Epoch Fail

In the eyes of many Americans, public education is an abject disaster. Whether it's because of wretched proficiency scores, underqualified personnel, ballooning costs, or safety concerns, there's a lot not to like about the way our country's schools are administered.

Try to recall the worst anecdote you've heard related to this issue. I can virtually guarantee whatever you're thinking of doesn't hold a candle to the plight faced by Native American students under the umbrella of the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) and its predecessors.

Cruel History

While I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about the atrocities that occurred during the period of Westward Expansion, I had a huge blind spot when it came to the United States' practice of forced education for children living on reservations.

As an Omaha World-Herald column described it, these programs cropped up in the late 1800s "as a way to force tribes to assimilate into white American culture." More to the point, Ojibwe scholar Anton Treuer unearthed a despicable quote from the founder of the blueprint Carlisle Indian Industrial School. That monster, Richard Henry Pratt, shamelessly expressed his intentions: "Our goal is to kill the Indian in order to save the man."

Native American children at these boarding schools sustained "rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse" during the first century of this governmental experiment. In a chilling added twist, the torment inflicted (e.g. - corporal punishment) was passed down into tribal homes, as author Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz painstakingly chronicles on pages 212-213 of her bestselling book.

Yes, reforms were enacted along the way; but, if the oldest generation alive today is any indicator, these facilities were still miserable well past the end of WWII. While researching this piece in Pipestone, Minnesota, I talked at length with an elder named Gary who affirmed the grief endured by students like he and his grandmother at places run by "holy rollers" and bureaucrats.

[It should be noted that the situation was no better across the Canadian border. As author Peggy Janicki detailed in her book The Secret Pocket, kids at British Columbia's Lejac School were hit with leather straps for breaking rules, were forbidden to speak in their native tongues, and routinely ate toothpaste to dull hunger pangs. Only decades after this house of horrors closed in 1976 did the accounts of sexual abuse and death begin to enter the public consciousness.]

The Modern Model

Thankfully, the tide began to turn by the 1980s. Most of the over 400 educational outposts were shuttered or transferred into tribal hands. Today, the Bureau of Indian Education is responsible for just four off-reservation boarding schools, twentyish on reservations, and two institutions of higher learning. Despite this drastic distilling of resources, the government is incapable of getting this seemingly attainable task even close to right.

Take Chemawa Indian School in Oregon. In just the past handful of years, stories of gross financial mismanagement, dormitory isolation cells, and highly questionable deaths have been reported. On the postsecondary level, look at the absolute mess over at Haskell Indian Nations University. Ignored cases of repeated sexual abuse, allegations of nepotism, apparent whistleblower retaliation, and more were exposed in late July during damning testimony on Capitol Hill.

[I highly recommend the coverage of this issue provided by the Lawrence (KS) Journal-World.]

Then there's what's been happening in Flandreau, South Dakota...

Might As Well Be On Another Planet

Few places in America are more isolated, both geographically and metaphorically, than the Flandreau Indian School (FIS). Located behind a secure entrance off of a dead-end river access road in a deeply rural county with zero stoplights, the property oozes twilight zone vibes.

One can only imagine the loneliness that envelops some of these kids while stuck inside a proverbial cage hundreds of miles from home in the dreary darkness of December. Boarders must feel trapped in conditions akin to a juvenile detention facility rather than a center of learning.

So, it is not astonishing to hear that reprehensible behavior regularly occurs there. Native murals painted over. Historical books thrown into dumpsters. A spouse of a top staffer using social media to allegedly intimidate a father whose child went AWOL. The possibility, thanks to a pandemic installation of over 200 cameras on campus, that security guards can use their personal handheld devices to view images/video of children in various states of undress (a belief students relayed to my sources). Utterly vile stuff.

For me, though, the accusation that kids have been repeatedly forced to take drugs without parent/guardian approval, is the toughest transgression to reconcile. As in, how in the world did multiple FIS employees -- in the 2020s -- justify violating both the school handbook and the Indian Affairs Directives System, not to mention the rules of common decency, when reputedly not informing families of SSRIs they were instructing teens to ingest under duress?

Imagine, as the matriarch of a family trying to maintain traditional tribal customs, finding gallon-sized Ziploc bags full of prescribed pills you knew nothing about in both your grandchild's and niece's belongings. Now put yourself in the shoes of the mother of one of those pupils when she discovered that her girl was written up for refusing medication after she pleaded with FIS to not drug the child! It is simply intolerable that this mom was "never notified (about pills) they were on or gave permission for them to take, especially the medicines for anxiety and depression."

[Quote is from her 9/5/23 correspondence with FIS that supposedly went unanswered for months.]

This was no isolated predicament. Kids who did not pop their meds were often sanctioned, according to a confidant of a former employee. As the aforesaid family tells it, the Indian Health Service doctor who saw them conveyed dismay about treating a wholly separate case with the "same concern about the same medications from the same place."

Needless to say, such a pattern is disturbing.

Shining Star Woman

To combat all this darkness demands a soldier of unyielding light.

Enter Lexie Follette -- or, as she is known among the Dakota, Shining Star Woman.

Before her daughter enrolled at the Flandreau Indian School, Ms. Follette was maybe the last person anyone would expect to become the torchbearer in the fight against it. You see, this Nakoda/Dakota/Lakota descendant is an FIS alum who is quick to admit the amazingly positive experience she had there in the 1990s. Whether she's reminiscing about being the first student to hold her naming ceremony on campus or recalling her classmates' escapades, it's impossible to miss her affection for Flandreau.

So, it came as quite a shock when things started to unravel soon after her child arrived at FIS. Figurative alarm bells (unrelated to medication) sounded during an unsettling November FaceTime conversation Lexie had with her daughter and fellow dorm residents. But it wasn't until the late spring that Follette became aware of the pervasive pill problem. Less than a month before diploma ceremonies, the school and/or its medical proxies allegedly asked for and received Lexie's permission to prescribe Escitalopram to her teen and to supervise consumption of the drug. Follette uncomfortably agreed to their plan... silencing her internal trepidations so as not to jeopardize her daughter's health from afar nor jeopardize her expected graduation.

Once her daughter returned home from boarding school, Lexie paid an urgent visit to their personal health care professional to facilitate weaning her teen off of the antidepressant. Follette estimates that it "took weeks until the medication was out of her (daughter's) system."

[Alas, the PTSD from the whole experience will unfortunately be with her child forever.]

In short order, the military veteran rolled up her sleeves ready to fight back. Follette, equal parts tenacious and spiritual, went out of her way to assist Native families going through similar ordeals. When one girl was expelled under dubious circumstances linked to seizures, Lexie stepped in to help the child's grandmother mount a case for finishing school via virtual learning.

Follette aided another kid (seeking financial reimbursement for an ACL torn on FIS grounds) who described the unnatural flow of generic Prozac there. As Lexie wisely reasoned, why is parental permission required for Tylenol but not for meds with serious side effects?

Campus contacts continued to relay worrisome signs from 'the 605' to her home in Tennessee. Rumors of covert walkie talkie coordination during a formal investigation of the Flandreau Indian School. Tales of youths lining up outside of the Home Living building, regardless of weather, to obtain their doses. An assertion of expulsion threats stemming from a former student council class president who challenged the decision to leave certain exterior school doors locked in the wintertime.

Speaking of expulsion, numerous teens were allegedly booted from FIS before any sort of adjudication interview process was initiated. In addition, Lexie insists an employee "was convincing parents to withdraw their students so disciplinary actions would not be on their records." Follette also claims this hearing officer packed the appeals panel with the boiler operator when "deciding the educational fates of students."

You read that right... a maintenance worker was roleplaying as a policy expert!

For everyone else, acts deemed as noncompliance carried with them the looming risk of suspension and the cost burdens associated with families paying out of pocket for travel to and from South Dakota. [Presumably, saying no to prescribed drugs would fall under this category.]

Eventually, Follette perceived Flandreau was responding in boilerplate language in an effort to make it arduous for her to advocate on behalf of other households. Consequently, she decided to cut out the middleman by dealing with BIE Director Tony Dearman directly. Then, leveraging the skills she gained while working in service to the Inspector General of the Marine Corps, Lexie compiled and submitted 98 pages of testimony and evidence to an official within the Department of the Interior, which oversees Dearman's agency. Sadly, DOI remanded her petition back to BIE.

Time For A Turnaround

What Lexie Follette has done in just two years is commendable. But she'll be the first to admit it's not enough. Like the other campuses under the BIE's purview, Flandreau Indian School is flailing.

Constant turnover of both staff and classmates is rampant. Attendance is dwindling.

During the Clinton era, FIS housed over 500 kids. There was even a waiting list. Ever since, the total has been in freefall. Ms. Follette estimates the current number hovers closer to 20 per grade.

[For context, those that are there today rarely come across the river into the county seat. When they do, per Moody County Museum Director Caitlyn Drietz, they're under constant supervision.]

While part of this precipitous drop in class size can be attributed to the prohibition of coercive measures as well as the ripple effects from near closures, much of it is the result of the negative reputation garnered from the lived experience of ex-employees, alums, and dropouts. Oh, and it is probably not good that the head of the BIE has changed nearly annually over the last 45 years.

Money is definitively not the hindrance. A while back, the government verified that "per-student spending at these schools is higher than in regular public schools." To be fair, there are a lot of valid reasons why this is true; but it's salient to identify that more dollars won't rectify BIE schools.

Why those in charge are so bad at remedying the problems at these places is unclear. They've been administering them for 150 years, but still haven't figured out how to do so without harming the Native population. Circling back to Anton Treuer's tome, throughout this dreadful epoch "children often felt they could not fit in either on or off the reservations" after entering the boarding school pipeline. Little about today's atmosphere seems at odds with that. Also of note: Treuer believes the federal network will likely have been responsible for the extinction of over 80% of tribal languages. As the old saying goes, without language, there is no culture.

Perhaps the hardest part to stomach is that the lady ruling the roost, Secretary Deb Haaland, is allowing it to continue on her watch. As a Native American whose family tree was scarred multiple times by the Indian Boarding School model, one would think she would be the best candidate to cure the ills faced by today's attendees. But, as we've seen, the facts on the ground are in conflict with this notion. She sure talks a big game about addressing past trauma... but that stance makes grappling with why students' current pain feels like a backburnered priority more perplexing.

If the BIE doesn't majorly change course, Lexie isn't sure Flandreau will survive another five years. She emphasizes the need for "the entitlement and incompetence" to show through. In her words, "Had this been Child Protective Services, the children would have been removed from their abusers. But (BIE) left them with theirs and now my daughter is coming home with disorders I did not send her there with."

Even after the torturous roller coaster Follette has ridden, the Shining Star Woman ultimately wants the best for her alma mater. She wishes institutions like FIS and Haskell could "reverse-engineer that generational trauma in environments that allow kids to heal." In so doing, when high school and college students of the 2030s and beyond go back to their respective reservations, they would become role models for elementary-aged children there. The vicious cycle would be broken.

Whether the BIE is willing to fix the macro crisis is up for debate. It doesn't take a PhD in sociology to postulate that they might be significantly responsible for the despondency experienced by the teenagers who wander the halls they monitor. Does anyone collecting a paycheck care enough to battle the bureaucratic machine?

If not, it's up to us to remind them that, no matter where we stand on the broad topic of parental consent, 99.9% of us are not okay with educators secretly plying kids with prescription medication.

You'd be surprised how fast things can change when enough of us step up and say no to drugs.

Note: the post above may contain commentary reflecting the author's opinion.