Contact: Sean Kearns, 707-826-5102, [email protected]
ARCATA, Calif. -- Thirty years ago, some Native American leaders in the redwood region along California's North Coast began a journey with some Humboldt State University professors. Seeking to quell the staggeringly high dropout rate among Indian students, they created the nation's first Indian teacher-training program.
Guided by the belief that Native students would respond better to Native teachers, they began to produce educators who would ultimately go back to their reservations and communities. Eighteen students were selected--seven men and eleven women representing the Hopi, Cherokee, Pomo, Mission, Washoe, Pit River, Hupa and Yurok tribes--and provided with rigorous, year-round training.
The short-term result? Although given no assurances when they started, most of the 18 got jobs. The long-term result? The trail-blazing Indian Teacher and Educational Personnel Program (ITEPP) at Humboldt has since trained hundreds of students for careers serving Native communities, and it has served as a model for similar Native teacher-training programs throughout the U.S., Canada and Australia. On May 13, in conjunction with Humboldt's Commencement ceremonies, ITEPP will celebrate its 30th anniversary with a reunion that will, in the case of one family, bring together four generations of ITEPP participants. (See sidebar.) "When we started, many of the schools in tribal locales were racist and perpetuated colonial oppression," says ITEPP Director Laura Lee George, a Karuk who is herself a graduate of the program. "In contrast, we knew what works and what doesn't work with Indians."
Although California has the second most populous Indian population after Oklahoma, the ITEPP program was restricted to no more than 18 students annually for the first 15 years of its life. The students came from all over California--and would have come from farther afield if not for prohibitive out-of-state tuition costs. Many represented tribes along California's Redwood Coast, such as the Yurok, Karuk, Wiyot, Pomo, Tolowa, Tsnungwe and Hupa. Other tribes represented--including Navajo, Hopi, Tlingit, Shoshone, Abenaki and others--are as far-flung as Maine; "the result of government relocation programs," George explains.
Despite the impediments, the program has chalked up an astonishing record of success. More than 90 percent of the students finish the program and graduate, a higher completion rate than most schools, including Humboldt. In comparison, the national Indian dropout rate has been as high as 60 percent at some institutions.
"If we can get them here, we can get them through," says George. Among the hundreds to go through are Andy Andreoli, who now directs Indian programs for the California Department of Education; Loren Bommelyn, noted linguist and author of the Tolowa dictionary; and Pamela Malloy, the first ITEPP graduate to get a teaching job, who continues to teach at a Eureka elementary school.
Praised by the U.S. Department of Education as the nation's foremost force in producing American Indian and Alaskan Native educators, ITEPP seeks to prepare qualified professionals who can teach the basic academic public school curriculum without "compromising the tribal and cultural identities of Indian students," George adds.
The focus of the program expanded in the mid-1980s to embrace educational personnel--social workers, administrators, guidance counselors and tribal service professionals--as well as teachers. Enrollment was increased, with as many as 60 students in recent years, although the average is about 35 to 40. Many applicants still have to be turned away.
Expectations of the students are high. In the early years, they took regular degree programs during the academic year, credential courses during the summer and special cultural classes throughout the year. On spring breaks, they made field trips to reservations, tribal education programs and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools.
Nowadays, each student also signs a "participation agreement" that includes such stipulations as weekly seminars, fieldwork offering direct experience with Indian students and proficiency in computer technology. In this era of teacher shortages because of smaller class sizes, the hard work pays off: ITEPP has a 100 percent graduate employment rate, George boasts.
Still the only program of its kind on the West Coast, ITEPP operates a curriculum resource center; its videos, periodicals and other archives for research on Indian-related subjects are open to anyone, stresses coordinator Buffy McQuillen another ITEPP graduate. It has also added a new minor in American Indian education.
Through regular summer workshops and three-day training institutes, ITEPP has also reached out to North Coast educators."We debunk white-dominated history, concentrate on breaking stereotypes and explain just where the real history is buried," George explains.
An example of such debunking is ITEPP's publication of a "response" to California's current three-year-long celebration of the Gold Rush. Conceived by George and carried out by the 44 ITEPP students, "Northwest Indigenous Gold Rush History: The Indian Survivors of California's Holocaust" is a collection of personal interviews with local Native elders, archival photos and literature reviews--all intended to paint an unromanticized picture of Native devastation by the gold-crazed 49ers.
ITEPP alumnus Chag Lowry, the editor, said the aim was to create an account for use in classrooms that offered "a more balanced and realistic view of history...in order to create a better understanding between cultures and pave the way for healing in Native communities."
# # #
RSS