In May, my romantic partner--a citizen of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate--and I visited Sica Hollow State Park. As I was walking down a path from the springs that inspire the park's name, a group of young indigenous kids noticed me and asked if I were a spider.
"Yes," I replied, "I'm a trickster."
One little boy raised his fists and said if I were a trickster, he'd have to fight me.
"No, you don't," I said, and with that, the children asked me my name and introduced themselves.
I was delighted that the little kids knew the nature of Iktomi, and complimented the mother of one child who waited in a nearby picnic ground with my friend.
Thus, I was disappointed to read in the Keloland story, Reaction from Tribal leaders and educators after removal of Native American references from South Dakota curriculum:
A draft of Social Studies content standards has been released by the Department of Education. The draft of standards released differ in some ways from the initial proposal, which was submitted by the Social Studies Standards Revision Workgroup, made up primarily of educators from across the state.
The main way that the standards appear to be altered in the removal of references to Native American culture and history.
Some examples of this are the removal of Kindergarten history standard K.H.6.1: ‘Read or listen to Oceti Sakowin Oyate stories, such as Iktomi stories and historical lore stories,’ and of Grade 4 history standard 4.H.6.1: ‘Explain how the Oceti Sakowin and Oyate culture and other groups were affected by westward expansion, the creation of the reservation system, and the US assimilation policies and programs.’ . . .
All South Dakota kids should learn those stories--and the material about the Oceti Sakowin and Oyate culture--long with the other material removed from the standards. The removal will impoverish their education.
Christopher Vondracek reported at the Mitchell Republic in In 11th-hour change, SD officials cut Indigenous references from social studies standards:
South Dakota's Department of Education released proposed social studies standards on Friday, Aug. 6, that veered significantly from those submitted by a working group earlier this summer, including multiple cuts to tribal and Indigenous learning objectives, Forum New Service has learned.
The much-anticipated proposed standards, which were overhauled just prior to their release last week by state officials in Pierre, also contains an entirely new preface than the one in the report submitted by nearly 50 teachers, museum experts, and professors on July 25.
It was that draft report, which has been obtained by FNS, that many group members had expected to be released to the public at the end of last week.
Instead, SDDOE overrode the input of educators charged with the routine update to state’s K-12 social studies curriculum standards, making significant, last-minute changes that stripped out most requirements intended to boost South Dakota students' understanding of Native Americans, according to a review of internal documents and interviews by FNS.
While the original report also emphasized assisting students to become "active, engaged citizens," the new preface refers little to students and instead spends three paragraphs extolling the "framers of our nation's constitution" as "great students of history, geography, civics, and economics."
The new preface mirrors language of a political pledge signed by Gov. Kristi Noem, who also championed the overhaul of civic education in her State of the State speech in January.
Some members say they had suspected state officials would make significant changes.
New Standards
The most glaring omission in the new, roughly 60-page draft compared to the working group's report is the emphasis on Native American history, particularly a point of pride for some group members in build-up to the release of the standards Aug. 6.
"In our textbooks, when you go and look at U.S. history, and even our local regional history, back when Columbus discovered that there were Indigenous people here, they mention [indigenous people] for about a page and a half and after that there's very little mentioned," said Sherry Johnson, a working group participant and head of the Education Department with the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, last week.
The new standards were aimed to give a "better portrait of Indigenous history," she told FNS.
But a comparison of the two sets of standards by Forum News Service reveal a diluted focus on Indigenous history, from the removal of references in kindergarten to the Oceti Sakowin — the Sioux Nation tribal communities rooted in the Dakotas and Upper Midwest — to the erasure of a standard in a high school economics classroom urging students to learn about banking in local, state, federal, and tribal communities.
The current standard only reads, "Explain the structure and function of the U.S. banking system."
Major changes made
The standards are undertaken once every seven years, and had been prefaced this year by calls from Noem to overhaul civics education in the state. Noem also signed a conservative educational treatise coined the "1776 Pledge."
Noem had made an overhaul to the state's civics education a signature policy goal of her 2021 legislative session, ultimately winning nearly $1 million in funding for grants and the development of a South Dakota history curriculum.
But the state Legislature stopped short of writing new standards for social studies, or learning objectives for history, geography, and economics. That job, historically, has been up to a nonpartisan group of educators chosen by the Department of Education.
The standards the working group creates then go to an obscure Board of Education Standards — all appointed by the governor — to approve the new recommended standards.
Prior to last week, members of the working group had remarked on the independence from political pressure from the governor's office they'd felt during the eight sessions in June in Fort Pierre. In July, retired Yankton High School world history teacher Paul Harens told FNS he thought the process was "excellent."
"When we began this whole thing, they told us, 'Do not worry what is in the press. Worry about what to do for the children of South Dakota. And that's exactly what we did," Harens said at the time.
The edited document, however, reveals substantial edits from the draft submitted by the working group, especially within the tribal historical importance. In the opening section titled "notable changes," rather than an "incorporation of more diverse perspectives, especially those of Indigenous Native Americans," the new document simply calls for "teaching the positive and negative aspects of our nation's history while instilling pride in being an American."
Whereas an eighth-grade U.S. history standard in the working group's report calls for a classroom to "examine major cultural traits and resiliency of the Oceti Sakowin Oyate throughout history," the new standards for eighth-grade U.S. history remove all references to tribal understandings.
For ninth- to 12th-grade U.S. history standards, the working group urged students to study the "impact South Dakotans, including Oceti Sakowin Oyate and other Indigenous Native Americans, had on U.S. and South Dakota History." But the new standards gloss over tribal distinctions, simply making note of the role of "Indigenous Native Americans."
While the original document made 25 references to "Oceti Sakowin," that phrase only appears thrice in the new report. Similarly, the word "Indigenous" appears 20 times in the originally submitted document and only nine times in the new standards. And whereas the working group made 34 references to the word "tribal," the new document only invokes the word 27 times.
The proposed standards will undergo four public hearings, beginning on Sept. 20 at a middle school in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and people can submit online comments, as well. Even if the framework is ultimately adopted by the Board of Education Standards, it is merely recommended, not compulsory. . . .
I was stunned to read the article and others covering the changes. For South Dakota Public Broadcasting, Lee Strubinger reported in Draft Social Studies Standards Don’t Match What Group Submitted:
The state Department of Education released a draft of social studies content standards last week.
However, those standards differ from the draft a working group submitted.
The Department of Education removed references to Native American culture, including historical lore, the meaning of symbols like the star quilts, buffalo and medicine wheels.
Those standards were included by the working group, which spent eight days in Pierre revising the state’s social studies standards.
The department also removed several references to “indigenous Native Americans.”
Sherry Johnson is the education director for the Sisseton Wahpeton Tribe. She sat on the content standards panel and says she’s disappointed in the changes.
“That wasn’t what we wrote. That wasn’t what I wrote,” Johnson says. “That wasn’t what I was there for, to have somebody else censor history. Censor history and erase ‘Native American’ out of there.”
It’s not clear why. The Department of Education has not returned requests for comment.
Paul Harens is a retired social studies teacher from Yankton. He has lived in South Dakota for over 40 years. He calls the removal of the standards “a sin.”
“We made a document that was not political. It was apolitical,” Harens says. “They have since—the Department of Education, with the changes they made—have made the document political.” . . .
At Native News Online, Jenna Kunze reported in South Dakota Department of Education contributes to “Native erasure” in new social studies standards:
. . . Indigenous leaders and educators across the state called the department’s decision “Native erasure.”
“Adjustments indicate…..revision. Well, they didn’t revise. They omitted whole sections. They added whole sections,” said Dr. Sherry Johnson, educational director at the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate and one of two enrolled tribal members invited Into the working group.
Johnson said that working group members spent eight days workshopping the standards, and were told by the DOE they’d be alerted of any changes made to the drafted document before publication. She said she was surprised to see the substantive changes, especially after having such a positive experience in the working group.
“In ... the work group itself, I felt embraced,” Johnson said. “I really put myself out there to answer questions, to alleviate some of the ignorance some people have because they just don’t know. To have all of that devalued … I’m very disappointed.”
Of the 46 working group members hired by the department to develop the new curriculum, two are enrolled tribal members and a third identifies as a descendant. That means Native educators made up less than seven percent of the working group meant to represent the 14,649 Indigenous youth in the public school population, plus hundreds more in tribally chartered schools.
In South Dakota, which is among the top five states with the highest percentage of American Indians, Native advocates and tribal leaders denounced the DOE’s re-drafting of history.
“The consistent and active erasure of our people is demonstrative of a larger social and systemic issue of white supremacy, racism and clear lack of cultural proficiency that can only be addressed when we begin to be inclusive of the narratives that have been absent and excluded from our education system,” said Sarah White, director of education equity for the nonprofit NDN Collective.
Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier said that withholding the state's history from young minds will negatively impact Native youth in the state by relegating Indigenous people to ‘the bad guy’ in every fantasy about the American conquest.
“Again, our children will be brainwashed by oppressive versions of our shared history that assimilates them into gratitude for Manifest Destiny, rather than the truths you inflicted, and now wish to erase,” Frazier said in a statement. “Our children were stolen from us in past generations, forcefully assimilated or secretly buried in boarding schools under the ‘kill the Indian and save the Man’ ideologies, and it would seem that the task to erase them has not ended under Governor Kristi Noem’s administration and leadership.”
Rodney Bordeaux, president of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, told KELO-TV in Sioux Falls that he disagrees with the removal of these standards.
“All South Dakota citizens need to be taught what’s going on in the state and throughout the country,” he told KELO-TV. “You shouldn’t gloss over it. I think our citizens deserve better. They need to know the true history so they know what they’re dealing with. Particularly in South Dakota … they need to know what our Tribal citizens — the history our tribes have faced — and if you gloss over that, it’s a disservice to the citizens of the state.”
The social studies standards are now open for public comment, and a final public hearing before the state Board of Education Standards is tentatively scheduled for March 2022, according to the DOE.
Johnson said she intends to provide feedback.
“I would really like to see that true history for Natives,” Johnson said. “And not just to have a few mentions here and there, but to really say we were a viable people. We didn't just float away or cease to exist after 1492. We were here prior, and that we continue to exist all these years (later).”
I shake my head at the implication that teaching the true history of the Oceti Sakowin or "the meaning of symbols like the star quilts, buffalo and medicine wheels" would prevent students from becoming "great students of history, geography, civics, and economics."
Rather, they could understand the nuances of spider lore, the consequences of the 1862 Dakota War, the Dawes Act, Wounded Knee, and the persistence of the Oceti Sakowin. That consideration would make for great students, whatever their own families' backgrounds.
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