Sadia Tasnim
Professor Sidibé
Freshman Composition ENGL 110
1 May 2019
The Trail of Tears Never Ended
“”Books,” I say to them. “Books,” I say. I throw my weight against their locked doors. The door holds. I am smart. I am arrogant. I am lucky. I am trying to save our lives.”(Alexie, 2). Sherman Alexie ends his piece, Superman and Me, with an air of desperation and the feeling of fighting a battle that has already been lost. After recounting his experience with the American education system, Alexie leaves his readers with a poignant message about the power of education, what the lack of it can do to a person’s life, and his mission to save the lives of Native children through education. Having grown up in a government-run reservation, Alexie had seen first-hand how the effects of colonialism, racism, lack of infrastructure, addiction, and lack of resources could cripple a society. All of these public issues stem back to the root of education, which can be the platform through which a person can make something of themselves or through the lack of which a person can end up losing their lives, be it through death or through imprisonment because of the school to prison pipeline that is in effect. Although the American education system claims to support and encourage proper education and development of Native American children, the current systems in place actually create a cycle of education deficiency leading to mass incarceration of Native people.
Where did it all start?
This story begins with the colonization of the Americas by Europeans starting in the early 1600s; the displacing, killing, and attempted assimilation of Native peoples were all precursors to the current state of Native American destitution. Fast forward from throwing sick-infected blankets over the fences of tribal lands and scalping Natives for game, colonizers had found a new avenue to rid the country of the Native people: by erasing their culture. The process of assimilating Natives, starting in the late 1700s and lasting until present day, was in a large part, done through stopping Native youth from accessing their culture and traditions. Under the mentality of “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”, boarding schools were established in the late nineteenth century to stop the growth and legacy of Native American culture (Little).
Hundreds of students were documented to have died while at boarding schools where they were exposed to diseases like tuberculosis and subsequently buried on the school grounds. While some passed away due to the purposeful neglect of the boarding school administrations, others that managed to survive were stripped of their Native names, clothes, and language while being assimilated into American culture and norms. The American government was bent on eradicating any trace of Native-ness from the youth as a way of ‘killing’ them without physically committing murder. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1885 was quoted to have said, “it is cheaper to educate them than to fight them.” (Little). This statement shows how the education programs set up for the Natives were aimed at wiping the Natives out in a systematic fashion that would replace the outright killing that took place in the past. This form of ethnic cleansing was carried out through the education system with the rouse of accepting and developing Native children into American society; the sentiment has outlasted these types of schools and continues to exist in modern day schools on reservations as well as those that are integrated into American communities. The schools serve as places of oppression and shame for Native children, who enter the education system with significantly less privilege than their non-Native peers and leave the schools in handcuffs.
The State of Native American Education
The egregious start of Native American-specific education facilities left lasting impacts on the current state of schools meant for Native youth. Many schools that are on Native reservations or cater mostly towards Native youth are in severe amounts of disrepair and are often held inside trailers or makeshift spaces with what little resources government programs provide or the administrators themselves can afford (Clarren). The Indian Affairs Commissioners statement about educating Natives being cheaper than fighting them still stands to this day, proven by the fact that while only 3% of public schools are in need of funding, 37% of schools for Native students are in need of funding for infrastructure and resources, adding up to more than 1.3 billion dollars necessary to get Native schools up and running at a passable standard (Hopper). Schools that are falling apart cannot support students that are, not only from an oppressed and neglected minority but are also, not given the proper support and counseling through which they can learn their own culture and traditions. Schools, as they had in the past are assimilating Native youth while providing them with subpar levels of education and ill-preparing them to live in American society.
The School to Prison Pipeline
It is well established that the level of education that Native youth receive is not enough to prepare them for success in the adult world. Many Native youth never graduate high school and never even make it to earning a college degree, leading to unemployment and poverty on top of the poverty that many Native children experience due to the cycle of oppression that they face, passed down from their parents and grandparents and so on. While Native American children represent only 1% of the nation’s student population, they account for over 2% of the nation’s in-school arrests and 3% of national referrals to law enforcement (NCAI Policy Research Center). Poverty, lack of parental support, lack of attention given by teachers, and lack of counseling for trauma leads many children in reservation schools toward violent and emotional outbursts which are then punished by law enforcement. This zero tolerance policy towards native children (which is more extreme compared to their non-native, Caucasian peers) gives no attention to the emotional needs of students and places them directly into a system that many of them never escape, even in adulthood.
Outbursts or breakdowns are treated as problems for the police to handle instead of counselors or therapists. Native American children are 30% more likely than their white counterparts to be sent to juvenile court or treated as adults in a court of law than to have their charges dropped (NCAI Policy Research Center). This inhumane treatment of Native students assures that they are entered into the prison system at a young age and because of their misdemeanors at school, these children are likely to be unemployed and impoverished later on in life, spending their days in and out of prisons as adults because of the lack of support they were given as children. Some may say that the American government does attempt to support and give resources to Native children through programs set up specifically to help rehabilitate them and help those who are behind get ahead in their education. However, this is a system set up to rope Native American youth into the prison circuit; the government funded programs that claim to rehabilitate unruly Native kids that have suspended from school or have been caught committing minor crimes are not what they claim to be (Clarren). These facilities are juvenile detention centers disguised as places of healing and help. More and more juvenile prisons are being approved to be built due to the influx of Native youth that are being condemned for crimes committed while in school. Centers of education are preprogrammed to give Native youth little chances at thriving all the while preparing places to house them once they are caught misbehaving with no regard for what caused their outbursts.
Native Youth and Learning Disability
A significant portion of people that incarcerated in the U.S. have some form of learning or mental disability. While these people should be getting access to rehabilitation and therapy services, they are instead imprisoned and left to worsen their conditions. In a study done on incarcerated citizens across the country, 65% of all people in prison never received their high school diploma or equivalent and of those 65%, 59% had a speech disability and 69% had a learning disability (Hopper). Add to that the statistic that Native American school boys with disabilities were the group that was referred to law enforcement the most out of every ethnic group in the country in 2014 and the fact that 18% of Native students have learning disabilities compared to the average 10% all other American students, it is apparent that Native students are not only in need to support, but that their disabilities are being exploited to fill jail cells and further the erasure of Native culture (NCAI Policy Research Center). Due to the traumas that Native culture has faced, the unending cycle of poverty and unemployment as well as high rates of alcoholism and addiction that the Native community faces (all attempts at eradicating Native Americans, one way or another), Native children are born into a legacy of suffering and little to no healing. This suffering is only prolonged by the school to prison pipeline that is functioning under the guise of a formal education.
The Cycle
In Superman and Me, Sherman Alexie talks about being lucky, being one of the few to push himself and make it out of the education system that valued people like him so little and now trying to save kids just like him. He sees himself as an outlier of the system, one person that has not been sucked in and broken by the school to prison pipeline. But he only stands out as such because of the majority of the children around him that have fallen prey to the system. Teachers that expect next to nothing from Native youth while encouraging their non-Native counterparts, schools that do not have enough resources to truly teach children how to thrive in modern society, and the expectation to fall into line with American culture all contribute towards the lack of success in Native students. Students are emotionally downtrodden and have little motivation to succeed. Many are dropouts and never make it to a college education; 41% of the 65% of national incarcerated citizens were highschool dropouts (Clarren). This makes it hard for them to obtain a job, make ends meet, and house themselves. Many end up homeless or living under government-subsidized programs. And because their parents faced a similar if not worse experience with education, unemployment, and poverty, these children that grew up in poverty continue to suffer in it as adults and the cycle lives on.
The Drug and Alcohol Problem
Along with the school to prison pipeline, Native Americans have also been systematically targeted by drug and alcohol companies, not only to profit off of them, but also to keep them controlled and unable to support themselves. A study conducted with Native American high school students and high school students nationwide showed that Native American school children had a higher lifetime drug use than other groups with the exception of a few choice drugs (NIDA). The statistics show similarly concerning numbers when dealing with the rates of Native American alcoholism with poverty and a lack of education as contributing factors to the rise of alcohol usage as well as past traumas, unemployment, stress and mental health issues (Recovery.com). Alcohol and drugs can also be viewed as another route that colonizers have taken to keep the Native population in a state of stagnation; if the people are occupied with their addictions and health problems, then they will not be able to fight back for their rights or climb any type of social or economic ladders. The initial platform of education which is supposed to empower a person, when not given enough support or resources, results in these situations of lack of motivation and unemployment and homelessness and stress that can lead to increased drug and alcohol use (and so the cycle continues).
Conclusion
The American education system, for all its claims about leaving no child behind and supporting programs for children in need, actually does more harm than good for children of Native American descent. After a long history of oppressing and ethnically cleansing Native peoples in the U.S., the American government has resorted to using the education system as a tool to control and subjugate Native peoples through their youth. Underfunded schools and racist school teachers are creating generations of Native children that do not have the basic education necessary to function as adults in American society and do not have an understanding of their own native culture because the American school system encourages them to assimilate. Along with these factors, drugs, alcohol, racism from law enforcement, mental disabilities, and poverty also weigh heavily on the shoulders of Native children and drag them lower than their already disadvantaged position in society. Education, when applied properly and with care, can mold a person into something more than what they were born into; something more than their suffering and traumas. However, the lack of a proper education is very effective in wiping out an entire culture. There is more than one way and more invisible ways than visible ones to oppress people, education being a major invisible weapon.
Work Cited
Alexie, Sherman, “Superman and Me: The Joy of Reading and Writing.” Los Angeles
Times, 19 April 1998. Web. 1 September 2013. http://articles.latimes.com/1998/
apr/19/books/bk-42979
Boarding Schools and the School to Prison Pipeline | States of Incarceration, statesofincarceration.org/story/boarding-schools-and-school-prison-pipeline.
Clarren, Rebecca. “How America Is Failing Native American Students.” The Nation, 14 Aug. 2017, www.thenation.com/article/left-behind/.
“How Education Deficiency Drives Mass Incarceration.” [FKD], 1 May 2018, www.genfkd.org/education-deficiency-drives-mass-incarceration.
Hopper, Frank. “Fighting the Worst Pipeline of All: From School to Prison.” IndianCountryToday.com, Indian Country Today, 29 Dec. 2016, newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/fighting-the-worst-pipeline-of-all-from-school-to-pris
on-kYyNgXmPTkulx1JLEKfM4w/.
Little, Becky. “How Boarding Schools Tried to ‘Kill the Indian’ Through Assimilation.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 16 Aug. 2017, www.history.com/news/how-boarding-schools-tried-to-kill-the-indian-through-assimilation.
“Native Americans and Alcoholism.” Recovery.org, 7 Dec. 2018, www.recovery.org/alcohol-addiction/native-americans/.
National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Higher Rate of Substance Use among Native American Youth on Reservations.” NIDA, 31 May 2018, www.drugabuse.gov/news-events/news-releases/2018/05/higher-rate-substance-use-among-native-american-youth-reservations.
