Are Native Americans a racial minority? That's the question before the Minnesota Board of Education later this afternoon, when it considers a request from Native American leaders NOT to be included in the state's new school desegregation rule. The request is an attempt to safe-guard majority-Indian schools.
MARTIN KASTE: When the state legislature directed the Board of Education to review its 15-year-old desegregation policy, the main purpose was to give big city school districts like Saint Paul and Minneapolis a little breathing room. Since the majority of students in those districts belong to racial minorities, the districts have been pleading for an exemption to what they say are outdated and unrealistic numerical guidelines. But now that the board has agreed to rewrite the desegregation rule, another issue has come up. Should Native Americans be counted as a racial minority? Ojibwe author Jim Northrup says no.
JIM NORTHRUP: No, I think they should be counted as members of their sovereign nations. These artificial labels don't help.
MARTIN KASTE: Northrup says calling a Native American student a member of a racial minority ignores the sovereignty of Native American tribes.
JIM NORTHRUP: On this little village I live in, I'm not a minority. Because most of the people around me are my relatives. So it makes the White people the minority. I think wherever the Indian people are, they bring their sovereignty with them.
MARTIN KASTE: Sovereign nation or racial minority, there's more than semantics at stake. In the case of the desegregation rule, if the state continues to count Native Americans as a minority, theoretically, it could force the integration of public schools that specialize in Native American culture.
CHRIS WARREN: Let's see, we got [NON ENGLISH SPEECH].
MARTIN KASTE: At the heart of the Earth Survival School in Minneapolis, Chris Warren runs through the numbers 1 through 10 in the Ojibwe language. Warren is the student services coordinator at this K through 12 institution, where almost all of the students are Native American and everyone has to take Lakota and Ojibwe.
CHRIS WARREN: Offering culture outweighs the fact that this isn't a desegregated school.
MARTIN KASTE: Warren says when he was a child, he attended both an all-Native American school and a mixed school. And he says it was harder to maintain his cultural identity in the mixed school.
CHRIS WARREN: And we had our Indian club. But it was a real, as far as what we offer here, to a real small degree. We had a meeting once a month. And it was club meeting, and it was announced over the intercom. And you hold your head down and walk to the meeting. OK, I'm going. But there was, it felt rough because the other kids would give you hell and say some things. And it makes you feel less important.
MARTIN KASTE: Native American leaders have told the Board of Education that their children have to have the option of going to school such as Heart of the Earth. The Board of Education says it will try to accommodate their request. But there are some legal realities it needs to consider. Scott Strand is a deputy counsel in the Minnesota Attorney General's office. And he's helping the board to rewrite the desegregation rule. Strand says if the state agrees to exempt Native Americans, it has to be very careful about the language it uses.
SCOTT STRAND: The distinction between treating them as a racial group and treating them as constituents of sovereign governments is pretty clear. In theory, in practice, how that works sometimes creates some controversy.
MARTIN KASTE: Federal courts have made it considerably easier in recent years for states to loosen their desegregation rules. But Strand says Minnesota still has to be very careful not to appear to be going too far.
SCOTT STRAND: It's important just to recognize the distinction between treating Indians differently in some way because of their political status as sovereign governments and treating Indians differently because of their race. And as long as the language reflects that distinction, I'm confident that it would survive any legal challenge.
MARTIN KASTE: The attorney general's office is now in the final stages of rewriting the desegregation rule. And the Board of Education is due to vote on the new rule and probably the exemption for Native Americans later this summer. From Minnesota Public radio, I'm Martin Kaste.
In 2008, Minnesota's voters passed the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment to the Minnesota Constitution: to protect drinking water sources; to protect, enhance, and restore wetlands, prairies, forests, and fish, game, and wildlife habitat; to preserve arts and cultural heritage; to support parks and trails; and to protect, enhance, and restore lakes, rivers, streams, and groundwater.
Efforts to digitize this initial assortment of thousands of historical audio material was made possible through the Minnesota Legacy Amendment’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. A wide range of Minnesota subject matter is represented within this collection.
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