Indians face discrimination in Wyo, school leader says
BRODIE FARQUHAR Star-Tribune correspondent | Posted: Monday, February 6, 2006 12:00 am
LANDER - Discrimination against American Indians is alive and well in Wyoming, says the superintendent of Fremont County School District 14.
Michelle Hoffman told state lawmakers last week that as students from the Wyoming Indian district have traveled around the state in activities, they have encountered behavior ranging from ignorant, insensitive actions by students at other schools to outright, in-your-face racism.
"It has to stop," Hoffman told the Select Committee on Tribal Relations. "I'm embarrassed for my state."
Hoffman's comments unleashed a series of complaints and painful stories from the audience.
Wind River Indian Reservation resident Sandra C'Bearing told the legislators that her son, Al, was attending Chadron State University in Nebraska on a basketball scholarship. When he learned that Chadron's men's basketball team would travel to Laramie to play the University of Wyoming Cowboys, he obtained several tickets to the game and sent them to his mother.
Yet when the C'Bearing family presented their tickets at the basketball arena, they were challenged by UW staff, questioned where they got the tickets and forced to wait until the tickets' authenticity could be verified, she said.
"We missed the warm-up period when I wanted to take photos of my son," C'Bearing said.
Once the tickets were verified, the C'Bearing family was admitted, and they took their seats behind the media tables at courtside. Again, they were challenged by UW staff and told they couldn't sit there, she said. When the ticket stubs proved those were indeed their seats, the UW staffer backed off.
That wasn't the end of it, she said. Throughout the game, there were rude comments about her son's long hair, war whoops from the stands and a number of UW students aiming "arrows" at her son in imitation of someone using a bow and arrow.
In a statement released by the UW Media Relations Office, Athletic Director Gary Barta said: "The Chadron State game was in early November, and this is the first time UW was aware of concerns about inappropriate behavior related to that game. We want to make attendance at Cowboy basketball games an enjoyable experience for everyone who attends and deeply regret it when the experience is not satisfactory.
"More importantly, UW will not tolerate discriminatory behavior on our campus. We will contact the family and thoroughly review their concerns to determine whether a response by the university should be undertaken."
Allison Sage, Northern Arapaho Tribe liaison to the governor's office, said that when he took a Wyoming history course at UW, he studied from three required books. Among all those pages of information, he said, was a page and a half about Indians, and that mostly consisted of stereotyped comments about savages.
"History can hurt," said Kassel Weeks, a member of the Eastern Shoshone Business Council, especially when he learned how his people have been treated over the years.
Several students from a government class at Wyoming Indian School said they were surprised at how fundamentally ignorant their white friends were about the Wind River reservation and the tribes, even when they live right next door in Riverton or Lander.
"I think the only solution is through education" of students and teachers alike throughout the state, Hoffman said.
She said she had invited teachers from a couple of schools where there were discriminatory incidents to come to Wyoming Indian School for a crash course in Indian culture and history. The next time her students visit those schools, she hopes they'll receive a better reception, because those teachers will have shared what they learned.
"It falls on us to provide the training, when all teachers should have this training," Hoffman said.
She's looking north, toward Montana, for inspiration of what could happen someday in Wyoming. Hoffman praised Montana's Indian Education for All, a program that educates all Montana school children about American Indian history and culture.
The Montana program received $3.4 million from the Legislature last year to develop a statewide curriculum that can be woven into the fabric of K-12 public education, recognizing the 12 tribes that call Montana home.
The Montana Office of Public Instruction, led by Superintendent Linda McCullough, has a plan for curriculum development and teacher training. In a Friday telephone interview, McCullough said the program is not simply to educate Indian students about their cultures and histories, but to educate the entire state.
On the Net
* For more information about Wyoming Indian Schools, go to {M7http://www.fremont14.k12.wy.us/.
* For more information about Montana's Indian Education For All program, go to {M7www.opi.mt.gov/IndianEd.
Brodie Farquhar is a freelance writer based in Lander. He can be reached at brodiefarquhar@hotmail.com.