Focusing through the indigenous lens
Hostile opposition to Ojibwe spear-fishing rights in Wisconsin’s Northwoods in the 1980s echoed across the United States, tarnishing the state’s reputation among American Indian communities. At the same time, that unpleasant chapter in the state’s history ultimately led to a positive change in American culture.
The symbolic battle over sovereignty and state law brought recognition that the curriculum in Wisconsin's public schools included little about the history, culture, or tribal sovereignty of the state’s federally recognized Indian tribes and bands. In 1989, the State Legislature adopted Act 31, requiring that all Wisconsin children be taught about this segment of the state’s population.
“After learning about the conflicts between Indians and non-Indians, I said I would never live in Wisconsin,” says Aaron Bird Bear, a member of the Mandan and Hidatsa Nations of the Northern Plains.
“The spear-fishing controversy was a wake-up call about the attitudes of some of our residents,” says Ryan Comfort. “And it gave Wisconsin a particularly bad reputation in American Indian communities.”
Comfort, an enrolled member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community of the Lake Superior Ojibwe, coordinates the UW-Madison School of Education’s office that provides teacher resources and training to address Act 31. Bird Bear, a recruitment and retention specialist in the School of Education, helps students from under-represented groups navigate and succeed at UW-Madison, where he also shares his knowledge of American Indian history and culture.
For Bird Bear and Comfort, education and American Indian culture are both lifelong personal and professional passions.
The two have been working with the School’s Equity and Diversity Committee to focus conversations “through the indigenous lens.” They organized the School’s first Common Read, a year-long series of discussions and events based on The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Sherman Alexie’s candid, humorous and poignant first-person narrative follows the tragedies and triumphs of an Indian teenage boy coming of age on a reservation.
Wisconsin is home to 11 federally recognized Indian nations. The Menominee and Ho-Chunk probably have the longest historical associations with the region. Also living here are the Oneida, Mohicans, Potawatomi and six bands of the Lake Superior Ojibwe (Chippewa).
Comfort’s parents left the reservation in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to ensure that he and his younger sister got a better education. This tremendous sacrifice meant leaving behind family, friends, community and cultural ties.
“There are two kinds education,” Comfort says. “There’s the education of Indian students and education about Indians.”
After graduating from high school in Janesville, Comfort came to UW-Madison, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in English and psychology in 2007 and certificate in American Indian Studies, which required a year of independent investigation and study.
“That’s why I love this job,” he says, “because it provides me an opportunity through educating pre-service teachers to create classroom and school environments that not only increase Native students’ performance, but to help all students look through the indigenous lens.”
Comfort hopes his work will mean future parents won’t have to make the choices his parents did.
“The better prepared our teachers are to enter Native communities with the right perspective and mindset, the more prepared they are to run better classrooms,” he says.
While some people might regard learning about diverse cultures and history as unnecessary because racism is no longer as overt today, the residue of the past still affects certain groups in more subtle ways, Comfort says.
“All teachers have to understand that students – especially minority students – are still living within these historical legacies,” he says. “Whether contemporary people were involved in the ills of the past or not, history has left us a legacy that we must engage. It’s left us with inaccurate mindsets about the effects of race and poverty in education.”
Preconceptions about a student’s culture or economic background can shade a teacher’s expectation about ability and potential, he says. This in turn feeds into the negative legacy.
This year’s Common Read series aims to take the next step.
“Learning about diversity is hard,” says Comfort, “but by finding common cross-cultural connections we can better investigate ourselves in this larger context and build a safe place for learning.”
He says the group discussions on Alexie’s book and related topics are intended to serve as those safe places. “As educators and future educators, we should come with open minds, ready to discuss how we can better prepare ourselves to teach both diverse students and students about diversity,” he says.
Comfort leads the year-old American Indian Curriculum Services (AICS) office and also serves as a recruitment and retention specialist for the School of Education diversity programs. The AICS was created to provide pre-service teachers with classroom resources for integrating American Indian studies into school curriculum.
Finding appropriate resources about Wisconsin’s tribes and bands can be hard, he says. The federal policy of Indian self-determination and recognition of American Indian agency goes back only a few decades, and Wisconsin adopted Act 31 just 20 years ago.
Much of America’s documented history has excluded American Indians, Bird Bear says. The nation is still emerging from a prolonged effort to eliminate and acculturate its Indians.
“We’ve neglected 12,000 years of history – since the last glacier receded – in Wisconsin and the Great Lakes area. As openness becomes a more pressing goal on this campus, we need people to be aware of different perspectives,” he says.
Bird Bear came to UW-Madison in 2000 as a student services coordinator in the Letters and Science Office of Student Academic Affairs, where he worked until 2008. Last year, he began working toward his master’s degree in educational leadership and policy analysis.
Born in New Hampshire, Bird Bear has lived in 11 states spanning the continent. He spent most of his years in Colorado, where his parents completed their educations. His mother is a member of the Navajo Nation and he has extended family in North Dakota and New Mexico.
“I’m not really from anywhere,” he says. “My ancestors have been on the continental United States from time immemorial, but I don’t really have a hometown. I’ve always thought of the Mountain West as my home.”
He studied physical oceanography at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Washington-Seattle. Although he was fascinated by doing research on environmental impacts of human development, he also found many aspects of science to be isolating.
“What got me interested in student affairs was working with pre-college students to get them interested in the sciences,” he says. “I recognized that working with students was a strong passion. I enjoy helping students find what will align their studies with their passions.”
UW-Madison has about 300 American Indians and Alaska Natives students, including a significant number from outside of Wisconsin, says Bird Bear.
Conflicts like those over spear-fishing rights can have long-lasting consequences.
“These modern bursts of racism magnify the historic conflict between cultures and validate the continuing concerns felt in minority and cultural communities,” Bird Bear says. “Sometimes our (minority) students become hyper-vigilant because of negative past experiences and we have to help them understand and interpret what’s happening. At UW-Madison the under-representation is profound; slights are sometimes overt and often subtle, but they also can be distracting.”
He draws on his experience and professional training to help students in under-represented populations navigate their academic lives and overcome the hurdles of diversity.
Openness to diversity has come to be considered a globally important cognitive skill, Bird Bear says. “We at the School of Education are already preparing students to work with diverse populations. Now we’re working on tools to meet the curriculum mandate.”
Although the School already is considered a leader by offering courses and curriculum focusing on diversity, the faculty and staff have to keep building their expertise in this area because of turnover and the evolving campus climate, he says.
Bird Bear cites research by former UW-Madison Professor Alberto Cabrera, who found that student experience in the classroom has an overwhelming impact on student retention in the Big Ten. Research also shows that the attitudes students form in college last 25 to 50 years post-graduation.
He says this makes continuing conversations on diversity essential — not only in the preparation of teachers, but for improving and retaining diversity at all levels on campus.
“The greatest influences students bring to an open discussion on diversity are the experiences and attitudes they experienced and developed prior to entering higher education, namely the attitudes of their parents, friends, background and people they admire,” says Bird Bear.
“It’s like making juice,” Comfort says. “Folks really shouldn’t look at diversity education as changing the flavor of the juice you love. Including diversity isn’t adding more to the bucket so that something else doesn’t fit. It’s about changing how you look at what’s already there.”
– by Valeria Davis
To learn more, visit aics.education.wisc.edu