Volume 18 Number 3
May 1979

Wayne K. Stahl

FOR NEARLY 400 years Native Americans have been subject to numerous methods of acculturation and, in some cases, extermination. Legislative programs for Indian education in the United States have been sporadic and have not formed a regular pattern of legislative commitment for Indian students. Since motives for Indian education have changed, a survey of the Congressional legislation will mirror those changes in attitudes.

Attempts at formal education began early in the U.S. Colonial period. Some early colonists saw the Indians as a challenge for Christian education. As early as 1617 the Virginia Company planned to convert the Indians through the process of a regular college education (see Note 1). However, due to a redirection of funds, an Indian massacre in 1622, and the revocation of the Virginia Charter in 1624, the first Indian college ended before it really got started. Similar struggles for Indian colleges were fought and lost by John Eliot of Harvard and Eleazar Wheelock of Dartmouth College. The establishment of the United States greatly changed Indian education, which increasingly came under the aegis of the federal government.

On March 30, 1802, Congress passed a bill to provide money not exceeding $15,000 per year "to promote civilization among the aborigines" (see Note 2). President James Monroe called for additional efforts to civilize the Indians, but his plea was not acted upon until two years later. Through the Act of March 3, 1819, Monroe received Congressional sanction to employ teachers to instruct Native Americans in agricultural techniques and to instruct their children in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Some tribes, such as the Choctaw, maintained their own schools. Nevertheless, most of the early education of Native Americans fell into the hands of religious missionaries whose chief aim was to Christianize the "heathen savage." The federal government actively supported these missions from 1819 to 1842 by appropriating $214,500 to them for supplemental aid (see Note 3). This process of Indian education dominated educational trends for the Indians until after the Civil War.

A new emphasis was then placed on Indian education. In 1877 the Commission for Indian Affairs recommended the establishment of a compulsory common school system, including industrial (trade) schools. In 1829 Congress had made it clear that compulsory attendance at nonreservation schools was not mandatory, but by 1891 all Indian children were required to go to some school. Numerous treaties dealing with technical education, agriculture, mechanical arts and so on were made with individual tribes.

The best example of the new ideas in technical training was Richard H. Pratt’s establishment of the Carlisle Indian School in 1879. This marked a new era in the education of Native Americans. The goals of a Carlisle education centered on Christianization, education, and an introduction into the ideals of private property, in other words, white acculturation (see Note 4). When Carlisle was transferred back to the Army for use as a hospital base during World War 1, the students were transferred to other boarding schools in the United States. However, the ideas of reservation and nonreservation boarding schools and technical training continued. An Act of July 31, 1882, provided for additional industrial training schools for Indians at unoccupied military barracks.

Throughout the post-Civil War period, the federal government funneled appropriations into Indian education when they passed appropriation bills for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The educational purpose of these appropriations was often cloaked in the terms "and for other purposes." The "other purposes" simply fed an inadequate school system by funding continuing programs.

The Act of March 3, 1909, permitted white children to attend Indian boarding schools if their parents paid tuition. Later, an Act of May 25, 1918, defined ineligible for federal Indian funds "any person with less than one-fourth Indian blood (ancestry) and whose parents are citizens of the U.S. and of the state in which they live and where there are adequate free school facilities provided" (italics added for emphasis; see Note 5).

Finally, in 1928, a major change in policy-making for Indian education occurred as a result of the Meriam Report. This report, edited by Lewis Meriam, was the result of a study entitled "The Problem of Indian Administration" commissioned by the Institute for Government Research (now called the Brookings Institution). The Meriam Report found that a student graduating from a boarding school had little chance of a college education, especially outside of the school’s immediate geographical area (see Note 6). The emphasis of education switched from placing the Indian children in boarding schools to keeping the students in their own environment. At that time "no government Indian school met the minimum standard requirements" of a comparable school (see Note 7).

The Meriam Report caused little flurry of legislative activity. On April 16, 1934, the Johnson-O’Malley Act "authorized the Secretary of the Interior to arrange with States of territories for the education, medical attention, relief of distress, and social welfare of Indians, and for other purposes" (see Note 8). This measure was very important, for it permitted reservation children to attend public schools. Since that law was passed, most Indian reservation children have in fact attended public schools.

In other areas there were also significant pieces of legislation that followed the Meriam Report. The Taylor Grazing Act of June 28,1934, called for compulsory school attendance of all Indian children (see Note 9). Provisions for compliance resulted in state representative inspections. A subsequent act of 1946 called "The Enforcement of State Laws Affecting Health and Education--Entry of State Employees on Indian Lands" enforced penalties against parents or other persons in loco parentis who kept their children from school. This added more strength to the Taylor Grazing Act. The Indian Reorganization Act passed Congress in the same year. This act promoted higher education through federal individual loan funds and established a revolving fund of $10,000,000 to be used to promote economic development.

In the following year, an Act of June 7, 1935, appropriated money for the purpose of cooperating with school districts to improve the physical plants for Indians and whites. The tuition for Indian children was provided by the government.

As a whole, however, these measures have been inadequate. Because there has not been a sound Indian policy supported by a strong legislative program, Native Americans have never been able to keep pace with the U.S. educational system; even those who at one time made a beginning have tended to fall behind. According to Alan Sorkin, author of American Indians and Federal Aid, only half of reservation Indians now finish high school. Another study estimated that, in 1963, 77% of America’s non-Indian high school seniors graduated from high school, as opposed to 40% of the Indian high school seniors (see Note 10).

In 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act appropriated $5,000,000 for Indian schools. Most of these funds went toward the implementation of remedial programs while the rest of the funds were used for the improvement of school facilities.

In the early 1970s two important pieces of legislation passed both Houses of Congress. The first Act, called the Navajo Community College Act, passed the Congress and was approved December 15, 1971. The Navajo Community College Act provided federal funds to be authorized through the Secretary of the Interior ". . . to assist the Navajo Tribe of Indians in providing education to the members of the tribe and other qualified applicants through a community college. . ." (see Note 11).

There are several reasons that make this piece of legislation important and unique. First, the money was not given to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to administer. The federal appropriations were given to the Navajo Tribal Council through the Secretary of the Interior. This became the first Indian institution for higher education to be established and directed solely by Indians for Indians as well as other applicants. Second, this institution for higher education seeks to provide greatly needed educational and technical training for Indians while maintaining and emphasizing their cultural heritage. Third, the Navajo Community College acts as a good transition for Indians seeking education beyond the associate degree level.

Since 1971 the Navajo Community College has received subsequent federal appropriations. They have expanded by adding extension centers in various locations in the large Navajo reservation.

The Indian Education Act, the second most important piece of educational legislation in the 1970s relating to Native Americans, passed both Houses of Congress in 1972. This Act added new legislative statutes and contained provisions to amend such previous legislation as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the Higher Education Act of 1965, and the Adult Education Act of 1966. Thus the Indian Education Act provides several avenues to aid Indian education. One section of the Act established pilot programs to meet the special needs of Indian children. Some of these programs include bilingual and bicultural projects, health and nutritional services, remedial instruction, and academic and vocational instruction. The Act also focused attention on pilot and research programs at the state and local levels for adult education. One goal is to determine effective techniques to achieve literacy and high school equivalency among adults. The Act also provided for funds to be used in the preparation of teachers for reservation schools. In addition, the Indian Education Act provided for the establishment of an Office of Education within the Bureau of Indian Affairs and for the National Advisory Council on Indian Education.

Two years after the Indian Education Act the Education Amendments of 1974 passed through Congress. The amendments contained no substantive changes regarding Indian education.

In the following year, the Office of Education, under the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, issued a progress report on the Indian Education Act of 1972. The report concluded that: one, the programs started off on a poor rapport with the local communities, but by the second year the programs tended to gain community support; two, according to the data, program implementation was effective; and three, communications problems developed between the school administrations and the Indian communities.

In conclusion, then, we have seen that Native American education received little attention until after the Civil War, when Carlisle Indian School began the boarding school tradition in Indian education. Not until 1928, when the Meriam Report revealed the stark inadequacies of Indian education, did the trend away from boarding schools begin with legislation aiding Indians and giving Indians opportunities to attend white public schools. Again, from the late 1930s until the passage of the Navajo Community College Act in 1971 and the Indian Education Act in 1972, there were few new initiatives in Native American education.

The Indian Education Act provides for the improvement of preschool, elementary, and secondary Indian education. Insofar as it is adequately funded from year to year, the programs that it established will be able to embrace new ideas and pilot projects capable of immeasurably developing Indian education. With the opportunities that this act offers, Indian education at the pre-college level should improve, thus affording Indian students, at long last, a realistic chance to compete at the collegiate level, gaining full access to higher education.

1. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Founding of Harvard College (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935), p. 411.

2. Felix S. Cohen, Felix S. Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971), p. 239.

3. S. Lyman Tyler, A History of Indian Policy (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1973), p. 46.

4. Carmelita S. Ryan, "The Carlisle Indian Industrial School," Dissertation, Georgetown University, 1962, pp. 23, 65.

5. 25 U.S.C.A. § 297 (1963).

6. Brookings Institution, The Problem of Indian Administration, edited by Lewis Meriam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1928), p. 13.

7. Ibid., p. 352.

8. Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law, p. 241.

9. Ibid., p. 118.

10. Alan L. Sorkin, American Indians and Federal Aid (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1971), pp. 25-36.

11. 25 U.S.C.A. § 640a (Supp. 1978).