SECTION I

SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

A. INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT

Education is viewed in the United States as a traditional formal arena of schooling from the elementary to the high school, college or vocational school levels. Such schooling is organized to take place in an institutional setting usually from six years of age to twenty-five yearolds. Education is the arena in which not only academic and vocation skills but culture, mores, and social values are transmitted to the student.

These institutions are molded clearly according to the American society's values and goals. Instead of education being used as a tool for developing the goals, aspirations, and skills of Indian people for themselves and their communities, American Indians have found themselves attending institutions organized and operated either by the federal or state government.

Many of the social and economic ills prevalent in the Indian communities today, and attendant problems of Indian students can be clearly traced to such educational institutions.

In analyzing the law which created the American Indian Policy Review Commission, the Indian Education Task Force formulated its work around the following issues:

1. A historical review of the federal relationship with Indian tribes;

2. A review and evaluation of the manner and extent to which federal agencies have implemented the federal role;

3. A review and analysis of the manner in which Indian tribes and communities have been included or excluded from the flow of federal services;

4. An exploration of alternative representative and service entities to insure maximum participation of Indian people in national policy formation and program development;

5. An analysis of how findings must be incorporated into existing laws, policies and procedures to insure effectuation of the purposes of the Commission.

Our work has looked at all levels and ages of Indian education and all Indian people.

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B. OVERVIEW

In carrying out its responsibilities as defined by P.L. 93-580, it has been the perception of the Task Force that arriving at a clearcut statement of the federal role in Indian education hinged not upon completion of any one task defined by the law, but upon delineating the interrelationship of the tasks defined as they relate to education.

To achieve this end, the Task Force effort has covered a time frame of nearly four hundred years. Federal, state, and private organization records have been reviewed in an effort to determine the extent and nature of past educational services to Indians.

Throughout its efforts, the Task Force has attempted to delineate the interweaving of past policies and practices and present needs and concerns of Indian Education. The rationale for this approach has been that the historical research will serve to define the legislative, administrative and policy contexts in which educational services have been provided to Indian people of all ages throughout the United States.

As a starting point for the historical review, attention was briefly focused on the Pre-Columbian period. For, as one Task Force member pointed out, prior to the arrival of the explorers in the New World, Indian people had their own educational mechanisms. These mechanisms could be analyzed in terms of goals, process and content. These goals, processes and contents allowed Indian tribes and communities to shape their own destinies. Thus, he noted, the historical fate of Indian people can be charted as follows:

The Indian Period-B.C. to 1492

For purposes of this report, the era pertaining to the time prior to the arrival of white men on the North American continent in 1492 is referred to as the Indian period.

The first people to inhabit the New World or the Americas were called Indians by Christopher Columbus when he landed in what is now known as the West Indies. He surmised he had reached India, and so he called the people he met Indians.

The Vikings are believed to have explored the coast of North America about 1000 A.D. and if so, they failed to establish a lasting contact with the inhabitants.

The question of origin and migration of the American Indian, north of Mexico, has never been completely answered. There is lack of agreement on the subject by anthropologists and archeologists. About the only thing scholars agree on is that the American Indian has been in North America a long time, perhaps at least 20,000 years. By the time Columbus arrived, Indians were living in the New World from the Far North to the southern tip of South America.

Nearly every tribe has legends explaining the creation of their people. Indian legends told stories of the world before it had people. told stories of the origin of people and tribes, and told stories of tribal heroes.

Before the arrival of white men in 1492, the American Indians who lived on the North American continent evolved civilizations which were suitable for their needs.

Among American Indians of that time, men, women and children lived together in families and the family was the basic unit of their society.

Families of Indians joined together to form local groups called bands. The number of people or families in a band depended upon the availability of the necessities of life in the nearby area.

Generally, bands joined together to form tribes. Hundreds of tribes. existed in 1492.

There are varied definitions of what a tribe is. One definition is: "Among the North American Indians, a tribe is a body of persons who are bound together by ties, consanguinity and affinity and by certain esoteric ideas or concepts derived from their philosophy concerning the genesis and preservation of the environing cosmos, and who by means of these kinship ties are thus socially, politically and religiously organized through a variety of ritualistic, governmental, and other institutions, and who dwell together occupying a definite territorial area, and who speak a common language or dialect. From a great variety of circumstances-climatic, topographic, and alimental-the social, political, and religious institutions of the tribes of North American Indians differed in both kind and degree, and were not characterized by a like complexity of structure; but they did agree in the one fundamental principle that the organic unities of the social fabric were based on kinship and its interrelations and not on territorial districts or geographical areas."

Some Indian tribes in North America organized larger groups called federations. The Iroquois federation was made up of the five Iroquois tribes-Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca, and Cayuga.

American Indians of this period developed many institutions common to non-Indian societies or cultures and a significant one was education.

Education has always been a need of human society, and every society evolved a process of educating its youth for active adult participation in that society. The Indian society devised a means for socializing the youth and transmitting the culture.

The educational process was active and not passive. The boys and girls learned by doing. The process was not highly structured and was dependent upon parents, relatives, and tribal elders for implementation. The curriculum could be described as informal but relevant. The life style of Indians was tuned to the natural forces surrounding them and the overall goal of education was to preserve and maintain their way of life. Indian children were expected to grow up as their parents were, to perpetuate tribal customs, values, traditions, and ethics. Indians of that period were profoundly spiritual.

Because American Indians did not have a written language, much of what was learned was by word-of-mouth transmission. The basic thrust of Indian education was traditional in the sense that the past was revered.

The tribes had little formal structured government. Men became leaders through exemplary action rather than through local election. The headmen were moral and spiritual leaders as well as political

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leaders. Decisions were arrived at in consultation with the heads of various families or clans. Indian leaders remained leaders only so long as the wisdom of their actions held the respect and support of the people.

The system served the needs of the Indian people of that period. Planners of education for American Indians in the future should heed the advice of Sitting Bull who said, "If a man loses something and goes back and carefully looks for it, he will find it."*

However, with the enactment of P.L. 93-638, the Indian Self-Determination Act, hopefully, the foundations have been laid for a contemporary Indian period in which control of their destiny is returned to Indian tribes and communities.

Excerpted from an unpublished monograph_prepared for American Indian Policy Review Commission; the Task Force on Indian Education by Earl J. Barlow, Blackfeet, of Browning, Montana, which appears in Appendix A, page 305.