At 3:30, the girls are spending a typical afternoon in Ronan Park, the same place where Parker’s mom used to hang out and smoke cigarettes during her own high school days. A red Honda coupe pulls up, bass speakers thumping, and three more Indian girls hop out. Where they’re standing, an empty Budweiser bottle lies in the muddy spring grass, and red and orange plastic wrappers litter the lawn.

Across the parking lot, three white kids lean on a post and look toward the group of Indian girls gathered around the Honda.
The street separates them, Indian from non-Indian.

Parker isn’t fluent in Salish. But she says it was her favorite class, added two years ago, and when she tells stories about tribal history, her friends listen, as usual.

Parker’s friends chime in, adding to the “apple” definition: an apple doesn’t go to powwows, an apple doesn’t support the tribe, an apple is not interested in learning Salish or Kootenai, an apple only dates white people and never Indians.

“I feel sorry for them really,” says Parker, “ ’cause they just don’t want to be who they are.”

In Ronan your name, your parents and who you are determines your fate, Parker says: “It all depends on who you are.”

Native American identity in the Ronan schools is something Jesse Janssen promotes as he works with students with discipline troubles.
Janssen, a 30-year-old Salish who grew up in Ronan, is the high school’s retention specialist.

“I’m here as a support for those students who wouldn’t have anyone to relate to,” he says. “I’m their advocate. If kids are getting in trouble and can’t deal with the discipline, I can step in and bridge the relationships between kids and administrators.”

He says sometimes the school discipline is too harsh for them. “Many of them just feel that they can’t relate to any teachers. Sometimes they listen to me mainly because I’m like them, I’m Native American. I’m more like an uncle or a big brother to a lot of kids.”

He’ll listen to students’ complaints about problems with the school discipline.

“I remember being called into the office one time at Ronan Middle School,” Parker says. “The principal accused me of being a gang member!”

The principal also asked her why she hung out with her Indian friends, Parker claims.

“He told me I must be a gang leader!” she says in exasperation. “I was like, ‘I’m the leader of a gang?’”

Parker and her friends say the principal implemented a new school rule after that meeting in 1999: Indians can’t hang out at school in groups of three or more.

Principal Andrea Johnson, who is new to Ronan Middle School this year, laughs when she hears Parker’s story. She believes the information about such a rule must have been a rumor. “I don’t think anyone could enforce something like that at school,” she emphasizes. “Gangs are really not a problem that I currently see.”

Another time during Parker’s years at Ronan Middle School, she says administrators called her and a group of her friends into the office and accused them of beating up a non-Indian girl. “They showed us a picture, and I didn’t even know the girl,” says Parker, her eyes wide and imploring. “But we all got in trouble together.”

In December 2004, the Office for Civil Rights told members of the Ronan panel that it was dropping the discrimination case, determining that Ronan schools had made satisfactory progress.

Tribal education director Joyce Silverthorne isn’t convinced.

In her second floor office of the new tribal complex in Pablo, stacks of papers and books and files cover every surface, except for a meeting table set with four chairs.

She shuffles though a folder until she finds a chart with columns and numbers, no names. It’s the September 2004 to January 2005 discipline statistics for Ronan schools.

“This is what we had to report to the Office for Civil Rights. It shows how the school improved the statistics from 1999,” she says. Although the numbers are better than those six years ago, Silverthorne isn’t satisfied.

“What we ought to be deciding is how to improve the numbers even more and how to deal with those who continue to get into trouble,” she says.

The Ronan Schools now adhere to a new discipline policy they call “Tools for Tomorrow.” This includes a more strict attendance policy. If students are tardy by five minutes, they’re considered absent. And once students miss 10 consecutive days of school, they will be suspended in out-of-school suspension.

Cajune, the Indian education specialist for Ronan schools, doesn’t believe the new policy is a sufficient one.

“The Ronan school discipline policy has changed,” says Cajune. “Administrators are supposed to provide an unconditional positive regard for all students,” but this falls short of the goal.

“We need to change the discipline rituals, those that are intimidating for both Native American students and their parents,” says Cajune.

Rather than having a student and parents enter a roomful of administrators, with an open file containing the student’s every move in front of them, the system needs to try another approach, she says.

“Teachers should talk to Indian parents on an equal ground. They should say to the parents more often, ‘Tell me more about your child so that I can work better for him or her.’”

Cajune says empowering parents in this way will help improve discipline, especially for Native American students.

Cajune has worked to help bridge the relationships between Indian students and their teachers.

“Teachers need to build relationships with kids,” she says, “because often kids wonder, ‘Why would I want to learn from you?’ or ‘Why would I want to risk sharing my thoughts with you?’”

While Ronan schools have only two Indian teachers, says Cajune, many Indian youths feel they have nothing in common with the majority of their teachers.

Retention specialist Janssen is one of the few Indian role models in the Ronan schools and students like Parker relate to him.

“He was always trying to teach us something,” says Parker, who recalls playing summer hoops with him. “He’s like an uncle to a lot of us.”

Janssen also helps students appreciate themselves as Indian people. “Indian kids need to know who they are, and a lot of that is parents’ responsibility,” he says.

Janssen is a parent, and understands the important role they must play.

While Cajune mostly works with teachers, Janssen works with students. Together, they hope to make a difference.

Tanya Grey, a seventh-grade English teacher at Ronan Middle School, works with students, teachers and parents for the same goal.
She says it’s all about “the power of one” – one person can make a difference.

After collaborating with the Kellogg Leadership for Community Change and Janet Sucha, director of the Ronan Middle School TRACKS program, Grey helped organize a two-day program for seventh-graders called “Peace Keeping Days.”

The program consisted of workshops where students learned about team building, communication, peacekeeping, and the power of one person.

“As teachers, we realized we weren’t having a positive influence over students,” she says. “We asked ourselves: What can I do as one person to make a difference?”

“We want to give them a voice, we want to give them a place to be safe,” says Grey. “You know, we reached a couple kids today. Maybe tomorrow, it will multiply and we’ll reach five more. As a teacher, you have to be an optimist. Hopefully it will make a difference.”

But sometimes their efforts are for naught.

Just a few days after Parker’s 18th birthday in mid-March, she dropped out of Two Eagle. Though only three months until graduation, it would be three months too long.

After her birthday, Parker received her “18th birthday money,” she says. When members turn 18 years old, the tribal government refunds them a per capita dividend that has accrued each year since birth. The dividend money comes predominantly from the tribe’s alliance with Montana Power Co., and now Mission Valley Power, which operates the tribal-owned Kerr Dam.

Parker says she received about $13,000. After receiving the money and refusing to help at her aunt’s daycare, she was kicked out. “My life’s crazy right now,” she says. “I have to get a full-time job. I need to get a car.” And, she has to find a place to live.

Moving out is nothing new for Parker. But dropping out is.

Despite all the efforts to keep young people in school, despite the programs and improvements and advocates for Indian students in the Ronan schools, there are still problems. Some still fall through the cracks. Some still drop out.

“It’s a hard thing to temper, your heart and your job,” says Grey. Her biggest frustration is getting her students to realize she cares, that she listens, that she wants her students to succeed.

“If only they saw what was in our heart,” she says with cupped hands stretched in front of her. “If only we could tear that thing out and say: “This is what I do with my life, this is my passion — you.”

Click Images to Enlarge

In 1999 the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights found that the Ronan School District applied discipline unevenly for its Native Americans and white students. The district changed its procedures. In 2004 the office concluded that the changes made in the Ronan schools were satisfactory.

Ronan City Park is a regular hang out for many youths in Ronan. Shayna Parker, 18, and her friends say Indians and non-Indians don't mix socially. "Sometimes they try to hang out with us, but it just doesn't work. It's too hard for them, I guess," Parker says.

Julie Cajune, Indian education coordinator, Ronan Schools, says: "There's a fragile relationship that exists in the Ronan schools, and it needs a lot of work. But people can't talk to each other unless they feel valued."

Jesse Janssen, dropout prevention specialist for the Ronan School District, talks with Melissa Whitworth, 15, a freshman at Ronan High School in the In-School Suspension room. ISS is similar to detention, but the student's are considered to be out of school. Students are sent here for missing class or for behavioral problems. Janssen checks up on students to make sure they are doing homework and to see what other issues they might be dealing with outside the classroom.

Leslie Caye, leadings a session during the "Peace Keeping Days" for Ronan Middle School's seventh graders. Caye is a dropout prevention specialist for the Tribal Education Department.

Tanya Grey, center, listens as students describe obstacles they face navigating through middle school. Seventh-grade students in Ronan Middle School spent two days this spring talking with mediators and doing community building activities as a part of "Peace Keeping Days."

Tanya Grey teaches her students a game that focuses on cooperation. The two-day mediation session was for the seventh grade class, whose members are still trying to cope with the deaths of two boys last year of alcohol poisoning and hypothermia. Both of the 11-year-old boys were in the sixth grade at the time.