Volume 18 Number 2
January 1979

Ann Ousterhout

The history of education among Alaskan Indians has involved some unique features, when compared to that of American Indians in other sections of the United States. For one thing, Alaska’s Indians, Eskimos and Aleuts have never been relocated to reservations, nor removed from lands they once occupied. Nevertheless, they have been included in such services as the federal government has provided to other American aborigines, and these have been largely in the form of health and educational services. By mandate of the First Organic Act of 1884, the Secretary of the Interior was to provide education for the children of Alaska "without reference to race" (see Note 1).

Locally controlled schools date from the early 1900s, particularly from the Nelson Act of 1905, which allowed the establishment of schools outside incorporated towns. While Alaskan natives were not denied access to territorial schools, the distance of native communities from the population centers where such schools were built tended to lower the school enrollment of native youngsters in Alaska.

Secondary schooling was especially problematic, due to the more complex requirements of the traditional high school program in terms of facilities, specialists and curricula. In 1947, the federal government approached this problem by opening a boarding school for high school age students, at Mt. Edgecumbe, near the historic town of Sitka, in southeastern Alaska. Soon this institution was filled to capacity with native students from non-high school villages throughout the state. The federal government then enrolled some students in boarding schools outside the state, particularly at Chemawa, Oregon, and Chilocco, Oklahoma (see Note 2). However, objections to this program of absentee education developed on the part of the citizenry of Alaska. While opportunities for specialized training, as well as socializing experiences, might be available to the student sent to boarding school, the feeling grew that loss of family and home contact was not worth the price.

Partly to meet this concern, voters of the state of Alaska authorized construction of a vocational, regional boarding school, the William E. Beltz School at Nome, which opened in 1966. Another step in the same direction was the Boarding Home Program, begun in 1967, funded by the Johnson-O’Malley Act and administered by the Alaska Board of Education. This was to be a temporary measure to meet the needs of secondary students from small, scattered villages, until additional regional high schools could be built.

In 1968, members of Alaska’s congressional delegation heard testimony opposing the expansion of Mt. Edgecumbe High School, based largely upon the distance students had to travel. That program was cut back, while the smaller, regional concept was expanded with the addition of the Kodiak-Aleutian School in 1968, and the Bethel Regional High School in 1972.

Governance of public schools, as known in the contiguous states of the union, has a history comparable to the growth of an individual from child to adult, or about 20 years. Statehood came to Alaska in 1959, followed by a state constitution which reinforced the concept of education for all, regardless of ethnicity. The position of the federal government, and of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Education Division in particular, was to effect a transfer of school responsibilities to the state, based upon action taken at "both state and federal levels" (see Note 3).

Land Claims legislation in 1971 increased the significance of education among the Alaskan native people, who were enabled by that legislation, to take upon themselves considerable decision-making in regard to vast sums of money, land, and other resources. Using the opportunities implied by that legislation requires enlarging and enhancing educational programs, vocational as well as academic, for the Alaskan native population.

If the Alaskan native student has faced unique problems to gain an education, has the student dropout, also, confronted unique problems? Studies of dropouts among the Alaska Indian, Aleut, and Eskimo student populations are not as numerous as those of American Indian populations in other sections of the country. This is due partly to the scattering of the Alaska native ethnic groups over a wide area, isolated by natural phenomena, frequently in villages of no more than a handful of families, a difficulty met by any sociological study attempted in the fiftieth state. This "scatter" was referred to by Ray (see Note 4) and by Griffiths (see Note 5), as well as by the economist George Rogers, who, in colorful fashion, described the native state of living as "a fragmented ghetto" (see Note 6).

Ray pointed out, in his summary of the Hoonah community profile, some of the characteristics of a Tlingit community which could affect dropouts from such social groups. One was the economic base of fishing, which was both seasonal and currency-based, as opposed to the Eskimo custom of using natural resources for clothing, fuel, and housing, as well as for food. Another related characteristic was the mobility afforded by that type of economy. Young people were not required at home year-round to assist in survival tasks. A third common factor in the Tlingit culture of the southeast was the lack of inter-dependence among family members, which seemed prevalent in northern and interior villages. Instead, a clan relationship existed among southeastern native people, allowing more independence to individuals, while still providing identity through clan membership. Lastly, the geographic proximity to larger communities and to the non-native culture of the "lower 48" provided an influence upon Tlingit cultural values, not available to a large portion of the native population in the rest of the state.

Within the southeast region, approximately one-fifth of the entire native population of Alaska resides. The Ray study reported nearly one-third of the dropout students, came from the southeast. Was it because of, or in spite of, the closeness of that population to the influences of the contiguous states? Research has yet to answer that question.

The next statewide study of Alaska native student dropouts was undertaken by the University of Utah Graduate School of Social Work, under contract to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior, Alaska Area. Using data from 1969, 1971, and 1976, this study was directed toward student perceptions of reasons and circumstances contributing to their school dropout behavior.

As in the earlier study, information was gained from questionnaires and interviews with students reported to have dropped out of school. In each of the three years studied, native student dropouts were identified by the Alaska State Department of Education records. Results were reported according to areas delineated for administration of social services by the federal and state governmental agencies. For the three periods studied, the report showed that in the southeast division, a total of 273 native students left school before graduation. Of these, 66% were reached for personal interviews. This compared to a native dropout throughout the state for the same period, of 1942 students, with an interview percentage of 53% (see Note 8). The results of the study were reported to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Alaska Area, as contracting agent.

Because a referral form for requesting assistance was made available to students as part of the interview procedure, a follow-up study was done by Griffiths to evaluate that component (see Note 9). A total of 321 students submitted referrals, out of 432 interviewed statewide, in the 1976 study, to one or more agencies charged with providing services such as employment counseling, vocational training, and work-study programs. It was noted that one-third of the total group referred had returned to school.

Figures for the southeast region once again showed that area to be at one end of the spectrum, with the lowest percentage of return to school: 20%. That figure represented an area in which ease of transportation and communication brought public education within reach of all school age children, with a simplicity rare in many parts of the state. What should be an asset to continued school attendance, appears to have been a liability. Of course, the reasons for high dropout-low return are too complex to be dismissed with a single statement. Educators and social workers must inquire into the whereabouts of such students. If they have moved to another district, or have entered vocational training, well and good. But if they are adrift, a search for direction and a set of skills to get them there must be made.

Another line could be drawn in the dropout picture from the cultural-ethnic mix of the communities. While on a statewide basis, Alaskan natives comprise approximately one fifth of the total population, the proportion in specific communities varies from a heavy majority in the southeastern village of Hoonah, for example, to a slim minority in Skagway, less than an hour distant by air. Studies have not yet tested hypotheses upon the significance of such extremes of ethnic mixture upon school dropout rates, or school performance in general, for that matter. It is possible that peer pressure works on both ends of the spectrum, helping students out, as well as in.

The school dropout is not a new problem. As early as 1872, a paper was presented to the National Education Association Division of Superintendence, titled, "The Early Withdrawal of Pupils From Schools: Its Causes and Its Remedies" (see Note 10). The issue has been addressed fairly often since that time, by presidents as well as educators and sociologists. The Bureau of Census figures for 1970 report that 27% of the non-white population of Alaska over 25 years of age, had completed four years of high school. To put it another way, the white population in Alaska was completing 12 years of education, compared to 8 years for the non-white. These figures have implications for the community as a whole, not simply the school system, alone.

It has been common among both professional educators and laymen to regard school dropouts as the result of poor home environments and inferior family relationships; to look at the problem almost in despair, because family and home have been viewed as beyond the sphere of the school’s influence. To study external elements such as population size or ethnic group ratios for possible relationship to school dropout patterns could be considered superficial. However, the very fact that home problems have become so complex may create an interest in external factors, however limited, which the school and other educational agencies might be able to control or modify. If research were to support even a slight effect of such components as community size, or proximity to the contiguous states, the potential for saving human resources would count the effort a success.

1. Office of Indian Education Programs. "Alaska Native High School Dropouts," a report prepared for Project ANNA. Albuquerque: Bureau of Indian Affairs, December, 1974. p. 1.

2. Office of Indian Education Programs, op. cit., p. 12.

3. Darnell, Frank, Ed., Education in the North, Selected Papers of the First International Conference on Cross-Cultural Education in the Circumpolar Nations. University of Alaska, Fairbanks: 1966. p. 29.

4. Ray, Charles K. Alaska Native Secondary School Dropouts. A Research Report for the University of Alaska Native Education Project. Fairbanks: 1962.

5. Griffiths, K. A. "A Comparative Perspective of the Alaskan Native Student Dropout 1969-1976," Report by the University of Utah Graduate School of Social Work, Salt Lake City: 1977.

6. Rogers, G. W., Alaska in Transition: The Southeast Region. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1960. p. 12.

7. Ray, op. cit., p. 34.

8. Griffiths, op. cit., p. 7, Table 1.

9. Griffiths, K. A. "Alaska Native Dropout Follow-up," unpublished report, Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1977.

10. Varner, Sherrell. School Dropouts. A Research Summary. Washington: National Education Association. 1966. p. 5.