these different things.

You have to prove that to the federal government, right? In order to become recognized. So my tribe has been petitioning the state since the 1970s. And we're recognized by our state, but not by the federal government.

Andrew: The burden, the burden is on the tribe-

Dr. Susan Faircloth: It is on the tribe

Andrew: - to prove that they exist rather than on the colonizing government to prove that it doesn't exist. Government that took the land in the first place. Right. So to say like, yes, you have, yes. We accept your argument that you have been here.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Right. And the very government that not only took the land, but it also forced migration. Right? When you think about the Trail of Tears, you know. Going all the way from Georgia and North Carolina over to Oklahoma, which is not a short trek, right? In the midst of winter. It also had treaties that it established with tribes and then went through a period of aggregating or failing to abide by those treaties.

And then it also went through a period of termination where there were tribes that were recognized by the federal government, but the federal government said “We no longer want to do that. So we're not going to honor the treaties and we're not going to honor your tribal, um, identity or your existence as a tribe.” See, it's, it's a really muddy, um, history.

I say all that because those 570+ tribes, those treaties that we're engaged in between the U S government and between the tribes included provision for health, education and welfare, right?

It's a provision that's not there for any other racial, ethnic, uh, political entity within the United States. With the exception of children whose parents or guardians are in the military? So they have department of defense schools. And if you're a child with a documented disability, right? You have a federal entitlement to special education services.

Those treaties - which means that the federal government has what is termed as a “trust responsibility” for American Indian, Native American, Alaska Native people - it is obligated to provide educational services for those federally recognized tribes.

Now, the Bureau of Indian Education is a federally operated system of education. It comes out of the US Department of Interior and it operates, I want to say, about 186 schools and dormitories across the nation. It educates about probably 8% of all native students in the United States. The other 92% of Native students either go to public schools or private schools. Right?

So the federal government has that responsibility. Failure to provide adequate education to American Indians, Alaska Natives, right, is a legal, moral and ethical violation of the United States government's legal responsibility to educate American Indians and Alaska natives, right? That is different.

There's nowhere in the Constitution where it says education is a responsibility of the federal government. It's a responsibility of the states. It is a responsibility of the federal government for American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Right? And so we oftentimes lose sight of that. We non-Natives lose sight of that, right? Because that's a very powerful argument when the federal government has that responsibility. We ceded lands in exchange -

Andrew: In exchange for that promise.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: - for that. Right. I think the one thing that you'd asked me about earlier was boarding schools.

Boarding schools are a piece of the history of education for Native children, but not the entire piece.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Um, I think it's really important to understand, though, the context of boarding schools because boarding schools started, uh, primarily in the 1800s. They still exist today. But I think one of the most visible signs of the impact of the boarding school era on Native children is evidence through the policies and practices of a man named Richard Henry Pratt.

So Colonel Richard Henry Pratt. And Pratt was instrumental in the establishment of Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And Pratt's motto was “Kill the Indian to save the man.” So you think about that. That was the policy for Indian education that the US federal government adopted in the late 1800s into the early 1900s was in order to “save the man” that you had to take away any vestiges of our language, of our culture, of our identity.

Children were taken thousands of miles from their home, given an English name, even when they didn't speak or read English. Their hair was cut. Anything that was related to their communities was taken away. They were forbidden to speak their languages. They were punished, right? If they were caught doing any of those things that were connected to their tribes. During the summers, they were farmed out and worked as domestic workers in the homes of White families in the Carlisle area, or on farms, or in factories.

Some of those children did get to go back home and then come back, you know, when the school year started. But hundreds of those children died without ever being able to go back to their homes. And you can see the graves that are still there. Carlisle, many of those graves remains are now being repatriated to their tribes.

But if you think about that. That. That moment in history where the federal government said “Turning you into the image of a White man, even if that means your death, is more important than allowing you to be a cultural being”? If we think about that. Right? Like that is the context in which we're trying to recover.

Right? I mean, that was, that was 1800s, but the vestiges of that are still felt today. Right? Now my family didn't have the boarding school experience, but we had the experience of, if you don't look White enough, you can't go to school past eighth grade. Right? That, that's similar. Right?

Andrew: This, this was the government, the federal government's response to its treaty obligation. It said, “Okay. You know, in exchange for lands, in exchange for, for recognition, we are going to agree to provide you an education, but the education that we're gonna agree to provide is going to kill the Indian to save the man.”

Dr. Susan Faircloth: That was a part of it, right? I mean, that, that was a part of it during that, that era. And so, you know, I mean, I work with the federal government now and the National Indian Education Association, I don’t want to be painted as saying I think the purpose of Indian ed today is to, to kill the Indian. I'm not saying that.

Val: Okay, we got you, we got you! Don’t worry.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Yeah. And in that. In that point in time, that, that was a practice, that was the policy, whether it was official or unofficial was “We're going to do whatever it takes to transform these Indian people into the image of the White man.” And that meant the forceful taking of language and culture. And in some cases, uh, the loss of life. It's not, it's not a pretty story, right?

There's like, there's no way-

Val: I've been an educator for 18 years in various roles, and I knew there was no federal requirement for education generally, but I did not know that it was a federal requirement for education for Native students until right now in this conversation. And so, I'm thinking about the ways in which we educate educators along the lines of, um, special education.

Like, this is the federal right of students, but we have not done that well, when it comes to the rights of our Indigenous and Native students at all. And in fact, as you mentioned, the, the dressing up, you see that far more often than letting teachers know, like, here's our federal legal responsibility to the students in our classrooms. Yeah.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Right. You know, people ask me about that all the time. I mean, I think, you know, I get called, I'm so happy that we're having this conversation in January, not in November, because November is when Native people, you know, suddenly come to life and people want to talk with us! And it’s around Thanksgiving. And so, and then after that, it is we go away, um, and you don't talk to us again until next November. And so I'm happy to have the conversation across the year.

I think, you know, in elementary school and some middle school, particularly when we teach history and we talk about cowboys and Indians, or we talk about Thanksgiving. Like, it seems fun to dress kids up, you know, and have them pretend to be people.

But I think we have to stop and really interrogate. How does that connect to our educational objectives, right? How does that further our understanding? I don't wear a regalia unless I'm going to a powwow, “regalia” being, you know, my Native outfit. I don't wear that unless I go to a powwow or there’s a cultural event.

I dress like I'm dressed today, right? With jeans and a t-shirt or a dress or something like that. And so we're perpetuating those stereotypes of Native people. When we have children dress up and pretend to be Native. And it's not just children. Teachers do it too.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: But I would also argue, and I say this very close to home. I direct a school of education. I think that those of us who are preparing future teachers and school leaders need to do a better job. We need to step up our game. And we need to think about what we're doing, how we're complicit in the perpetuation of these stereotypes and myths, right? Like, teachers learn these things from somewhere.

Val: Yep.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Are they learning them from colleges and schools of ed, or are they learning them from their mentor teachers? Are they learning them from some website that they went to that said “Here, this is a good idea.” Like how do we get teachers to be savvy consumers of different practices that are out there?

And that's not to say that I think teachers go into education to harm kids, perpetuate stereotypes. I don't think they do. I've heard teachers say, “Well, I didn't see anything wrong with that. I thought it was cute.” Right? And, and I said, yeah. I mean, I know that I used to teach Sunday school and work with children when I was younger and I've made paper feathers and headbands, as a Native person.

It wasn't until I became really aware that, Hey, that that's damaging. You know? That I stopped that practice. And so. You know, I want to work with teachers and educators, not to, I don't want to get into that politics of guilt, right? Like make you feel guilty, so you do better. But I want them to understand, like, there are ways to deepen and expand your practice. There are ways of deepening our understanding and awareness of Native peoples that don't harm them or harm their peers. Right?

It requires, I think, a commitment on the level of the administration and leadership of schools and districts to want to do better. To know, to do better. It requires a stronger partnership between colleges and schools of education. And it also requires some vulnerability on the part of teachers, right? To mix up your practice.

And you may get it wrong. You may do something that totally flops. But I would rather you do that than perpetuate the notion that, uh, we wear, you know, paper bags from the grocery store and construction paper feathers.

Val: Right.

Andrew: I'm wondering if you could take that out to, to parents as well. Because then, I feel like, yeah, there's, there's a role for schools to play and there's a role for teachers to play. But they are so often responsive to parents and parents' demands. What, what role do you see for parents to play-

Dr. Susan Faircloth: They are.

Andrew: -in kind of moving that conversation forward in a helpful way?

Dr. Susan Faircloth: No, and I've heard that. I mean, I was talking with some teachers last year and they were saying that, like, they were doing a particular activity around Thanksgiving and then recognized the need to do differently. And they got a lot of pushback from parents and community members. “This is how we've always done it.We've always had that.”

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Again, I mean I think it's, it's an, it's a process of education and conversation. And, I think about this when we talk about anti-racism and, and what it means to be an anti-racist. It's one thing to say that. It's another thing to enact anti-racism, right?

To embrace it. And to recognize that you don't suddenly become anti-racist like it's a process of -

Val: Right. Just ‘cause you’re just saying it-

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Becoming and being right? Yeah. It just, it's not like the Field of Dreams, “Build it and they will come,” right?

It's like, you know, it's like sometimes as a Native person, I mess up. Right? I. I mess up. And it's owning that. And so I think it's, it's, you have to build those relationships with your community and with your parents. And, I may not be the person who's going to go to a school and say, “Stop doing all of that today!” I might say, “Okay, I recognize that you're going to get pushback. So maybe we need to phase in, like, this talk with parents.”

That's not an approach that all Native people would have, right? I think you got to know your community, you gotta know your constituents, you gotta have conversations. But you also need strong leadership at the school and district level that is willing to have your back as a teacher when community members or parents are irate or unhappy about these decisions to change your curriculum. Like, who's going to have your back. Right?

I don't think it's easy. I want to say that. I don't think you go from, you know, 50 years of doing it this way to “I'm going to change it overnight.” But I also think our children, my child, your children, do not have 50 more years to wait for us to get it together. Right? Like, we don't. So we keep talking about it or we can be vulnerable.

We can be courageous. We can be brave. And we can do differently. Otherwise, we're going to be in the same place 50 years from now.

Andrew: Hmm.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Asking these same questions, right? Like,

Val: Oh, that is so good!

Andrew: I, wonder if you could maybe just speak a little bit, I believer there are, 650, or so, thousand Native students in our public schools right now. What, what do they need to, to be able to thrive and show up with their full humanity? Are there things that are specific to Native kids or more broadly as we think about, you know, the environments we want our kids to be in? What do they need?

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Right. I mean, one of the things that, you know, I've been most excited about across my career, as I mentioned to you, that I graduated from Penn State through the American Indian Leadership Program. And I went back there as a faculty member and as the co-director and director of that program. So, one of the things that we did through that program was to prepare cohorts of American Indian and Alaska Native school leaders, because we realized that there was a, um, a lack of American Indian, Alaska Native school leaders. Before that, we recognized that there was a lack of American Indian, Alaska Native teachers and particularly special education teachers.

So I think that that’s one of the first things, right? Is that we need, uh, we need more teachers of color in general and leaders of color in general. But we particularly need more American Indian, Alaska Native, and we especially need more teachers and leaders who are versed in and understand the role of language and culture and the importance of that.

Right? Because our students, our students need to be able to see people who look and sound like them. And I don't mean just physically look like them, but like who culturally have those connections.

But we also know that there's a shortage of teachers in general. So, so while we're working on better pay, right? And to think about how we can, um, entice more people into formal education roles, I think we've also got a wealth of cultural knowledge in our communities. So, how can we connect with tribes and tribal organizations and think about partnerships with them?

Before we do any of this, we need to have conversations with Native peoples and communities and ask, what do you want? What's the purpose of education for you? Right. And for me, there's multiple purposes, but one may be that we want to educate our children so that they can leave their community and pursue external dreams.

Right? But we may also want to shape education so that they can remain in their communities. Because we don't want all of our cultural wealth and brainpower leaving, right? But we also can work to educate our children and youth to leave and then return. Right? Like that, to go and do these things and then come back and be able to live and to learn and to thrive in your community of origin.

And I don't, I don't think that we always look at it in that way. Like, we think about, we’re educating children to get jobs. Well, that's important. But I don't want my daughter, Journey, to be educated in the academic ways to such extent that we forget to care about her heart. Like, I want her to be a good person.

I want her to care for others. I want her to know that she's Cheyenne and Arapaho. I want her to have access to that. That language and that culture. And so, but I think it's critically important, like, ask!

Val: That's it.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Ask parents, ask community members, ask tribal members. What do you want? What are your dreams and aspirations?

You know, my mother says that she never got asked, right? Nobody ever asked her what she wanted for me, or what she wanted for my sister. Right? But she had those dreams. And so I think those conversations are critically important.

And I think what you said about, like, respecting their, their humanity and their dignity, that, um. Each of our children comes to school from a different place. But the very fact that they're even showing up for school? Like, we ought to praise that. And how do we encourage that? And then I think the final thing is thinking about, many of our children are not raised in their, the homes of their biological parents. Many Native children are raised by aunties and uncles and grandpas and grandmas. Or they're raised by the community. And so, think about our language, about parent involvement. How can we involve the community? Because the community is integrally important in the, in the rearing and the education of that child.

So. I think many of those things are not different than what I would say for a non-Native child, right? But I think it's, it's, you really have to have an understanding of who your children are, who their communities are. And teach to their strengths as opposed to teaching to what you perceive to be their weaknesses.

Andrew: Mmm.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: And I think it's a change in mindset around how we approach our children.

We can learn so much from our children, right? Like if, if we talk to them, like they have things that they can teach us. But so many times, I've done interviews with children in the States and in New Zealand around Indigenous ed. and what they tell me is “You ask us all the time, what we want, but you never listened to it. Like, nothing changes.” And so, if we want schools to be different, if we want schools to be warm and welcoming. If we want schools to be places that are affirming of Native languages and culture, then listen to our children and our youth, and do differently.

Andrew: Hmm. Thank you.

Val: Thank you!

Andrew: Thank you for taking the time. For sharing so much, uh, of your brilliance. And, uh, it's a conversation that has been long overdue for us. I'm really grateful that we got to have it with you.

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Thank you.

Val: Yeah. And as always, my White supremacy, headache started to rat, you know….

Andrew: The dull throb became a little-

Val: Oh my gosh! We'll try!

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Sorry about that.

Val: No, no! It's not you. It's important for us to have these authentic, gut-wrenching conversations, you know?

Dr. Susan Faircloth: Yeah, no, I think they are. And like I said, I appreciate you putting the invitation out there and I particularly appreciate it not being in November! Cause I mean, I like to talk about Native people in November. Yeah, but it's like, I think more people need to recognize that as you said, we're here! You know, I mean we're here and we're here all year long.

And so talk about us and with this beyond November, I think it is important. Thank you!

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Andrew: So Val, what did you think?

Val: Yeah. So many feelings and so much new learning happened in that conversation. I'm really interested in getting into it with you. But first I'm curious, do you know the Indigenous land on which you're living currently?

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, I do. Yeah. I really appreciated her starting us off there. And she is in Fort Collins, which is not far from me. We actually happened to be on similar Native lands: the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Ute. And I think this was, trading grounds where a lot of various, Native peoples came through, over, over many, many centuries. How about you?

Val: Yeah, I am new to my state. And what I learned from conversation with Dr. Faircloth is that my state is home of one of the largest populations of Indigenous folks. And so, I believe, and forgive me for the mispronunciation, I'm on the Sugaree land. And I'm just really excited to know that and learn more about the peoples of my state.

Andrew: Yeah. I'm glad she, she started us off there. It's I think important to acknowledge and, you know, sort of say out loud. And then I think also, probably to, like you were saying, do some learning about that history.

Val: I have lots of learning to do.

I want to just name for the listeners that you heard Dr. Faircloth say she was comfortable with various terms to describe Indigenous folks. Indigenous, Native, Indian. So we will probably use that interchangeably in our conversation.

Andrew: Yeah.

Val: So, let's talk about what learning you got from this episode. Where do you want to start?

Andrew: Yeah, there was, there was so much in there! And I thought about her, kind of, three visions of education that her own family has experienced. From her parents in the Indian school, totally surrounded by Native people, to her own experience in an integrated school, but with the, you know, a significant Native population that she really felt at home with.

And then her challenge of trying to, kind of, recreate that for her own daughter who had started out at school as one of if not the only Native student, and yeah, just the challenges of that.

Val: Yeah, something I'm connecting with is, you know, those decisions that she's had to make for schooling for her daughter that often put her as the only one. Where she was surrounded by a Native culture that really just loved on her, and she was able to see herself reflected and in her community members and her family, you know, that were all there.

I want to say it can be a challenge, right? Because we know that historically, segregated schools, especially Black schools for Black people, were affirming places. And integration was a difficult decision for many parents to make.

Right? And they were making it for that greater good. But it also cost their children to be in these, probably better financially resourced places, where they could potentially have more opportunity. But they weren't always getting that, that love and support from their teachers and other classmates that they were used to in their segregated spaces.

And so, it really is a challenge. I, I, I don't think that we will have hit the goal of integrated schools just by getting the bodies there. Right? It becomes this vision for what we want once everyone feels like “I am included in this. I am welcomed in the space. I am not losing any of myself or my culture or my identity by coming to an integrated space.”

Like that's not what we're asking for. And I think, just grappling with reality, you know, it can be challenging for any parent who is just trying to decide where to send their kids to school.

Andrew: Yeah. The challenge that she faced of, of where does her kid go to school? Of is the school willing to have a conversation about the problematic things that are happening in the building? And then ultimately feeling like she had to pull her kid out of that school.

That's a tough decision, and one that I can't really relate to, as a White parent.

Val: Yeah. And it would be nice if, as a parent of color, that my arrival in the arrival of my kids didn't mean that I had to do the educating around this issue. So Dr. Faircloth and her family, you know, have done a lot of that with the schools that they have, you know, sent their daughter to.

And so, how do we leave the burden upon folks who are coming into these spaces to do all the educating as well? Right? That's a lot to ask! I got to integrate and teach? I'm just trying to go to school!

Andrew: Yeah. I'm glad she, she came on and certainly did some, did some educating for me and hopefully listeners take something away from that so that there's at least a tiny bit less work out there to be done.

What other things kind of jumped out at you as new learnings?

Val: Well, I, you know, you heard my “A-ha!” about the federal requirement to educate Indigenous folks. That was brand new information to me. And I think that just speaks to how much is missing from our conversation, as educators, that include Indigenous perspectives, Indigenous, again, current Indigenous history, like, we're missing a ton. Just recognizing that, the students are in our classrooms. They're our kids' friends. Like, how do we make room for that? And so, I think that just makes me, just want to be even more accountable to my learning.

You know? Like, these are my friends and neighbors and folks. Right? And I want to know about their experiences, how they're experiencing schools, how I, as an ally can make sure that, you know, she thanked us for not having this conversation in November. How can I make sure that the conversation continues and that we're not, reducing having conversations like this in November.

Andrew: You know, it's like, it's like only talking about Black history during February, right? I think that's important to do ‘cause it's the right thing to do! I think we should acknowledge those things. I would like to be a better ally in that, in that regard, but, but I also feel some kind of, like, selfish drive towards it as well. Because, you know, similar to what we were talking about last episode with Parenting for Racial Justice, I want to lean into my curiosity about how other folks live and the fact that there are Native folks now. That is not, you know, I mean, so much of the story is told in the past tense that there “used to be” Indians.

The fact that there are Native folks now, there is, like, a whole other way of interacting with each other, with the world, with the earth that, that I want to be enriched by, you know? Like, I want to learn more about, for my own sake because I think it would make me a better person.

Val: So, you know, I think it's important for us to share with the audience again, like, our ignorance of these topics isn't because Indigenous folks haven't been screaming at the top of their lungs forever, right? And so, I think that's really important for us to name.

For me, it feels like Black people have been exceptionally clear about our experience in this country for a long time. And that still hasn't resulted in the change that we want. And I feel, you know, some solidarity with Indigenous folks in that same way. Like, they have been exceptionally clear. A book that I picked up, at the beginning of this year that really, uh, has spoken to me, We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy.

Andrew: That’s amazing! We had a little real estate problem. That's amazing.

Val: Isn't that a great, that's a great title! And so that is by Kliph Nesteroff. He goes through and, like, talks about Native folks in entertainment, right? Specifically in comedy and how, from the beginning, there was always this fight against the stereotypical images that were presented. Right? So had coalitions back in the early 1900s that said, “Hey, you need to hire Indigenous actors for these roles.” But White studio owners would say “The Indigenous folks weren't authentic enough.” I don't understand it. I don't. I don't understand it.

And so, I think we have to take on the responsibility of listening to the stories that have been told over and over again and believing them. And I think that is the part, when I think about how Black people are represented just in the media and the stereotypes that I feel a real sense of solidarity. Right? I've been telling you this and you haven't listened. And so I want to take responsibility for listening better.

Andrew: Yeah. On that, listening and believing, she speaks so eloquently about the sovereignty of Native peoples that there are, 600 some odd Native tribes, nations that are federally recognized as sovereign independent people. Like, something about that, I understand it, but I don't think I really understand it.

Like the same way that we have treaty relationships with Canada and China and Japan, we have treaty relationships with, with these people. I don't know, like, how do you make sense of that?

Val: Um, no! I, I struggle with it as well. And you know, I think it's, that's probably my own history. Family's history in the United States. Never feeling like a sense of sovereignty. Right? So I think for me, it was kind hard to-

Andrew: Hmm.

Val: -initially wrap my head around. And then, you know, I would see Indigenous scholars sharing about how, you know, you can't trust a US treaty! And I was like, you know, confused! Right? Because I, that's not the history that I learned. Where, you know, Dr. Faircloth talked extensively about the number of treaties that, have just been abandoned or broken or….

Andrew: It speaks to the story that we've been told and, and the way that we have relegated Native people to the past, I think. Because, if you imagine that we made an agreement with Canada and then just ignored it, people would be like, “Wh- Uh- I don't, wait. We can't! That doesn't make sense. We can't do that.” And yet every day, I mean the, right, the federal government, the only recognized people other than the children of military and people with special needs. The only other people that the federal government promises an education to are Native folks.

Val: Right. And right now, if a Native student goes to a non-Native school, there’s a high likelihood that what they are learning about their ancestors, if anything, is based on stereotypes.

Andrew: Yeah. It feels all tied up in, in White supremacy and feels all tied up in the premium placed on White people's comfort.

Val: Mmm. Say more about that.

Andrew: You can't look at what happened to Native people on this land and not come away feeling like they were wronged. Similar, uh, drive to look at Martin Luther King as, like, the turning point from a racist country to a not racist country.

You know, that, you sort of have to put the past behind because it's too painful to look at.

Val: I want to say that it feels like it would cause some distress to think, oh man, those folks have been harmed. But I think that's only if people recognize that there's the equal amount of humanity. Right? Like it would be easier for me to deny an Indigenous person humanity and keep the land.

So think it's easy to feel guilt if you recognize someone else's humanity. But I think too often we put those feelings into a box and saying, “You know what? That's just the way it happened.”

Andrew: Yeah. I think that is the comfort that I’m talking about, that you can't really hold someone's humanity and past actions at the same time.

Val: You can't. Not really. I think that's the only way folks can justify our current realities. It's because they don't see everyone as human.

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, that’s depressing.

Val: I see you as a human, Andrew.

Andrew: I see you as a human, Val. I appreciate that.

Val: Yeah, yeah, of course.

Andrew: Yeah. I do think there is something to be gained. It's painful. Like we have to look at it. It's painful. But, but the world is such a richer place if it's full of people with humanity.

Val: Absolutely!

Andrew: Right? Like that's the, that's the upside to going through the painful reckoning. That's the upside to looking at these unheard stories, to really confronting them, and looking at them, is that that is how you then see the humanity, and then the world is actually much bigger and more interesting.

Val: Right! And so, when I think about, and I believe it was the Cherokees' contribution, like their governing documents and how it impacted our Constitution. Awesome! When I think about the idea of thinking seven generations in advance and how our decisions impact them, that's an Indigenous idea. So there's so many things that we can learn to make the world a better place. When we talk about that, that richness of inviting everyone into the conversation, right?

Andrew: Right, I love that you said that is an Indigenous idea. Because I think, my, my mind goes to, still, I think, you know, and this is where I catch myself and try to push back, it's like, that was an Indigenous idea. But like that’s still an Indigenous idea that continues to be. And this is, this is what I appreciated, we sort of asked, you know, Dr. Faircloth, what, what do we do now? What sort of, what's next? And she said, the first thing is to ask the communities what they want, what they need.

Val: Absolutely.

So, I don't think I've told the story of Lewis and Clark, the Lewis and Clark play musical?

Andrew: No.

Val: Oh, my gosh. When my son was in fourth grade, there was a Lewis and Clark musical at school.

Andrew: I’m nervous already . . .

Val: Yeah, you should be nervous. A week before the musical, we got a letter home saying, you know, “Your child can either dress as, like, basically a colonizer or an Indigenous person. If they're dressing like an Indigenous person, make sure they have ‘traditional’ wear like moccasins, feathers,” like, named it in the letter.

So I am like, “Oh, crap.” Right? So we're, home trying to figure out what we're gonna do. Right? So, my son ended up wearing, I think a red shirt and he picked a red shirt because it represented the Shoshone tribe.

And before I was like, “So you want to sit this one out? Are we doing a protest?” And he was like, you know, “Mom, I just kind of want to be in the play with the rest of my friends.” Which I get! Right? Like, cause young people are still trying to figure out.

Cause I was going to be in the back with my fist up, but my son talked me down. And, that would have been my child’s only lesson about Indigenous folks, explicitly, throughout elementary school. Right?

You know, it was a, it was a teaching moment for us in our home, and we spent a lot of time doing some learning around that. But I just felt like, every kid's not going to know that there's another story. Every parent! Doesn't know.

Andrew: Cause that's the story I was told! So I see it told to my kid, I'm like, yup, this is what we learned because this must be true.

I mean, I think, that speaks to the, the importance of having these conversations with our kids. The importance of questioning and, and it's, I don't know. I wonder, hmm. So, and smack me down if this feels out of line here, but maybe the stakes feel somehow lower to, like, enter into that learning with your kid, both knowing nothing. And they probably shouldn't feel different, but they do feel different than around, you know, the Civil Rights Movement or around Black history where, where it feels harder to say, “Oh, yeah. I actually never learned about that.”

Val: Well, hope just talking to you, White dad from Denver, Andrew. Um, like the, what I would wonder is, do you feel somehow less implicated in conversations around Indigenous stuff versus Black/White American history stuff? Um, and there should probably be an equal level of implication in both of those, but because, you know, the narratives that we've learned around Indigenous folks does situate them in the past so often, it's easier to kind of ignore?

And it's because we don't know contemporary stats. So I think I read something, Indigenous folks have the highest level of suicides within their communities. Indigenous women often go missing and nobody is talking about it. I'm sure Indigenous folks are being killed by the police. Let's just keep it real. You know? And so, because we have, we as a country, have just kind of cut off learning about their current existence, maybe that's why it feels like, “Okay, we can, we can go in this both not knowing.”

Andrew: Yeah. I mean that, that's the only path out. We have to learn somehow. Right? That is the only path out. And yet, no, but I do think you're right. Like, I, I feel more implicated in Black/White race relations than about Native folks and I shouldn't.

Val: No. Nope.

Andrew: Hmm, great. Thanks.

Val: Just got to keep the same energy! Keep the same energy!

Andrew: Yeah. Okay.

Val: We're going to try to know better and do better though!

Dr. Faircloth seems super hopeful. And I, I appreciated what I could feel from her was so much grace for people who are learning, and trying, and taking steps. Like, I felt like she recognized that this is a deeply complicated historical situation that we're all trying to navigate. We’re left picking up the pieces.

And what I got from her was a sense, like, everybody is welcome to start this journey ASAP, you know? Like, so come on, come on in, you know. It's okay that you, you know. It's not, it's not okay you didn't know. But we understand you didn't know!

Andrew: Right.

Val: And you're invited into this conversation now. And I know that you and I have talked offline about how overdue this conversation was, even for the podcast, right? Do you want to say any more about that?

Andrew: Yeah. It's been like floating there as, as something that we've needed to cover. That we recognized we needed to cover, and, and didn't. And you know, I think some of that is finding the right voices to do it. So when we did our Brown v Board series, we really wanted to include a section on Native and Indigenous education and, and just couldn't find the right person, you know, without a team of researchers.

And so it has been sitting there, but, but I don't think. I think, I think if I felt equally implicated about Indigenous education, about Indigenous relations, that it would not have sat untouched for so long.

Val: Same! So much the same.

Andrew: I'm very glad that Dr. Faircloth came on. I'm very glad that we got the chance to at least start on it. And we certainly didn't, this, this episode did not, uh, tie a neat bow on the Indigenous experience. It was Dr. Faircloth’s experience.

And yeah, I'm so grateful how personal her story is. You know, and her story is, is one story of many and many. Um, and so there, there's a lot more to learn, but I appreciated how forthcoming she was. Even with her own struggles around, you know, just her own daughter and, and the environments that she's putting her own daughter in, and the choice that she has to make.

Val: Before we head, I want to shout out another book that I, um, started reading recently, An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States by Dr. Kyle T. Mays that talks about the intersections between Black and Indigenous folks. And the history of that relationship as well.

Andrew: Yeah. We will put links to both of those books in the show notes. As always, if you buy through our links, you get to support local bookshops and Integrated Schools. And speaking of supporting Integrated Schools, you like that segue there, Val?

Val: That's right! We want you to share this and share it broadly with your friends and neighbors, to strangers. If you need us to send you some VHS tapes of our recordings, we're happy to do that as well! Um. We believe that these are conversations worth having, and we want you to continue having them in your community.

Andrew: Yes. And if you'd like to help us keep making them, you can join our Patreon patreon.com/integratedschools. Give a little bit of money every month to help keep this podcast going. We'd be very grateful.

Val: Absolutely Andrew, always a pleasure. I am, I'm going to do some learning.

Andrew: Yes. Yeah, me too. It was a pleasure to be in this with you, as I try to know better and do better.

Val: Until next time.