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Education for Native Youth Is a Work in Progress

Julie Taboh

   WASHINGTON - Some Native American children fear bullying and harassment
   so much, they hide their ethnicity at school, according to an education
   expert.

   "A lot of Native students feel invisible," said Katrina Boone, an
   associate partner at [1]Bellwether Education Partners, a national
   nonprofit whose mission is to change education and life outcomes for
   underserved children.

   Boone said many students have told her they don't feel comfortable
   letting their teachers know they are Native American because they have
   "been harassed and bullied, not just by peers, but by teachers in
   school."

   Native American students languish in schools across the country and
   often face worse outcomes than their white, black and Latino peers, she
   said. And the rates of high school and post-graduation trends [2]are
   below the rates of their peers.

   The suicide rate for Native youth exceeds the rate of their peers,
   Boone said. And national data indicate that rates for illicit drug use
   and tobacco use are higher for Native youth than for their peers, she
   said, citing the National Survey on Drug Use and Health from the
   [3]Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

   False history
   Native Americans have been discriminated against "for hundreds of
   years," Boone said, and forced to assimilate into a Euro-centric
   American culture.

   "A lot of people view Native people and their socio-economic challenges
   and think the cause is Native people themselves," she said. "But the
   actuality is that of course these challenges aren't inherent to Native
   people. These are the effects of centuries of our government being
   terroristic, genocidal, and just generally unfair to Native American
   people since European first contact."

   Schools were used as a tool of assimilation, Boone said. "Very
   thoughtfully and very strategically by the government to destroy Native
   culture, to destroy Native language, to separate Native people, and to
   erase their cultures as they originally existed before first contact,"
   she said.

   Hundreds of thousands of Native children were sent -- often forcibly --
   to Native American boarding schools where "they were punished for
   speaking their native language, banned from acting in any way that
   might be seen to represent traditional or cultural practices, stripped
   of traditional clothing, hair and personal belongings and behaviors
   reflective of their native culture," according to the [4]National
   Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

References

   1. https://bellwethereducation.org/
   2. https://educationpost.org/america-has-always-used-schools-as-a-weapon-against-native-americans/
   3. https://www.samhsa.gov/data/data-we-collect/nsduh-national-survey-drug-use-and-health
   4. https://boardingschoolhealing.org/education/us-indian-boarding-school-history/

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