Dylan M Chino

How place names impact the way we see the landscape

It talks about the importance of how land and places are names with meanings that implies the stories and history from the past. Western land names are the most common around streets, libraries, walk trails, and counties crossing around the United States. When there are deeper stories about the land that was disturbed by those said names. Western names cloak the land with the history of them neither being the military nor having great power in the government. Ms. Laura Tohe, from the Navajo Nation, grew up with two names for her homeland. She talks about how those places are attached to stories and that those stories give them a sense of belonging. The colonial names cover those stories of identity from the land and hiding their abuse of the land to give them self-forgiveness and belonging in their own way. 

The same happened to Cash cash, a dining speaker, whose tribal home was cut from the Oregon trail running through and only put blame on the Indian killing four freight haulers during the “Indian uprise” when they killed more than they did for when they were gathering food there. They name their land “Deadman's pass” It also happens to be a story about a measuring worm saving two brothers on a high mountain on the Sierra Miwuk then changing into a version with a bear than the boys for a children's book when it wasn’t theirs to write.

Hawaiians Fear The Loss of Their Native Language

              We know how other people speak their own languages in most of the world, the word aloha sums up the spirit of the Hawaiian islands. In the Hawaiian language, aloha means love, but it is used here mostly as a greeting or to say farewell. And it is spoken with such warmth that it seems doubtful the word will fade from use. But educators and native Hawaiians are concerned that the language might be fading, and they fear that the islands could lose a critical link to the past. Enrollment in high school and college Hawaiian language courses has dropped more than 40 percent since the 1977-78 school year, educators say. 

Also, only 12 students have graduated from the University of Hawaii's four-year Hawaiian language program in the five years it has been offered, say officials of the department of Indo-Pacific languages. But in the Hawaiian language, which is related to Tahitian, Samoan, and Maori, every syllable ends in a vowel, and speakers must pay much greater attention to a word's inflection than in English. A wise man once said ''There is a tremendous amount of very great and very beautiful Hawaiian literature,'' said Mr. Charlot. ''It would be particularly tragic if the language were lost.'' But not everyone thinks the Hawaiian language is dying. Robert Snakenberg, a specialist in Hawaiian studies for the State Department of Education, said he believed language study might be entering a period of consolidation rather than decline. ''As the people who are native speakers die out, the language is going to change,'' said Marguerite Ashford, a researcher at the Bishop Museum here. ''The people who are learning it now are working to bring it into the 20th Century, with words such as 'bicycle' and '747.' '' But Sarah Quick, a Hawaiian language teacher at the Kamehameha Schools, a privately financed institution for 2,700 students of Hawaiian ancestry, was not so optimistic. ''The Hawaiian-speaking generation is dwindling,'' she said. ''The hope is with the young people.''

                Compromise Reached in Boycott of Native American School

The dispute centered on who would become the new principal of the Onondaga Nation School, which sits on the Onondaga Nation, just south of Syracuse. Parents and Onondaga leaders wanted a nation member who was a teacher at the school to become the principal. The local school board, which operates the school under a contract with the state, and has no Onondaga representatives, said that she did not have the proper certification and experience to be principal. The board instead chose a white man, an assistant principal in a nearby district, and a colonel in the Army Reserve, but he ultimately turned the job down. Most of the parents kept their children out of school for the last two weeks of classes in June to protest what they said was the board’s failure to listen to their request. Jeremy Belfield, the superintendent of the LaFayette Central School District, said that the goal was for Ms. Thornton to gain administrative experience so that she could potentially take over as principal, once she gains the necessary certification.

Jeremy Belfield, the superintendent of the LaFayette Central School District, said if Simone Thornton, the choice for the principal by parents and Onondaga leaders, meets the criteria “established for her to be principal, the opportunity is there for her to serve as principal.” She said that the interim principal, John Gizzi, a former social studies teacher and assistant principal at the LaFayette Junior/Senior High School, was not the education committee’s first choice, but they had met with him earlier this month and had a good conversation. “He expressed that he understood the situation, and he would mentor Simone to get her ready to be a principal,” she said. “He had a lot of good things to say.”

The Onondaga consider themselves a sovereign nation and don’t vote in any elections, including those for school board, making it difficult for them to have input into the district’s affairs. And certainly, there is room for improvement: In 2015, the four-year graduation rate among the district’s Native American students was only 50 percent; it was 89 percent for white students. Nonetheless, Joseph Heath, the nation’s general counsel, said the nation had begun exploring other potential arrangements, including whether the school could be managed by a charter operator or by the School of Education at Syracuse University.

Native American Students Face Ongoing Crises in Education

                Native-specific education media profiles mostly focus on a handful of the states with the largest Native populations (namely California, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Minnesota), Federally Recognized Tribes, and/or well-known reservations like Pine Ridge. In the Fall of 2013, Education Week sent a team to reservations in South Dakota and California, Pine Ridge included, for its multimedia Education in Indian Country: Obstacles and Opportunity project. While this focus is important, the reality remains that 78 percent of Native Americans live outside of reservations with 70 percent living in urban areas (US Census 2010) many of the challenges facing and solutions for “Urban Natives” will be different. “These rituals dominate the first months of school, putting Native children in their place, holding up the traditions of white children, and championing the ideals of white supremacy and imperialism. As November's recognition of Native American Heritage Month ends, educators should… instead discuss the reality of life, historical and current, for the more than 600,000 Native American students in our nation's K-12 public schools. 

Internalizing harmful images most acutely damages Native children, but absorbing racist and dehumanizing ideas about fellow classmates also diminishes the understanding and compassion of non-Native children, warping their conception of a history that often erases Native Americans altogether. The education system lies at the heart of maintaining the erasure of Native Americans. Native children have been miseducated for generations under deliberately repressive federal policy, and all children in public schools are miseducated in U.S. and Native history,” Dunbar-Ortiz explained. This is especially painful for urban Native students unable to benefit from strong cultural ties to their extended family and culture. This can include not being tribally enrolled and/or wholly disconnected from their culture. “Many education analysts have noted that when educators don't acknowledge Native American culture with their Native student body, the students begin to feel disenfranchised, said Native Youth Magazine. “There have been a number of schools that have successfully implemented programs that teach educators and staff about Native culture, giving them a better perspective on how to interact with Native students. The schools that have these ‘cultural sensitivity’ classes have seen a noted decline in the number of disciplinary actions they take against Native American students. Some credit the sensitivity training itself, but only time will tell which programs were the most effective.”

In a Struggling School District, Partnerships Bring Progress 

A student in the Cuba school district in 2020. The district has overhauled its curriculum, added an Indian education department, and hired Native American employees in order to improve graduation rates. the state of New Mexico, which has long struggled with chronic absenteeism and poor academic achievement, has embraced community schools. The concept, which more districts are adopting since the pandemic highlighted the central role of neighborhood schools, involves, among other things, integrating nonprofits, businesses, and colleges on the school site to offer services to student and their families.