Volume 11 Number 1
October 1971

Gene Leitka

American Indian education, under the direction of Bureau of Indian Affairs, has not been immune to the unrest among the youth of today. The Indian youth, more so than any other group, has been subjected to rules and regulations in federal Indian schools while in pursuit of equal education with members of the larger segment of the society.

The students’ dissent and nonconformist movements have been coming in assorted packages. The most prominent among the male Indian youth on the campus has been the return of their ancestral heritage of sporting long hair. It might be said that the Indian youth is partially accomplishing his search for self identity with something that may uniquely be identified as Native American. He has discovered that sporting long hair has become a new ball game in a new ball park—the ball park being that of both public and federal boarding schools. According to reports and from observation, the boarding schools seem to have relaxed much of their restrictive standards in recent years and wearing of long hair has been one of them. This, in itself, is a long cry from when many Indians, products of boarding schools, can remember the day, "you got your mouth washed out with yellow laundry soap for speaking Indian" (see Note 1).

An example of the new trend in Indian schools is the Institute of American Indian Arts, (IAIA), in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A student body president is described as having the look of a traditional Indian brave with long straight hair hanging down to the top of his back and is readily noticeable that he is proud to be what he is—American Indian" (see Note 2).

With changes occurring so rapidly in our society, many schools have altered or restructured their conduct and dress codes that have been adhered to religiously in the past. These changes could very well have had some influence from court decisions, such as the Tinker vs Des Moines Independent Community School District involving student’s rights in 1969, and the case of In Re Gault (1967), in which the decision extended the constitutional safeguards of due process to juveniles and emphasized that adequate and timely notice as well as a hearing be provided to school age children (see Note 3).

On the other hand, in some segments of our country, change comes slowly—if and when it does come at all. A case in point is the small town of Hartshorne, lying at the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains in eastern Oklahoma, with a population of approximately 2,000 residents. At the eastern edge of this town sits Jones Academy, a federal boarding school for Indian children of the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma. Jones was built in the 1890s, and has teetered back and forth from near termination back to revival. Presently, it has approximately 200 students from elementary through high school. A staff, headed by a principal who is the director of the dormitory, operates the Indian school. The Indian students are bussed into Hartshorne public schools daily and bussed back at the end of the school day.

During the school year 1970-71, Jones Academy officials reported, at the close of the school year, that 25 to 30 Indian students were expelled from public schools at Hartshorne. Reasons given were that the students refused to have their long hair sheared and consequently, the administration resorted to expulsions. Seemingly though, the students were given a choice either to take "paddling" or "haircut" and obviously they refused both. According to an official spokesman of the Indian school, the expulsion of the Indian students by the public schools extended over the entire year (see Note 4).

Officials and other sources in the community and the Indian School related that "those Indian kids were looking for a reason to quit school and go home, so this was a good way out and they took it." When asked if the students had been given a proper hearing or informed of their rights to appeal their expulsion, either to the school board or local court, the response was that "They were aware of the dress code because the students themselves had had a voice in establishing the school dress code."

It is pointed out in Public School Law that thousands of male pupils have been threatened with similar actions, but no action as severe as above is recorded. A few hundred have actually been suspended, and a few of the cases have resorted to courts for relief (see Note 5). A case in point is the Griffin vs Tatum (1969) in which a high school student had been suspended for violating a rule requiring that boys’ hairlines be tapered rather than blocked. In ordering his readmission, the court noted that "there can be little doubt the constitution protects the freedom to determine one’s own hair style and otherwise to govern one’s personal appearance." The court concluded in the Griffin case that:

In regards to the Griffin case, the court also stated that if there is any hygienic or other sanitary problem in connection with those students who elect to wear their hair longer than that presently permitted by the dress code, there should be ways to remedy this other than by requiring their hair shorn or expulsion (see Note 8).

A similar case—that of Breen vs Kahl (1969), where the question was the constitutionality of a school board regulation limiting the length of a male student’s hair—found that "wearing one’s hair a certain length is one’s liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment," and that such restrictions would assault personality, individuality, would undermine identity, and would invade human "being" and violate a basic value—the concept of "ordered liberty" (see Note 9).

The question remains whether the expelled students were properly informed and advised of their constitutional rights and their legal status as minors. Sources contacted stated that the Indian parents were notified of the expulsion of their children from school but that there were no challenges of the decisions by the school’s administration. This is understandable on the part of the Indian people who never seem to question the laws of the white man because of the intricacies and the complexities involved. Nevertheless, responsible persons, particularly those charged with providing homelike situations for the students while away from home, should be aware of the safeguards of due process to juveniles. After all, these persons charged with parental responsibilities of all the students in the federal school were the very people who permitted the wearing of long hair to the public schools and stood by the decisions made by the school to deprive them of an education, and much more important, their basic constitutional rights as individual citizens.

The traditional long locks of the Indian male has been a problem to him in some respects, even historically, as Vine Deloria points out:

The analogy being made here is somewhat reversed in the case of the Indian students, in that they were knowingly permitted to grow their hair and sent to face the consequences.

The idea that the student body representatives were present when the dress code was established for the student body does not invalidate the basic constitutional rights of the individual. Understandably, officials of the school felt that the students helped establish the rules so they should live by them, and this excluded the adults from responsibilities of interpreting constitutional safeguards of due process. It would be easier to say, you made the rules, you live by them.

It cannot be pointedly said that the school officials did not extend due process with adequate notice as well as a hearing but it seems obvious that this important provision for the individual citizen can no longer be ignored. Justice Fortas made it clear in the Tinker case "that students are also persons with constitutional and fundamental, rights and that school officials do not possess absolute authority over them in schools" (see Note 10). It appears that even the minimum due process would certainly include adequate notice of proposed action and a hearing before taking such drastic steps as expelling 30 students because they had dared to exercise their personal freedom of determining their personal appearance as long as it had no detrimental effects on the normal operation of the school.