Mainstreet Radio's Catherine Winter reports on Cass Lake-Bena school district, a small district on the Leech Lake Reservation that has struggled with racial tension for years. The district is trying to serve its Native students better, but the case is still not settled.
In the 1970s, many Native American parents were so unhappy with the Cass Lake-Bena schools that they pulled their children out and formed a new Native American school. Five years ago, a group of Native American parents and community members filed a complaint against the Cass Lake-Bena district with the U.S. Department of Justice, saying their children were unfairly steered away from college prep classes and weren't getting the language help they needed. The Department of Justice found that the district had violated the children's civil rights.
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CATHERINE WINTER: Cass County in Northern Minnesota is one of the poorest places in the state. Nearly 30% of the children live in homes with incomes below the poverty level. More than half the Indian children live in poverty.
Steven Hirsch, a lawyer with Anishinaabe Legal Services, says those children also face discrimination. He says Indian people in the Cass Lake and Bemidji areas face racism when they look for housing or work, when they shop or eat in restaurants, and when they go to school.
STEVEN HIRSCH: The school district hasn't created this problem. What goes on in the school district is reflective of what goes on in the larger community. And no one can deny the existence of serious racial issues in this community.
CATHERINE WINTER: Five years ago, Hirsch helped a group of Indian parents and community members file a complaint against the Cass Lake-Bena School District with the US Department of Justice.
STEVEN HIRSCH: We looked at the statistics. And by any measure of student achievement and student performance, Indian students were underperforming.
CATHERINE WINTER: Those statistics showed that even though a majority of the students in the district are Indian, most of the students in college prep classes and extracurriculars, such as mock trial or speech, were not Indian. And Indian children were more likely to be disciplined than other children.
A few miles outside town, Feather Eagle Rock wipes the kitchen table in her trailer. Eagle Rock used to work with children who had behavioral problems in the school district.
FEATHER EAGLE ROCK: Discipline was different. There was less tolerance for the behaviors of the darker-skinned students.
CATHERINE WINTER: On the day we spoke, Eagle Rock's 12-year-old grandson, James, was home from school, suspended. He helped his grandfather work on the roof for a while, then sat in the kitchen, using markers to write his name in fancy calligraphy. James recently came to Cass Lake from Utah, where he also had trouble in school.
He and his grandparents acknowledge he misbehaves and has trouble controlling his temper. But James also believes he gets grief because he's Indian. He says the white students tease Indian kids and call them savs or savages. James wishes he could go to boarding school.
JAMES: Yeah, I wish I could go to boarding school my cousin went to because it's all Indian.
CATHERINE WINTER: And you think it'd be better to go to a school that's all Indian?
JAMES: Yeah.
CATHERINE WINTER: Why?
JAMES: There's nobody to tease you or nothing for who you are and what you are.
CATHERINE WINTER: James's grandmother was a member of the group that filed the complaint with the Department of Justice. And she's not very excited about the result of that effort.
FEATHER EAGLE ROCK: I don't know if the government intervention ever does anything besides cause more problems. But that just comes from a Cherokee that knows how the government helps tribes.
CATHERINE WINTER: The Department of Justice investigated the complaint. But it took three years before it found that the school district was violating civil rights laws. And when it made that finding, it didn't deal with the question of discipline. Instead, it said the district needed to do more to help Indian students who didn't speak English well enough.
Superintendent Mary Helen Pelton says English is the first language of most of the Indian students in the district. But the Justice Department found that Indian children's English was influenced by tribal languages.
MARY HELEN PELTON: What they said was this, that our children come to school without the language skills that children in mainstream America might have. And because the children come to school at a different place in their language development, they never can really keep up or catch up.
CATHERINE WINTER: Pelton says the district has poured resources into early education and started a program to help struggling readers while they're still young.
DIANE WAHL: I'm going to give you some ladders. And I'd like you to make the word she.
CATHERINE WINTER: Teacher Diane Wahl gives magnetic letters to a first grader named Brittany as part of a program called Reading Recovery. Wahl works with Brittany one on one. And she says the little girl's reading is improving. Brittany tackles a book about a girl and her garden.
BRITTANY: Sally looked for the beans day after day. Come up, beans, said Sally. Come up, beans.
CATHERINE WINTER: Language seems to have been the major concern for the Justice Department. But Superintendent Pelton acknowledges it was not the first thing on the minds of parents who made the complaint. Those parents were unhappy because Indian kids were more likely to be disciplined than non-Indians and less likely to do well academically. Pelton hopes that boosting kids' skills early will help solve those other problems in the future.
MARY HELEN PELTON: We've done some wonderful work. And what we hope is that by having children learn to read very early on and have them be successful in those early years in school, then the whole issue of being frustrated and acting out in terms of discipline, all of those types of things will disappear.
CATHERINE WINTER: Pelton says she's also trying to hire more Native American faculty and staff. Although most of the students in the district are Indian, most of the teachers are white.
MARY HELEN PELTON: We have really tried hard. I think if you go to even Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School, which is totally a tribal school that's focusing on culture and, really, the cultural roots, they too have trouble recruiting American Indian faculty.
CATHERINE WINTER: Pelton says she hopes to develop a partnership with Bemidji State University to train more Indian teachers. She says the district has hired more Indian classroom aides and an Indian administrator.
During lunch hour at the high school, Jim Chase comes bustling in after spending the morning at the grade school. Chase is one of the Indian parents who originally filed the complaint against the district. Now the district has hired him to be dean of students. Now he is responsible for disciplining students grades 7 to 9. Chase says he thinks discipline was discriminatory a few years ago, but he hopes it isn't now.
JIM CHASE: Well, let me put it this way. I've got both sides angry with some of the discipline decisions that I have made, whether they were Indian people or whether they're not Indian people. So I must be doing something right.
CATHERINE WINTER: Chase says things aren't as bad at the schools as some people say they are.
JIM CHASE: Regardless of who we are within the district, if you're expecting changes overnight, that won't happen. The environment that's here will need time to change. And I think we're moving in the right direction with that.
CATHERINE WINTER: But there's no way to know whether the district's efforts have been successful. The district used to compile statistics showing Indian participation in various activities. Those statistics were the focus of the Justice Department's investigation. But no one has crunched those numbers in several years. Administrators say they don't know why not.
There's no way to know whether the district's efforts will satisfy the Department of Justice either. Normally, the Department negotiates a settlement when it finds someone has violated the Civil Rights Act. It's been five years, and the Justice Department still has not met with district officials to tell them what exactly to do. Superintendent Mary Helen Pelton--
MARY HELEN PELTON: I feel like I'm in a college class. And the college professor says, I'm going to test you tomorrow. But I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to test you on. And I'm not going to teach you those things. And you just have to guess.
CATHERINE WINTER: The Justice Department attorney handling the case referred questions to a public relations person, who said the Department can't comment on open cases. I'm Catherine Winter, Mainstreet Radio.