Education as Protection
By Henrietta Mann

  I can recall growing up in an extended family, happily free from thoughts of higher education, careers, employment, or having to make life decisions. In the early evening or on weekends, my older school-age relatives played "school" and I learned my ABCs, colors, numbers, and letters called vowels and consonants in those make-believe classrooms. Learning was fun, so much fun that it prompted me to convince my parents and our Indian agent to let me begin school at age five.
   Education for most Native children traditionally began in infancy when the baby learned appropriate, quiet behavior in the cradle board or with the piercing of ears. Ear piercing usually involved much ceremony and protocol, and it was believed that this opened the mind to knowledge and learning. Thus, in Native communities, education was a natural part of life, and knowledgeable and skillful community members were highly esteemed. It must be recognized that Native traditional systems of learning were the first educational systems of this country, and that education is as native to this country as we are as First Nations people.

Historically, Native peoples always have been educated peoples, who followed varied educational pathways with many different possibilities for careers.

   Historically, Native peoples always have been educated peoples, who followed varied educational pathways with many different possibilities for careers. Our people could choose to be keepers of traditional knowledge, medicine people, warriors, arrow-makers, artists, lodgemakers, farmers, herbalists, healers, historians, astronomers, or storytellers, to cite but a few of the many Native professions or careers. Regardless of chosen expertise, however, all were teachers who taught directly or indirectly by example. They were experts at role modeling, which was but one of many different educational methodologies that Native peoples used while educating their youth.
   Some Native peoples had knowledge of strangers who would come to this land, who would superimpose their ways, including non-Native forms of education, over our ancient Native ways of life. Education became a topic of great concern among Indians, and the late Cheyenne Keeper of Sacred Arrows Edward Red Hat in an untitled manuscript expresses one perspective: "Perhaps this education the White man [Veho] talks to us about is not all bad. We need to understand the Veho. We have to live with him. We have to deal with him. If our children go to his school they [will] learn his language; they will know how he thinks. They will become our eyes, our ears, our mouths. Through our children we will listen, and we will speak. Thus, we can better protect our ways, our culture as it has come down to us through many generations."   
   Some Native agreed with this view or had their own reasons for allowing their children to attend Anglo-European schools, and others resisted until they had to comply with compulsory education laws.
  As one can discern today, many Native students have attended and are currently attending our nation's colleges and universities or tribal colleges. The number of Native students enrolled in higher education is increasing. From an educator's point of view, education provides a person with a way of improving one's quality of life and/or community. Today, many Native students are making tremendous sacrifices to pursue higher education and stay in school to graduation.
  There are obstacles in students' educational pathways, such as those that are family related, financial, the result of inadequate student support systems and/or culturally irrelevant curriculum. These can cause a sense of alienation, isolation, or erosion of self-confidence. Whatever the seemingly overwhelming obstacles appear to be, one has to maintain perspective and look to Native role models who have succeeded and who are now scientists, engineers, medical doctors, entrepreneurs, university professors, and/or high-level managers.
  One also has to remember that Native people have forever believed in education and consider it important to improving quality of life. Also, never forget that our grandparents and Elders need courageous and culturally sensitive young people to listen, think and speak for us, and to "become our eyes, our ears, our mouths." Education is a way of protecting our respective tribal cultures that have been passed "down to us through many generations." Thank you for the love of your grandparents' ways, for your sacrifices, for your determination, and for being tomorrow's educated professionals.

Henri(etta) Mann, Ph.D., Cheyenne, is Endowed Chair of Native American Studies at Montana State University in Bozeman. She is also an AISES member and a part of the AISES Council of Elders.