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“Here, we implement levels of discipline whereas in the
public schools, they’re not really going to have that,” Horn
says.
School ends
at 4:30 p.m., later than the public schools because kids find trouble between
the end of school and dinnertime, says Ackerman. De La Salle keeps the
kids until most parents can pick them up after work.
De La Salle
also has zero tolerance for gossip, Ackerman says. The prayer circles confront
conflicts directly.
Gossip is
something Amorette admits she’s experienced many times. “Some people
are just wanting to fight,” she says.
Bullying and
fighting, especially between girls, is common at the Browning public schools,
but Blackfeet Middle School counselor Broere doesn’t see it as extraordinary.
“Bullying
is an issue,” she acknowledges, “but it’s not different with
any other community that struggles with poverty” and lacks programs and
personnel to address it.
For the Grounds
family, the school has the mix of Blackfeet culture, spirituality and academics
that they’d been searching for.
Though academics
are important at the school, Ackerman is reluctant to talk about standardized
test results. It’s a touchy subject in a small town, he says.
But Principal
Meyers reveals that when De La Salle tested the first class as 5th graders, they
scored at the 4th grade level in math and reading. By 8th grade, the students
had caught up, and as freshmen at Browning High School, they’ve excelled.
Three De La Salle alumni were the only freshmen to earn 4.0 GPAs. A former De
La Salle student body president was elected class president at the high school
and made the basketball team. One student won a scholarship to the exclusive St.
Paul’s School in
New Hampshire.
Despite its
success, De La Salle will stay small. It accepts all applications, but the admissions
committee looks at grades, behavioral history and the willingness of the family
to support their child.
“Your
heart has to be in it,” says Horn.
Taped
to the front windows of Napi Elementary are giant letters – Ah-koht!, meaning “Do
it!” For many years the Browning public schools have
encouraged Blackfeet education, emphasizing language. “Parents
this day and age don’t speak the language,” says
Moses Spear Chief, the school district’s Blackfeet/Native
American Studies director for five years. “The
kids are teaching the parents.”
The language
classes, offered in kindergarten through 12th grade, incorporate an overview
of Blackfeet history into the lesson plans. And all classes try to integrate
Blackfeet culture.
Blackfeet
language and culture classes, however, are electives.
Spear Chief
is blunt about religion in the classroom.
“Spirituality
and anything to do with stuff like that, it’s demonstrated, but not taught,” Spear
Chief says. The district doesn’t get involved with what he calls “ceremony.”
School
policy isn’t
always clear, though, on what’s ceremony versus culture. “The Board
recognizes that at graduation time, societal inductions, and student/staff
recognition there will be instances when Blackfeet traditional values, ceremonial
practices, and cultural expression interact with the public schools and students,” it
reads. “The Board, however, does not endorse religion, but recognizes
the rights of individuals to have the freedom to express their individual political,
social, or religious views, for this is the essence of education.”
To Amanda
Whiteman, the Blackfeet Studies teacher at Napi for six years, the policy means
nothing remotely ceremonial is allowed.
Whiteman
teaches history, music, art, drama and language – all in her 45-minute
class that meets only once a week.
“The
4th grade is singing the Days of the Week song,” she says, and in one
of her classes they’re performing a play completely in Blackfeet.
She’s
also had to tell students they can’t express some parts of their culture
in school, such as smudging or talking about the Creator and Napi.
She tells
students it’s because of federal or state laws, and not her decision.
Some boys wanted to bring in eagle feathers, a ceremonial tradition
that symbolizes achievement. Whiteman said no.
“You
can’t bring any of that stuff,” she says. “You can’t
get plants from the trees or the ground. We can talk about it, but can’t
do it.”
The
pews in the front half of Little Flower Church are
filled with jittery students from De La Salle School’s
Thursday Mass. As the closing song plays, they shift impatiently,
charged by an undercurrent of anticipation.
They have
only a couple of hours until school ends early today. Tomorrow there’s
no class. It’s a child’s most cherished school event: the random
three-day weekend.
After the
final strains of the song fade, the students pour into the aisles.
Amorette jostles her way down the middle aisle, her pink long-sleeved
shirt peeking from under her sky blue polo emblazoned with
the De La Salle logo of a star encircled in a dreamcatcher
with three feathers hanging down.
Rick Ground
stands in the back, watching and leaning lightly on his wooden cane. Amorette
is his youngest, his only girl.
“She’s my baby,” he likes to say. He doesn’t
know where she’ll go for high school next year.
De La Salle’s
last day of classes is May 26, and Amorette and her 14 classmates will move
on. Next fall, most of them will be at Browning High School. Amorette will
not.
She may
attend one of the smaller high schools in Cut Bank or Valier, about 35 to 40
miles away, her mother says. They’ll drive her halfway, then a bus will
pick her up. She’s also considering a high school online or home
schooling her again. Or, if Elise Ground decides on graduate school at the
University of Montana, she’ll go to the Catholic school in Missoula or
learn at home.
Amorette
hasn’t thought much about it. She’s focused on her Blackfeet
Nation Boxing Club matches and finding pink boxing trunks. She’s thinking
about the summer, riding horses with her friend, Zowie Whitegrass, heading
out to Cut Bank Creek (they call it “Big River”) and finding that
bend where they jump in and swim. She’s thinking of Haskell
Indian Nations University for college
and studying mechanics or nursing.
She likes 8th grade. “De La Salle’s better,” she
announces.
Maybe at
graduation she’ll get an eagle feather. Last year, elders presented two
eagle feathers to two graduating students who best exemplified Blackfeet tradition.
“We give our students the best education possible,” Meyers
says, an education that lets students celebrate both their Blackfeet cultural
and spiritual traditions.
He’d
like perceptions of Blackfeet culture to change, and he wants the students
to believe that they have great potential.
The
Blackfeet “have so many talents” that outsiders
are unaware of,” he says, adding: “That they
themselves are unaware of.”
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