This is the second in the series
By Anna Ferdinand
In the late 1800s, after the United States government’s policy toward Native Americans had evolved from annihilating them to assimilating them, the practice was to exterminate any vestige of their old ways.
When Indian reservations were established, many cul-tural practices were actually outlawed, and children were put into boarding schools, where they were forced to forget their heritage. Today, educators are working to heal the scars that were passed down through generations.
“Some of our great-great-grandparents would go hide out in the woods in small cabins down by the channel, and they would practice our singing and dancing,” Aurelia Washington told La Conner High School students at an assembly last week.
Washington, who is the cultural director for the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, spoke to La Conner High School students on Native American Day last week. The goal is to raise the identity of the tribe to both native and non-native students as an integral part of education in La Conner.
General Cayou, a senior at La Conner High, told his school mates about hunting, fishing and gathering with his father. Their quests for traditional foods take them up into the Cascade Mountains hunting for bear, deer and elk and fishing in the Skagit River and in the Salish Sea.
“When it’s berry season, my dad goes out and picks like seven gallons of berries. It’s ridiculous,” Cayou said. “It takes a lot going out fishing and hunting; there’s a lot of preparation we do. Me and my cousin Willy, we’re learning how to do all that so we can take over. When my dad steps down, we step up.”
The 2011 Canoe Journey, which was hosted by Swinomish, played a major role in generating pride in the youth and interest and awareness on the part of non-native students.
During a session of oral storytelling, necklace making and dancing, La Conner music teacher Shegay Vanderpool said she has seen a major shift in students’ attitudes towards the Swinomish traditions.
“I’ve seen lots more participation from all of the kids since the Canoe Journey,” said Vanderpool.
Second-graders were dancing the Spirit of the Eagle as Washington sang and drummed in Vanderpool’s class. “I think because they saw it so often, and they worked and practiced so hard and were so excited about it, that it’s kind of caught on,” she said. “I really see that.”
In contrast, Swinomish students of earlier generations speak of having no sense of cultural identity and feeling uncomfortable at schools while growing up.
“We never had our cultural identity,” says Washington. “It wasn’t until we started getting ready for the Canoe Journey that Swinomish pride was re-instilled. We’ve seen complete changes with the kids; their whole attitudes and desire to do well changed, and to me, it was that pride of knowing who they were.”
The school district aims to bring this sense of identity deeper into the fabric of the schools by including instruction in native culture and language as well as an understanding of the past.
“One of the primary things you have to look at was the boarding schools and access to education at its root level,” says La Conner Superintendent Tim Bruce. Generations of sending Native American children away to boarding schools “created a lot of mistrust and a lot of feelings that ‘this isn’t for me.’ We’re just into the generation where we can start getting past that,” Bruce said.
In 1866 Catholic nuns in Tulalip started a school which would become the first contract boarding school with the federal government in the United States. In 1879, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was established in Pennsylvania and was the first of many off-reservation boarding schools.
Children were taken from their families and tribes and forced to abandon their native cultures and languages. By the late 1920s, the government changed its official culture-destroying policy, but Native American children were still routinely sent away to boarding schools well into the 1970s.
Recently La Conner teaching staff attended a training session at Swinomish that featured a documentary film with accounts of people who had been students in boarding schools.
Beatings for speaking in their native language, having their hair cut off, being separated from their families, sexual abuse and sometimes even death are described in the first-hand accounts of former boarding school students.
The reverberations of self-hate the experience engendered had a profound effect on those students and the generations that followed them.
Washington’s grandfather, Chester Cayou, Sr., was taken to a boarding school in Canada.
She discovered her grandfather’s story in 2008, when retrieving his birth certificate in Canada. There was a settlement from the Canadian government for students of that school. Washington learned horrific stories of boarding school life, including an incident in which a boy was hung in the school gym as an example to deter bad behavior.
“I was in tears, I had never even fathomed…,” said Washington. Chester Cayou “was this gentle, gentle man, who never raised his voice. That was just his character and his spirit. His motto was what we used for the Canoe Journey; ‘Loving, caring and sharing together.’”
According to Washington, her grandfather was rescued from the school by his older brother in a canoe and brought to Swinomish, where he was adopted by the tribe.
During the time of the boarding schools, “You had this clash of worlds,” explains Theresa Trebon, archivist for the Swinomish tribe. “Instead of learning to subsist and create baskets, all of a sudden, they had this non-native-based education. Kids were heavily punished if they spoke their native language of Lushootseed. They lost their Indian names and were baptized with the names of saints. Everything changes.”
Swinomish Chariman, Brian Cladoosby explained at a speaking event last month the effect the boarding schools had on his own family.
“My grandparents were boarding school kids,” he said. “Boarding school experience was unspeakable; the physical abuse, the mental abuse, the sexual abuse, even kids dying at these schools. If you had to experience that type of education, it wouldn’t be a top priority for you to push that on your kids.”
Cladoosby says the dropout rate for his parents’ generation was probably more than 90 percent. Today the high school dropout rate for Native Americans hovers around 20 percent in La Conner.
It’s been a slow climb back up for the traditional ways of the tribe, says former tribal senator, Ray Williams. Williams grew up with an impoverished sense of his own culture, which he didn’t discover until studying Indian law at the University of New Mexico. He was invited to a Navajo ceremony and was moved by the connection these tribal members had to their spiritual culture, based on a deep connection to the land.
“I met up with the Navajos and the Hopi people who lived in the old way, and I said, oh my God, this was what was haunting me all these years.”
The Swinomish longhouse culture came back with the building of the tribe’s longhouse in the 1990s. Williams says the longhouse brought a major increase in the activity around spiritual and cultural teachings. “The educational institution for us was the longhouse,” Williams said. “That was our university, our way of teaching.”
The next essential step is bringing back the language, says Williams.
“What we realized was that the Lushootseed language was essential to our future,” he said.
Washington says they are working on a plan to bring teachers to teach tribal members who will then teach the native language to the kids. There are only two people still living who are fluent Lushootseed speakers.
“All along this coast the language has been in jeopardy of being lost,” Washington said. “It’s going to be a lot of work, but it will be worth it in the end, and the kids want to learn how to speak and identify themselves in their own language. If we can incorporate it in the schools in a couple of years, that would be ultimate.”
Tim Bruce says he hopes to eventually see the language taught at the schools. For now, the impact on the cultural identity of this generation’s students has been gratifying in terms of levels of participation, both with sports and academics.
“We’ve had a lot more students willing to share a piece of their culture,” says Bruce, who sees the sense of identity built from Canoe Journey as a stepping stone to move forward.
“I think with this renewed pride that’s come out of the Canoe Journey and everything the tribe and the school is working on,” he said, “I think this will probably be one of our largest graduating classes with one of the largest percentages of Native American students.”
Next week: Washington State history curriculum – teaching the sovereignty curriculum.
By Anna Ferdinand
In the late 1800s, after the United States government’s policy toward Native Americans had evolved from annihilating them to assimilating them, the practice was to exterminate any vestige of their old ways.
When Indian reservations were established, many cul-tural practices were actually outlawed, and children were put into boarding schools, where they were forced to forget their heritage. Today, educators are working to heal the scars that were passed down through generations.
“Some of our great-great-grandparents would go hide out in the woods in small cabins down by the channel, and they would practice our singing and dancing,” Aurelia Washington told La Conner High School students at an assembly last week.
Washington, who is the cultural director for the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, spoke to La Conner High School students on Native American Day last week. The goal is to raise the identity of the tribe to both native and non-native students as an integral part of education in La Conner.
General Cayou, a senior at La Conner High, told his school mates about hunting, fishing and gathering with his father. Their quests for traditional foods take them up into the Cascade Mountains hunting for bear, deer and elk and fishing in the Skagit River and in the Salish Sea.
“When it’s berry season, my dad goes out and picks like seven gallons of berries. It’s ridiculous,” Cayou said. “It takes a lot going out fishing and hunting; there’s a lot of preparation we do. Me and my cousin Willy, we’re learning how to do all that so we can take over. When my dad steps down, we step up.”
The 2011 Canoe Journey, which was hosted by Swinomish, played a major role in generating pride in the youth and interest and awareness on the part of non-native students.
During a session of oral storytelling, necklace making and dancing, La Conner music teacher Shegay Vanderpool said she has seen a major shift in students’ attitudes towards the Swinomish traditions.
“I’ve seen lots more participation from all of the kids since the Canoe Journey,” said Vanderpool.
Second-graders were dancing the Spirit of the Eagle as Washington sang and drummed in Vanderpool’s class. “I think because they saw it so often, and they worked and practiced so hard and were so excited about it, that it’s kind of caught on,” she said. “I really see that.”
In contrast, Swinomish students of earlier generations speak of having no sense of cultural identity and feeling uncomfortable at schools while growing up.
“We never had our cultural identity,” says Washington. “It wasn’t until we started getting ready for the Canoe Journey that Swinomish pride was re-instilled. We’ve seen complete changes with the kids; their whole attitudes and desire to do well changed, and to me, it was that pride of knowing who they were.”
The school district aims to bring this sense of identity deeper into the fabric of the schools by including instruction in native culture and language as well as an understanding of the past.
“One of the primary things you have to look at was the boarding schools and access to education at its root level,” says La Conner Superintendent Tim Bruce. Generations of sending Native American children away to boarding schools “created a lot of mistrust and a lot of feelings that ‘this isn’t for me.’ We’re just into the generation where we can start getting past that,” Bruce said.
In 1866 Catholic nuns in Tulalip started a school which would become the first contract boarding school with the federal government in the United States. In 1879, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was established in Pennsylvania and was the first of many off-reservation boarding schools.
Children were taken from their families and tribes and forced to abandon their native cultures and languages. By the late 1920s, the government changed its official culture-destroying policy, but Native American children were still routinely sent away to boarding schools well into the 1970s.
Recently La Conner teaching staff attended a training session at Swinomish that featured a documentary film with accounts of people who had been students in boarding schools.
Beatings for speaking in their native language, having their hair cut off, being separated from their families, sexual abuse and sometimes even death are described in the first-hand accounts of former boarding school students.
The reverberations of self-hate the experience engendered had a profound effect on those students and the generations that followed them.
Washington’s grandfather, Chester Cayou, Sr., was taken to a boarding school in Canada.
She discovered her grandfather’s story in 2008, when retrieving his birth certificate in Canada. There was a settlement from the Canadian government for students of that school. Washington learned horrific stories of boarding school life, including an incident in which a boy was hung in the school gym as an example to deter bad behavior.
“I was in tears, I had never even fathomed…,” said Washington. Chester Cayou “was this gentle, gentle man, who never raised his voice. That was just his character and his spirit. His motto was what we used for the Canoe Journey; ‘Loving, caring and sharing together.’”
According to Washington, her grandfather was rescued from the school by his older brother in a canoe and brought to Swinomish, where he was adopted by the tribe.
During the time of the boarding schools, “You had this clash of worlds,” explains Theresa Trebon, archivist for the Swinomish tribe. “Instead of learning to subsist and create baskets, all of a sudden, they had this non-native-based education. Kids were heavily punished if they spoke their native language of Lushootseed. They lost their Indian names and were baptized with the names of saints. Everything changes.”
Swinomish Chariman, Brian Cladoosby explained at a speaking event last month the effect the boarding schools had on his own family.
“My grandparents were boarding school kids,” he said. “Boarding school experience was unspeakable; the physical abuse, the mental abuse, the sexual abuse, even kids dying at these schools. If you had to experience that type of education, it wouldn’t be a top priority for you to push that on your kids.”
Cladoosby says the dropout rate for his parents’ generation was probably more than 90 percent. Today the high school dropout rate for Native Americans hovers around 20 percent in La Conner.
It’s been a slow climb back up for the traditional ways of the tribe, says former tribal senator, Ray Williams. Williams grew up with an impoverished sense of his own culture, which he didn’t discover until studying Indian law at the University of New Mexico. He was invited to a Navajo ceremony and was moved by the connection these tribal members had to their spiritual culture, based on a deep connection to the land.
“I met up with the Navajos and the Hopi people who lived in the old way, and I said, oh my God, this was what was haunting me all these years.”
The Swinomish longhouse culture came back with the building of the tribe’s longhouse in the 1990s. Williams says the longhouse brought a major increase in the activity around spiritual and cultural teachings. “The educational institution for us was the longhouse,” Williams said. “That was our university, our way of teaching.”
The next essential step is bringing back the language, says Williams.
“What we realized was that the Lushootseed language was essential to our future,” he said.
Washington says they are working on a plan to bring teachers to teach tribal members who will then teach the native language to the kids. There are only two people still living who are fluent Lushootseed speakers.
“All along this coast the language has been in jeopardy of being lost,” Washington said. “It’s going to be a lot of work, but it will be worth it in the end, and the kids want to learn how to speak and identify themselves in their own language. If we can incorporate it in the schools in a couple of years, that would be ultimate.”
Tim Bruce says he hopes to eventually see the language taught at the schools. For now, the impact on the cultural identity of this generation’s students has been gratifying in terms of levels of participation, both with sports and academics.
“We’ve had a lot more students willing to share a piece of their culture,” says Bruce, who sees the sense of identity built from Canoe Journey as a stepping stone to move forward.
“I think with this renewed pride that’s come out of the Canoe Journey and everything the tribe and the school is working on,” he said, “I think this will probably be one of our largest graduating classes with one of the largest percentages of Native American students.”
Next week: Washington State history curriculum – teaching the sovereignty curriculum.