Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for north central Minnesota.

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Hello again friends.

I'm Jason Edens, your host of Lakeland Currents.

Thanks for joining the conversation today.

Thanks for your ongoing support of Lakeland Public TV.

Charter schools are becoming increasingly common throughout our region and across the nation as are immersion language schools but my guests today are breaking new ground and innovating in the charter school space by creating an Ojibwe Language Immersion School within the Red Lake Nation.

Nate is the founder of the new school and Duta is the executive director of the Native American Community Academy and Sam is serving as the secretary of the Red Lake Nation.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me today and making time.

I appreciate it.

[thank you] [miigwech] Well first of all Nate I'd like to start with you and I was wondering if you could just tell me a little bit about the origin story.

How did this school first come about?

Nate: I think Sam can kind of maybe touch on it a little better because I didn't know about Duta and I these guys got a couple, they got a history together and I I would rather Sam probably take that question.

Jason: Sounds good Sam.

Sam: Sure, yeah definitely so I've known Duta for many years.

In fact I attended Cornell University and one of the reasons I attended is because Duta was my host in fact and he's one of the people that helped start my journey in academia and we've kept in touch since then.

We were actually roommates for a semester and he's done a lot of great things down in Albuquerque to create this culturally based charter school, NACA and so we've been in touch about that and all the great things that he's done and the successes that he's seen with his students.

You know he's created you know in a, in a population that was having big trouble graduating from high school.

They're now seeing a very large population actually attending universities and even further education and so knowing that Red Lake has a low graduation rate.

We're at about 30 percent right now.

I know that we're trying to find different ways to reach all of our students and so within that dialogue you know I think for many years in fact I, I reached out to Duta and he's been on his journey for many, many years and we were able to touch base and, and we were able to plan a trip to go visit Duta and in fact Duta has come up to our area and we've had a couple conversations about how they could help and in this time they've created this NACA inspired schools network and so the role of this network is to help people start schools and so it's you know what they say there is no coincidence and and I really believe that and you know myself and Duta, Nate, you know we, we had a very what I would say is a very inspirational experience.

When we went to go visit their school we saw what they were doing and not only that but you know just through prayer and through working with one another on a, on a really deep level we've come to you know this conclusion that together we can really help our kids here.

We can help change the disparity that we see within education and more importantly we can you know change generations, generations of people that have sadly lived in poverty and really gone through a lot of trauma due to you know the boarding schools and you know relocation all of these horrible elimination policies of the federal government.

We can overcome that through culture and through teaching our, our children how to succeed and so I think we've, we've come to a point now where this dream is become is coming to fruition.

It's becoming a reality and it's incredibly inspiring and, and you know I'm just a small part of this.

You know I was lucky enough to know both Nate and Duta and connect the two and you know I have some ability here in the tribe to help bring resources to the table as well as you know my development experience and so you know I'm just, I'm here to try to help make this dream become a reality but it's really it's becoming much more than even what I originally thought it could be and that's in large part due to the work that Duta's doing with the NACA Inspired Network and all the resources he's brought to the table but more importantly it's really down to the great work that Nate and his team and all of our community members have put forth to make this dream really become a reality so I think that's kind of my part and I want you know I don't want to try to take credit for all this great work that all of us done but I'm just happy to be a part of it and I'm lucky enough to have spent a lot of time with both of these individuals on the call and be able to help see, have their dreams become a part of our dream here in Red Lake and help bring that to our people so I'm really just honored to be a part of it and so I'm more than happy to have Duta talk a lot about it too because I know we've had these conversations for years and years and you know without their help we wouldn't be where we are today so maybe he could speak some on that as well.

Jason: Absolutely.

Well Mr. Secretary first and foremost I just want to thank you for sharing the vision of the school.

That was actually my next question so I really appreciate that.

Duta: If you would tell us a little bit more about NACA and the inspired schools.

I didn't realize that this school that will be based in Red Lake, I didn't realize its origin story was related to New Mexico and Albuquerque so tell me how this came to be?

Duta: Yeah and, and maybe loosely associated just as we think about the evolution of education right like?

NACA was created in 2006.

But my argument is always that it goes back decades if you will in terms of like our relatives asking the question of what is it going to take to adequately educate our students and our our youngest people based upon the priorities that we set out?

So you ask the elders, aunties, uncles, grandmas and grandpas what they want to see in, in their, their relatives as they move through school you'll hear things, you'll hear things like college access.

You'll hear things like about performance and you'll also hear things about language and about stories and about songs and about identity and culture and for so long those those things were, were kind of existed in mutual exclusivity.

Right, like one can't exist without the other and or one can exist if the other exists right?

[mmhmm] I actually grew up in, in South Dakota and went to school on the reservation and Standing Rock off the reservation in Mobridge and then graduated from a private boarding school in here in New Mexico and all of those places gave me a single serving of academics or of culture or of at the time like whole child development or holistic wellness.

It wasn't until I heard the presentation one once upon a time in, in Albuquerque here that is like what if we did all of it together and what if we, if we tried to create a school structure that sought to do that and what if that school structure was within the current public, public school system and that's when people started to point to like different structures, magnet, private charter and, and really but it was the coalescing of what is going to be the right fit for our community and what's going to be the right fit for what we're lifting up and what was being lifted up in Albuquerque at the time wasn't dissimilar to what I was experiencing in my own, in my own schooling in South Dakota which I think is, is the, is relevant for this conversation because it's you know we're seeing Nate and Sam feel momentum about things that they're witnessing across the country in New Mexico you know even though there's different contexts and I think at the end of the day it's about where, where is there the self-determination on an autonomy for a community to articulate its education model based upon the terms of what the community thinks should be lifted up.

Now that's not to say that at a school like NACA there's not attention paid to state standards right but we believe that we can that both of those can happen at the same time and if we get intentional about what it is that we're seeking to articulate that is indigenous education where it's not either or that students aren't learning about who they are but they're going through the journey of who they are in relation to, to their family through, through the content and seeing themselves in it right so it doesn't become an elective in which you're teaching about ethnic studies or Native American history or Ojibwe language or Lakota language but it's embedded in the core content of the whole design of the school and we believe that there's a few structures that really bring that alive so whenever Sam and Nate came down to the school they were like we need, we need to do this and we've always been really clear that you know like what exists as NACA now exists because the community created it and put their hands on it and there's not going to be any branding of like, there's not never going to be another NACA anywhere else because it's unique to Albuquerque so as such will be what you know what it what becomes of it in Red Lake.

It's going to be of the essence of the community.

We are we're in partnership as a good relative is to say like we're not going to be stingy with anything that we've learned and if there's anything that we have at our school that can be shared we're here to stand alongside you and we want to also create a network of folks that are thinking about articulation of indigenous education from New Mexico to Colorado to South Dakota to Minnesota to California, Oklahoma so that we're not doing these things in a single serving in isolation but I think this is where, this is the point where the story of Red Lake starts to come alive is that it has to right, like I, I, I'm not going to be in Red Lake running the school or even articulating the mission, mission and the vision that's going to be.

That's gonna be Nate and his team, Sam as a community member, as the tribal secretary and I think that's where the story starts to come alive of like how does it get nuanced and what is, what is the role of, of [inaudible] Ojibwe or identity look like within the construction of the school?

Jason: Well gentlemen thank you so much for the big picture.

I think that's really useful to understand.

Nate, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about your role and I'm interested to ask some granular questions about where the school's going to be and when you expect it'll actually open its doors to your community?

Nate: Start out first with you know the, the connection is most important you know so we had a relationship, call it maybe a umbilical cord to our ancestors to the plant world, to the water world, to our community and that was where our strength was.

We were we felt we were a part of nature.

It wasn't you know it didn't differentiate so when when I speak about that it was real, it was really big.

A light went off when Duta and his crew came up.

They said if the community doesn't want the school then you know we will back off but if the community wants it we got you guys back so just connecting again to the core identity of who are, who we were and giving the giving our children that and you know so the community we've done surveys and different things like that.

The community does want, wants a better education and you know that, that involves culture and language and the true essence of who we are.

Being self-aware of historical trauma we can, we can heal our own wounds and you know and give back and you know I like to refer sometimes to, to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

You know, if you don't have these needs met you know so NACA uses this wellness wheel and you know we, we want to utilize that in the sense that we're, we're making sure our children are well balanced you know, in that, in that old time sense of that who we were and I don't know is there another question that you had too?

Jason: Well I have a lot of questions.

I'm so interested to learn more.

Since you mentioned Maslow's Hierarchy I'm curious do you see this school helping to facilitate self-actualization among the population?

I, I guess I'm curious to know how you see the community being different in the future and maybe that's a question that you can answer Nat?

Uh, Nate, I'm sorry.

Excuse me and you too, Sam.

Nate: So I used to go to Haskell Indian Nations and that's where I met my wife at and they have... it's an old boarding school so they it's like a historical center and you can see where our language and culture was kind of ripped from us.

Now I don't want to be angry in any way.

I just want to like promote that healing that to recognize what happened and how do we remedy that so that's a lot of why, why I came home into to understand that.

You know that well how do we get to that point?

I mean you got to get to a point where you're tired of pointing fingers and you start to say you point at yourself and you say hey how can we, how can we take this on and help our children and I'm content with you know it's, it may not happen in my lifetime but as long as we get that ball rolling and, and to push that, that message and that vision and the mission you know so we also have a school that's been up here for we're on our seventh year.

It's a Wasabi language immersion school and we teach three and four-year-olds but our reach is only to that level and it's tribally run, the school is.

It's not part of the school district or anything but so we want to extend that and we wanted to extend and so when we start out our school will be K through 5 and we're trying to reach those kids that went through our program and still hold on and still you know have that connection that we implanted in them at three and four years old and okay [Mr. Secretary, oh, I apologize] oh yeah sorry I just I forgot to answer your question earlier.

You said the school or we plan to open our doors in fall of ' 22.

Jason: Fall of 22.

Okay, excellent.

Mr. Secretary, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how many Ojibwe speakers there are among the Red Lakers in the Red Lake Nation?

How many people are currently fluent?

Sam: You know and this number sadly is changing weekly and monthly in these hard times.

You know it's, it's a, it's a number that is it's a you know there's not an exact number of speakers you know.

In terms of fluent speakers the number is, is, is lowering by the day in terms of people that you know first, first language speakers that number is growing even smaller.

I think there's a whole population, a generation of people such as Nate and even myself to a certain degree that do speak the language at some capacity and are learning it and so you know I know we have a list of elders that we started putting together, these first language speakers and there's about 60 on that list.

A couple years ago we did a study and we found about 180 and so the sad reality is that we're losing our elders at a very fast pace and a lot of these first language speakers are, are sadly leaving this world and so you know it's a really pressing time from that standpoint.

However there's hope you know.

Nate talked about these seven years of three and four-year-olds that were learning the language and many of them have continued to learn the language too.

I think there's been some limitations there working with the public school system and some of the complexities that go along with that.

However you know I see those individuals as the ones that are going to carry us to the future and in fact some of my, my, my nieces have gone to that and it was a really powerful experience to have them be my teachers.

You know I think that's really where you start to see the community growth coming in and, and so from that perspective you know we're, we're in a hard time but we have a lot of good resources still available to us.

A lot of these elders these first language speakers are here.

Some are in the immersion school.

Some are in the community teaching and we also have a group of young people that are learning the language and carrying on those traditions so I would say you know for certain we have you know hundreds of people within that category and for you know a community, an Ojibwe community, we actually have a very large proportion of language speakers if you compare us to some of the other surrounding reservations and so there's a lot of strength there and it's not just language you know for that self actualization.

It's much deeper.

You know the language is the tool that we use to, to reach it but there's other ways to also connect and I think for us that's what this is about and you talked about you know the vision or the the hope and the hope is that we can use these resources that we've always had, our language, our culture, our identity and help this next generation reach that point of self actualization and really aspire to much greater things and change you know this generational poverty that has continued to plague our people ever since you know these instances of historical trauma, so healing ourselves through our own tools and resources and I think each one of us on this call have gone through that in our personal lives.

I know when I was 16 I went to a treatment center and I was plagued with alcoholism.

It's at a very young age in fact and it was through my own identity that I started my path to Cornell and to ultimately coming to my position here in the tribe and I know Nate has a similar story.

I know Duta has a similar story and many of our people that are now leaders within our community also carry that same story and many of our people that have overcome drug addiction and alcoholism, they carry that story and so you know for a community that is dealing with drug addiction and poverty that tool is the best tool that we have to uplift our community and so in fact not only will this school help you know send kids to college.

That's the you know standard American conception of success but it's far deeper than that for us.

For us it's that we will live meaningful lives and, and some may go to college and we promote that but just having that identity will keep us safe and allow us to restore, restore our ways into our community but more importantly uplift our people and so I think that's the vision and this school will be the leaders of tomorrow that are going to change you know that those statistics or whatever you want to call them that have you know have led to the poverty, that have led to all the disparities that sadly that we're experiencing and that results in a lot of the community trauma that we still see today and so I believe that these students that we've already started to foster through our immersion school and the students that will be in this school are going to change this community forever and I think that's our vision.

That this will forever be a place of prosperity, not just economically but more importantly a prosperity of the soul and, and so I think that's our that's our vision and, and I think each one of us have experienced that in our own lives and we want to help all of our people experience that prosperity.

Jason: Well I'm glad you shared that Mr. Secretary, drawing the connection between community health and the educational aspirations of the community.

I've got a couple rather specific questions.

One of which are there any schools like this anywhere in the geography of Minnesota?

Are there other schools within Indian country in Minnesota that are immersion like this?

Nate: Yeah, there's one in Cass Lake called Niigaane.

They, they were teaching language and it was the immersion school.

They've been around I think 15 years.

I know there's one in Wisconsin.

They, they've been around 20 years and they're full-on language immersion and they teach, they teach it's kind of land-based philosophies also and I know that there's maybe two or three in Minneapolis area.

One is called Bdote and I forgot some of the and then one more in Duluth Misaabekong.

They're an immersion school and that's in integrated into the, into the public school so those are the ones off the top of my head that I can think of but there's so few out there.

Jason: So the one, Bdote, that one actually teaches both Ojibwe and Dakota languages, is that correct?

Nate: Yes.

Correct.

Jason: Interesting.

So are you able to work with your peers in this space in order to you know facilitate the work that you're doing in Red Lake?

Nate: There is organizations out there that are developing curriculum and getting people onto the same page, like with the curriculum like, like you just said.

There's other schools out there but we got to connect more and and be on the same wavelength and there is efforts out there.

It's in the works and even though this is new it's also old.

In the sense that you know that I was talking about the connection earlier?

We want to connect back to mother earth and there's a lot of things that we've always done and so we want to bring that back again.

We're not reinventing the wheel.

We're just trying to be who we always were and if you think about how we lost it.

You know it was shattered and now we're picking up the pieces again and remembering you know it's okay to be who we are and we want to...what do we really want to promote that?

You know the way that things are going in the world you know that you need that, you need that, that inner to, to... promote that beauty.

You know that that connection and we want our kids to have a world view where they can share who they are and respect others you know and you know that's what we really want out of our children.

Jason: Well there's so many questions that I'd like to ask you and unfortunately we're running low on time so I want to ask just a couple other rather specific questions.

One of which is it difficult to find instructors?

I,I learned from you Sam that there's a sense of urgency in terms of first speakers, so is it difficult to find instructors in the Ojibwe language?

Nate: Yes.

very, very difficult to find so, so it's, it's, it's what do you call it, a crux so you may be a fluent speaker but then you may not have the education to be a teacher and vice versa.

You may be a teacher but then you don't, you know your only, your language level is low so we are making efforts to create teachers right now.

We have an adult immersion program that we just started recently and you know making those efforts and, and the capacity though I mean.

The school district here they do a good job too.

They've been having, having postings you know for Ojibwe language teachers and nobody's been applying so that you know that, that shows right there that this is you know something that we we're probably going to have to homegrown and create from within and how do we do that?

So we'll take that on.

Jason: You know I've always been curious how similar or dissimilar is the Ojibwe that's spoken in Red Lake as opposed to Mille Lacs or Fond du Lac or Red Cliff in Wisconsin, for example?

Are they distinct dialects?

Nate: There's differences but it's not really a roadblock that... an elder once told me, she said that she was from Canada and she would come down to Red Lake, go to Mille Lacs.

She said we were always the same people.

The reservations were kind of put upon us.

You know we got put into the reservations but we this area we used to travel and have our camps, or our sugar bush camps our our different camps around and we never thought of ourselves as different people.

The only, the, the only distinguishing things were the the clans.

Which clans we belong to and that was our relationship to the animal.

Like the the fish clan, you know the the what is it?

Crane clan.

There's different clans that we had and that was where the only things that really different distinguish you, know your roles or responsibilities and things like that but yeah some people try to ha they they get apprehensive towards dialect things but not really a major issue.

I mean it, it could be a good excuse so you know that's my dialect, that's your like.

That's why I'm not going to use the language you know so just, just different things like that but in that sense it's not, it's not really a big deal.

Jason: So we've only got about one minute left.

Mr. Secretary, I'm curious can you tell me a little bit about who will have the opportunity to enroll in this charter school?

Can any enrollee of Red Lake be a part of this charter school or how will that enrollment registration process work?

Sam: Yeah, I mean we're trying to target all of our community members.

You know I, I don't think it's, it's just catered to our community and so anyone that's a part of our community or in the surrounding areas we, we want to cater to those individuals and anyone that has the capacity to you know come to our school we'll, we'll try to serve them.

You know and, and the hope is that we grow this concept and we have a lot of tribal members in the Twin Cities and so in the same way that you know NACA is helping us grow we want to help grow a school in Minneapolis too once we get our feet on the ground and bring these same teachings to all of our people and so I think the goal is to serve anyone and anyone that's in our area but ultimately even beyond that.

Jason: So Nate I'd like to close with you.

What do you need in order to bring this to fruition between now and the fall of 2022?

How can the community help you?

Nate: To remember our children are very important to our future and you know and, and, and coming together as a community and remembering how important our children are.

Our people always thought seven generations down the line.

We thought about our children, their children, their children and that's how we lived with the world.

Jason: Well gentlemen, I'm so glad we had the opportunity to learn about the school and your efforts and I thank you for what you're doing and I thank you so much for taking the time to visit with me today.

[migwech] Chi-miigwech and thank all of you once again for joining me.

I'm Jason Edens, your host of Lakeland Currents.

Be kind and be well.

We'll see you next week.