In keeping with our previous entries in this month’s weekend series, today’s feature is linked to yesterday’s — again, by the identity of the artist. In this case, the motif is also clearly related: eagle feathers carved by Jeremy Gomez out of stone.
But today’s feature is frankly less about the earrings themselves than about what their image represents, and the need to ensure that the traditions underlying that continue to be honored in culturally significant and appropriate ways.
We’ll get to that in a moment.
First, though, a brief look at Jeremy’s work is in order. We’ve covered it somewhat regularly here lately, not only because we acquired several new modestly priced pieces by him in time for the holidays, but because it’s important to promote the work of the younger generation of talented Native artists from the Pueblo. Yesterday, we looked at his rendering of eagle feathers in orange alabaster, beautifully simple pendants that feel both soft and full of substance — much like the actual feathers, in fact, on which they are based. Today’s feathers are much smaller, simpler in design, but no less lovely. From their description in the Other Artists: Miscellaneous Jewelry gallery:
Soft and silky as soapstone, these delicate eagle feathers have been coaxed by hand from local Pilar slate by Jeremy Gomez (Taos Pueblo). Eminently touchable, they’re cool to the fingertips, but warm against the skin. Despite being carved from stone, they’re light in weight and dangle beautifully. Earrings hang 2-1/8″ inches long, excluding wires (dimensions approximate).
Pilar slate; sterling silver
$75 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I said “simpler in design,” but that description is itself an oversimplification. It seems much easier than it actually is to produce pieces like this. A carver who makes jewelry as well as figurative pieces has to be able to switch gears in some fairly significant ways in working between and across the two genres. The goals are different, driven largely by the fact that the uses will be vastly different. Figurative sculpture, even of small fetishes, requires a solidity that promotes balance of the sort that permits a piece to stand upright on its own. It takes skill and effort, and not a little experience, to carve a piece that will stand under its own weight and gravity without tipping over.
Jewelry, even carved stone jewelry, requires a very different sort of balance.
Most such pieces are going to be pendants or earrings, which means they won’t stand; they’ll hang. Suspended from a chain or a thong or pair of delicate wires, they’re pieces that will dangle as adornment on a human body. And so they need to be lightweight enough for the wearer to bear the weight without discomfort — and properly balanced to hang evenly and straightforwardly. That gets tricky with any material; with something as potentially weighty and with as much natural variation as stone, it’s more difficult yet. And these little slate eagle feathers, a little over two inches in length, hang light as actual feathers, facing fully forward. They’re also modestly priced, making them a good option for someone who wants to wear the imagery and symbolism of the eagle feather without the high cost of a version rendered in precious metals and gemstones.
But sometimes, for some people, a symbolic version isn’t enough. In our cultures, there are times when an actual eagle feather should (even must) be worn. No, it’s not an option open to people of other blood and culture. But for those for whom it is meant, it becomes not merely an honor but a trust, and ensuring the ability to do it becomes a duty.
That honor, that duty, is once again being denied some of our young people.
I’ve written about this phenomenon before. It crops up again and again, usually at least once per academic year. It’s always ugly.
In our cultures, eagle feathers (and in some cultures, plumes) are presented to individuals for service to the people in one form or another. They are earned, whether by dint of continuous hard work or by a specific act of courage. They are also, so to speak, entrusted to the recipient. Traditionally, such a trust is often given to a young person after the successful completion of a particular rite of passage. Today, contemporary culture marks graduation (whether from high school, college, or graduate school) as one such obvious rite of passage. Many (perhaps most?) tribal nations make it a practice to present their graduates with an eagle feather or plume to make their successful completion of many years of hard work, of their efforts to obtain an education, and of the promise that such efforts hold for the student’s ability to return help to the people in the future.
Two years ago, a graduate from Alabama’s one federally-recognized tribal nation was ordered not to wear her eagle feather attached to her cap when she walked across the stage to receive her high school diploma. Coming from my professional background, I first viewed the story with a typically jaundiced eye — neither happy about it nor surprised in the least, and assuming that it was merely a “time, place, and manner” restriction that was unlikely to face a real challenge. I was wrong about its nature, and while I continue to be unsurprised, I now regard this issue as something of far broader cultural significance.
Back then, I wrote elsewhere from news reports:
When Ramer and a few other Native American graduating students approached the school’s headmaster for permission to wear their feathers at graduation, the youths were warned not to do so.
The teens were also urged to sign a contractual stipulation that enforces a strict dress code for graduating seniors so that they could walk with their class at the ceremony.
According to Ramer, she never signed the contract.
So when graduation day rolled around on May 23, the 17-year-old walked across the stage, proudly sporting her feather for all to see.
Ms. Ramer also alleges that, when she and her fellow Indian students requested permission, “[the headmaster] told us ‘no’ and that if we did, she would pull us off the field.”
Really, people? “Pull [her] off the field?” Deny her the diploma and transcripts she earned through 12+ long years of work? Force her to pay one thousand dollars to ransom those earned credentials? A little perspective, please.
Now, the issue is bubbling up again, this time in the heart of Indian Country (as it does there every year; it’s just not generally considered “newsworthy” enough to make the national media). In North Dakota, Native students and their parents are already looking ahead toward this years graduation ceremonies, and are launching a formal challenge to the dress codes that deny American Indian graduates the right to walk while wearing the eagle feathers and plumes that they have rightly earned from their people. Some of the schools in the area are at least engaging in discussion with the students, their parents, and tribal leaders. others are, predictably, flatly refusing to consider any accommodation whatsoever — despite the fact, as one Native activist points out, that the same school district permits female Muslim students to walk wearing hijab (and rightly so, I might add). The assistant superintendent attempts to have it both ways:
“For our English language learner and refugee families, since that is part of their daily attire, that’s part of their cap and gown,” he said.
Mr. Thompson is not the arbiter of what constitutes “daily attire” for Native students, and clearly has no understanding (or at least doesn’t care to learn) of how “daily attire” works for our young people.
The same day that I covered the Alabama incident, I wrote about several other troubling aspects of this nation’s educational system as it pertains to students from our cultures. Taken in context, they all underscore just what a challenge it is and what hard work is often required for our students to earn their diplomas in the first place, often laboring under conditions that non-Native students can’t even envision. In the intervening two years, sadly, not much has changed. Here’s a quick look at some of the obstacles Native students in much of the country must navigate on a daily basis.
Crumbling and dangerous facilities:
Currently, 63 tribal schools across the country are identified as being in “poor condition,” a label that covers sins ranging from leaking roofs to rodent droppings to toxic mold to sewage problems to buildings that cannot withstand winter winds. As Senator Al Franken (D-MN) noted in opening remarks [at a congressional hearing]:
“When the wind starts blowing at a certain rate, they have to leave the school because it doesn’t meet the safety standards. This can be when it’s 20 below zero in northern Minnesota. It puts the Indian education system to shame.”
Staff cuts, lost funding, and school closures:
The sequester went into effect on March 1 [2013], so affected schools have already had to slash operating budgets in anticipation of losing Impact Aid at the end of June. According to theNational Indian Education Association (NIEA), the sequester will cause cuts of more than $60 million to 710 mostly-Indian schools that serve some 115,000 Indian students.
Here in New Mexico, the Gallup-McKinley County Schools, serving some 9,000 Indian students (about 75% of the school district’s entire student population) is already suffering. After cutting $2 million from its budget on March 1, the district is now facing the loss of 35% of its overall budget at the end of this month.
“The bottom line,” [District Superintendent Ray] Arsenault said “is why should the poorest people in the United States have to pay” for Washington’s gridlock.
For rural counties, like Gallup-McKinley, the problem is particularly complex.
Distance between schools — in Arsenault’s case, his furthest school is 103 miles away — means that consolidating programs is not possible.
In most rural school districts, students bus vast distances already.
“I bus three million miles a year to get the students to and from school,” Arsenault said about his own district.
With just as many schools running but less money to operate them, cuts are being made to programs like library and vocational training.
Window Rock High School, in Window Rock, Arizona, is looking at huge staff cuts and even closures:
Debbie Jackson-Dennison, superintendent of the Window Rock Unified School District in Arizona, told the Washington Post in March that she would cut 65 positions by the end of May. All of the students at Window Rock High School, the district’s only secondary school, are Native American and 56 percent are considered low-income.
The rural district also slashed school bus routes, and may shutter three of its seven schools, the Post reported. Almost 60 percent of the district’s funding comes from federal aid.
“We may have to close those schools,” Jackson-Dennison told the Post. “We don’t have any other avenues at all.”
And it’s not just ordinary K-12 schools. Sitting Bull College, a mostly-Sioux post-secondary school in the Dakotas with programs for middle and high school students, faces similar problems:
Sitting Bull’s three campuses, one in North Dakota and two in South Dakota, serve around 320 students a year, most of who [sic] are from the local Sioux tribe.
The college faces a cut of nearly $1 million under sequester, according to the NIEA.
Thompson said those cuts would force the school to freeze salaries and possibly close for summer recess, which means ending college programs for local middle school and high school students.
Overt racism from school administrators:
After Bayfield (WI) High School valedictorian Victoria Gokee-Rindal called out the school administration for its treatment of Indian students, 15 of those students staged a walkout.
Ms. Gokee-Rindal (Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa) made her point during her commencement address last weekend:
“Even though we’re 80 percent Native American, we have to almost check our ‘Indian-ness’ at the door.”
It’s a problem Indians across the country face, at any age and in nearly any context.
The final straw apparently was the school’s refusal to allow Indian students to attend classes after having smudged themselves.
. . .
Of course, the smudging issue was, as Ms Gokee-Rindal put it, just the “tipping point,” allegedly after a long and continuing history of disrespectful treatment:
Gokee-Rindal said her main concerns were about “basic human rights.”
. . .
“There is a lot of cultural insensitivity at the Bayfield School District,” she said.
. . .
“[The smudging ban] is a concern, but there are many other concerns that are basic human rights that we are concerned about. The whole smudging issue is just the single issue that put people over the top,” she said. “It seems to have gotten a lot of media attention, and it is giving the impression that it is the only issue at the Bayfield School, but its [sic] not.”
Gokee-Rindal said a teacher had personally belittled her in a room full of people because she was Native American.
“They had no right, it was very unprofessional, very disrespectful, and it was not handled in the right way at all,” she said.
And, of course, the continually declining graduation rate among Native students:
According to Education Week‘s annual “Diplomas Count” survey of graduation rates by demographic categories,graduation rates are declining for one (and only one) ethnic group: American Indians.
The annual survey’s records indicate that Indian graduation rates hit an all-time high in 2008, at an astonishingly bad 54%. Five years later, that number has dropped back to 51%, barely more than half. The reasons are legion, but it all comes back to one thing I’ve harped on my entire life:
“In many ways, our students are invisible,” [National Indian Education Association director of communications RiShawn] Biddle says. “We’re not the largest percentage of the population, so people forget for a moment that we’re at the table.”
Some states, of course, perform better than others when it comes to ensuring that Indian students graduate. In Oklahoma, with a significant Native population (9%), Indian students have a graduation rate of 63%. On the other hand, in South Dakota (a state whose population comprises an even higher percentage of Native students, at 15%), fewer than one-third of Indian students receive a high school diploma.
These are only a few of the threshold barriers to education for our students. In addition, centuries of public policy that have resulted in enforced economic poverty (on some reservations, at annual rates exceeding 90%), the governmentally-enforced break-up of families, and a whole host of other factors grounded in institutionalized and structural racism do their damnedest to try to reinforce this vicious circle. Instead of depriving Native graduates of an essential component of their cultural heritage and, yes, daily life within their cultures, we should be encouraging cultural norms that reward their hard work in the face of adversity that most can’t begin to imagine.
And so, as the current social media campaign urges, we should #letthefeathersfly. You can help. There’s a petition at Change.org to urge North Dakota school administrators to do the right thing. At last look, they were still seeking another 188 supporters. I’d like to see them blow past their goal of 812 signatures, by several orders of magnitude. Let’s show this particular school district, and by extension, all those who are observing this controversy warily, that this country supports Native students. Because, as the title of this post indicates, their eagle feathers are an earned and sacred trust. For their hard work, our young people shouldn’t be confined to wearing “eagle feathers” that are mere necklace or earring facsimiles.
#LetTheFeathersFly!
~ Aji
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