Volume 18 Number 2
January 1979

Laurence French

MUCH effort has been made within the past 20 years to upgrade 'turban education' with the development of special programs designed to better assimilate impoverished race and ethnic groups into the mainstream of American society. Unfortunately these programs seem to exclude the Native American and this is due primarily to their unique cultural heritage. The failure of the reservation boarding schools illustrates this point. The attempt to "white-wash" Indians has never met with much success and there is no reason to believe that it will succeed in the future.

Today Indian educators are insisting that any viable Indian educational program, reservation or urban, must be made culturally-relevant to the group's particular and unique Native American heritage. And for this to occur these programs need Indian in-put and guidance. They must solicit Indian help. This article outlines some of the criteria for a successful urban Indian education program as we see it from our standpoint in a Northern Plains urban setting.

Any viable urban Indian program must be an educational one involving both Native Americans and non-Indians alike. The single most significant factor here must be a realistic Indian-run urban Indian center. A successful Indian center has the delicate task of helping the urban Indian bridge the gap between his traditional tribal heritage and the functional urban society. With the help of a nearby urban university and community services, the Indian Center should be responsible for coordinating basic health, educational, occupational and welfare service for the urban Indian population. And for these services to be functional they must appertain to the larger objective of preparing the Indian to become a "responsible" citizen.

The delicate task of the Indian Center is to provide the urban Indian with an acceptable identity so that he or she can then come to accept their "Indianism" without suffering tremendous guilt or shame. Many programs in the past failed because they attempted to make the Indian white - even when this "white-wash" was administered by Indian staffs. A more realistic approach is to aid the "marginal Indian" in his or her pursuit of a viable Indian identity and then, and only then, can other reintegration attempts become feasible. Here the single most critical obstacle to any viable urban Indian Center program is that of ethnocentrism, or the bias of cultural superiority. Unfortunately, many urban Indian centers are closely monitored by a number of social, political, religious and educational agencies at the local, state and federal level, often imposing their views and biases on the center and its programs.

Forcing an American Indian into the supposedly "superior" white mold is a system tantamount to the colonial caste system whereby the tainted minority members are constantly reminded of their "inferiority" vis-a-vis the more acceptable majority standards. It reflects the attempt to "de-Indianize" Native Americans, making them into pseudo-whites. The fact remains that most Indians know that they are not white and never will be. Moreover, the vast majority do not want to be white even if this was a feasible alternative. Attempting to make an Indian learn white ways at the expense of his "Indianism" leads to increased inner turmoil, which often is manifested through alcoholism, tension and other illnesses.

This is not a new approach since Native American groups have a long history of both inter- and intra-tribal adoption whereby the new Indian is made to feel he or she is a full-fledged member of the group. For the urban Indian, once his "Indianism" is reassured, he can then learn the skills and techniques needed to survive in the larger society while at the same time preserving the seeds of the Native American heritage.

The challenge of our educational system is to strengthen and preserve the positive attributes of the marginal subcultures utilizing the cultural milieu as a vehicle for preparing these students to better cope in the larger, multi-cultured environment. Reinstating their cultural pride without adequately preparing them for the challenges of the larger society is a futile effort. These programs usually restrict access to the minority students' traditional culture while only partially availing them access to the values and objectives of the larger society. Even among those few who have been successfully "assimilated" into the larger society many come to resent this success and begin searching for their lost heritage.

Any viable multi-cultural educational model must place considerable weight on the academic end of this relationship, requiring the teachers to know about the cultures they are talking about. Here the most important factor to overcome is that of ethnocentrism or our own cultural bias. Teachers must be sensitive to their students' needs and must be able to empathize with them as well. Burger (see Note 1)emphasized the role of the teacher as a bicultural agent stating that this is an important first step in bridging the cultural gap.

Rosenthal and Jacobson (see Note 7) stressed the importance of "teachers interest." They found that a direct relationship exists between teacher expectation and student achievement concluding that it is not enough to merely have Indian, black or Hispanic teachers teaching minority students, these teachers must be able to understand the group's culture and to care for these students. Race and sex of the teacher apparently plays a relatively minor role in regards to actual academic productivity. What really counts is having concerned competent teachers who are able to empathize with these students.

The objective of these programs must be to not only provide better educational opportunity for urban Indians but also to better educate the general public about the Indian's plight as well. Basic to this larger educational endeavor is the challenge of distinguishing between existential (Native American Harmony Ethic) and phenomenological (Protestant Ethic of the larger society) cultures and to do this we need to emphasize the importance of the cultural relativistic perspective. In other words, educators must beware of culturally biased value-laden assumptions when viewing another person's cultural background. The Indian's point of view is conspicuously absent from our educational material making this an even harder task for the educator, yet it is a challenge that must be met if we are to end this disservice that we have perpetuated for more than 200 years (see Note 2).

We offer a model for special Indian educational programs, one designed to aid urban universities which have substantial Indian student populations or the promise of such (see Note 5). This program should be coordinated through the local Indian Center, first providing the appropriate training for their staff if they are lacking in certain expertise. Prime considerations are the broader educational objectives of an urban Indian population.

These objectives can then be implemented through special programs.

In a nutshell these programs would provide a positive endorsement for the Native American cultural heritage replacing the condescending epistemological approach now used. The idea is to promote a strong sense of "Indianism" among Native American students while at the same time exposing non-Indian students to this group's positive and unique cultural attributes. All too often Native American culture is glorified in the past tense. We must get away from the narrow vulgar anthropological and historical focus on the "dead Indian" culture and place things in their proper perspective.

The burden of responsibility for these changes lies not so much with Native American students as it does with the educators. High college attrition among Native Americans has long been blamed on their inability to adapt and adjust to the highly competitive university environment, one based on the Protestant Ethic. Consequently little attention has been paid to the wide cultural gap existing between the Indian's more traditional phenomenological cultural perspective and that which exists in the larger white society. Hence it is usually felt that Indian students fail because they are inferior. What educators and school administrators often do not realize is that if they were suddenly thrown into a completely different environment, especially one comprised of an alien ethos, they would suffer from severe cultural shock as well. And since schools have a special mandate to educate and socialize, one would think that they, and not the minority student, would be responsible for providing insight as how to bridge the cultural gap.

1. Burger, H., Ethno-pedagogy. Albuquerque: Southwest Cooperative Educational Laboratory, 1968.

2. Costo, R. and J. Henry, Textbooks and the American Indian. San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1970.

3. Deloria, Jr. V., Custer Died for Your Sins. New York: Avon Books, 1969.

4. Dreeben R., "The Contribution of Schooling to the Learning of Norms," Harvard Educational Review, 37, No. 2, 1967.

5. French, L. and J. Hornbuckle, "Cultural Clash in Our Educational System," Indian Historian, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Fall, 1977).

6. Hertzberg, H., The Search for an American Indian Identity. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1973.

7. Rosenthal, R. and L. Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.

8. Thomas, R. and A. Wahrhafting, "Indians, Hillbillies and the Education Problem," Anthropological Perspectives in Education. New York: Basic Books, 1971.

9. Wax, M. et al., Formal Education in an American Indian Community (Monograph No. 1). Society for the Study of Social Problems, 1964.