A History of Schooling for Alaska Native People

a set of values and beliefs that includes: priority of communal and family considerations over individual considerations, a belief in sharing versus accumulating, and a respect for spirituality and an interconnectedness with the natural world

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Western system does not always mesh well with the Native worldview,

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Some schools were operated directly by the federal government while others, referred to as "contract schools," were contracted to missionary groups

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Bureau of Education schools continued to operate with the belief that it was important to transform American Indians and Alaska Natives into civilized and Christian Americans, and the best mechanism for achieving assimilation into American society was education

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recommendations called for a major reformation of American Indian education with Indian involvement at all levels of the educational process and with specific recommendations that education be tied to communities, day schools extended, boarding schools reformed, Indian language and culture included in the development of the curriculum

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self-determination in economic development, social services and education

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The state established the Division of State-Operated Schools (SOS) with special responsibility for rural and on-base military schools, and it created a governor's committee to again explore the merger of BIA and state schools.

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negotiations between the Alaska Territorial Department of Education and the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the transfer of federally-operated rural BIA elementary schools to the territory

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by 1954 efforts to bring the two school systems together ceased

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pressure for more local control from Alaska Native people brought legislative action again in 1975 that abolished this system and in its place set up a new form of "extraordinary units of government" (Darnell, 1979). Twenty-one separate rural school districtsãRegional Educational Attendance Areas

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State regulations provide each REAA with enough latitude to design its schooling policies and practices in ways that are appropriate for the particular region and for the cultural and linguistic group of people that it serves. Because most rural communities have little tax base to draw upon, REAA's are funded directly by the legislature,

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as a response to the developing Cold War, an insistence on conformity to narrowly-defined national standards became prevalent.

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a lawsuit was filed against the State of Alaska in 1974. The class-action suit, charging discriminatory practice on the part of the state, was filed by Alaska Legal Services, on behalf of rural secondary-aged students, for not providing local high school facilities for predominantly Native communities when it did for same-size, predominantly non-Native, communities. The Hootch family, whose daughter the suit was named after, lived in the Yup'ik Eskimo community of Emmonak

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The policies of the BIA and territory schools attended by many Alaska Native adults forbade students to speak their Native languages and did not allow for a curriculum that reflected anything Alaskan, American Indian, or Alaska Native.

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Today, nearly all Alaska students attend elementary and secondary school in one of three settings: (1) village schools; (2) rural regional centers and/or road system/marine highway schools; or (3) urban schools.

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The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 represented the first major involvement of the federal government in education for groups of children beyond American Indians and Alaska Natives.

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The inherent paradox in a system that requires the government to provide education for Native Americans while at the same time promoting self-determination has not yet been resolved.

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failure of the public schools to educate and assimilate Indian students

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it is better to talk about education than to educate

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The highly decentralized system of schools and districts in rural Alaska, however, is both "the good news and the bad news." Because the state's rural school system allows for significant variation in the goals and implementation plans of each region, some rural districts and their school boards will continue to work respectfully with parents, elders, Alaska Native educators, and other community members in their on-going collaborations to develop realistic approaches for assuring that their children reach high academic standardsãin culturally appropriate and meaningful ways. Other districts will continue to respond with reform efforts that are temporary in nature and that only address issues at the tip of the cross-cultural iceberg

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This Act provided "major changes in the administration of education programs by giving controlling authority to local communities"

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