Student Union
- By Julie Taboh
Education for Native Youth Is a Work in Progress
Some Native American children fear bullying and harassment so much, they hide their ethnicity at school, according to an education expert.
“A lot of Native students feel invisible,” said Katrina Boone, an associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a national nonprofit whose mission is to change education and life outcomes for underserved children.
Boone said many students have told her they don't feel comfortable letting their teachers know they are Native American because they have “been harassed and bullied, not just by peers, but by teachers in school.”
Native American students languish in schools across the country and often face worse outcomes than their white, black and Latino peers, she said. And the rates of high school and post-graduation trends are below the rates of their peers.
The suicide rate for Native youth exceeds the rate of their peers, Boone said. And national data indicate that rates for illicit drug use and tobacco use are higher for Native youth than for their peers, she said, citing the National Survey on Drug Use and Health from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
False history
Native Americans have been discriminated against “for hundreds of years,” Boone said, and forced to assimilate into a Euro-centric American culture.
“A lot of people view Native people and their socio-economic challenges and think the cause is Native people themselves,” she said. “But the actuality is that of course these challenges aren’t inherent to Native people. These are the effects of centuries of our government being terroristic, genocidal, and just generally unfair to Native American people since European first contact.”
Schools were used as a tool of assimilation, Boone said. “Very thoughtfully and very strategically by the government to destroy Native culture, to destroy Native language, to separate Native people, and to erase their cultures as they originally existed before first contact," she said.
Hundreds of thousands of Native children were sent -- often forcibly -- to Native American boarding schools where “they were punished for speaking their native language, banned from acting in any way that might be seen to represent traditional or cultural practices, stripped of traditional clothing, hair and personal belongings and behaviors reflective of their native culture,” according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
When they returned to their families, “they were so completely Americanized that they couldn't speak the language of their families and had lost their culture and traditions,” Boone said. The outcome is poverty, poor physical and mental health issues and subpar education outcomes “that we see in Indian country today."
Native schools
But Boone is quick to point out that there are pockets in the country where Native students excel.
“The schools where Native students excel acknowledge those students’ culture, they acknowledge those students’ Native languages, they involve communities in really rich ways, and usually those schools are controlled and run by Native people,” Boone said.
She points to the Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion School in northwestern Wisconsin, where students thrive in an academically rigorous environment that leverages the myriad assets of their Native culture and language.
There is also the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), a 56-hectare (140-acre) campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where approximately 500 students are immersed in contemporary Native American arts and culture.
Members of about 100 tribes attend the school, President Robert Martin, a member of the Cherokee Nation, said. "So that's a lot of diversity,” he said, but the school’s main mission he points out, “will always reflect that indigenous or Native perspective.”
Dolores’ story
Native American and IAIA student Dolores Scarlett Cortez studies printmaking and photography. She said using those mediums allowed her to explore her roots. Cortez said she spent this past summer photographing members of her community, and in the process, found her calling.
“With my own indigenous cultures and especially coming to the school, I do feel like there's not enough resources on reservation land that caters to indigenous people,” she said. “I think it's really important to bring that representation back.”
The power of film
Anthony Deiter, who graduated from IAIA 25 years ago and is now a professor of virtual gaming and simulation at the school, teaches a new concept in filmmaking: moving images viewed on a spherical screen rather than a flat one.
He said he thinks the arts -- especially film -- are a powerful platform to help students understand their history, and they provide an opportunity to correct it where they can.
“We often look at those movies and go, ‘Well, that’s sort of not us,’ and I’m going ‘Well, maybe we need to start putting that voice out there. Maybe we need to take a place, like the Institute of American Indian Arts, [which] has the platform to jump off to tell our own stories,’” Dieter said.
Political push
“What I really feel needs to happen is we need to have more Native Americans in roles that we don't necessarily see them in now, or roles that we are a vast minority in,” said U.S. Congresswoman Deb Haaland, a Democrat who represents New Mexico's 1st congressional district and is one of two female Native American legislators elected to Congress.
At the University of New Mexico School of Law where Haaland graduated in 2006, she lobbied the state legislature to pass a bill giving Native Americans in-state tuition regardless of their residency. She paid out-of-state tuition at University of New Mexico School of Law because she resided in California several years before enrollment.
“I felt that I'm a Pueblo woman, and my family's been here since the 1280s, and that made me a 35th generation New Mexican. And it just seemed wrong that I had to pay out-of-state tuition," Haaland said.
She said she would like to see more Native Americans in leadership roles, especially women.
“We need more Native women CEOs. We need more Native women in public office. We need Native Americans in high military positions. We need to ensure that we are giving opportunities to not just Native Americans, but minority students all over the country," Haaland said.
Walking in two worlds
Boone, of Bellwether Education Partners, said she thinks that in order to succeed, Native Americans have to first be fully grounded in their own culture.
"New students have to understand that they live in, for better or worse, the country that we all live in today, and that there's a real need to be able to navigate that society, but with the strength within them from their first culture," she said.
"That's not different for any other kid in school," she said. "I saw in my teaching experiences that kids really need to be rooted in their families and their communities, and have some sort of cultural base.”
“Those are the kids who are the most successful," Boone said
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Lily Meskers faced an unexpected choice in the lead-up to the first major election she can vote in.
The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.
Meskers, who is from Colorado but registered to vote in Montana, decided against the deal because she disagrees with Tester's votes on legislation involving transgender athletes in sports.
"I was like, OK, I believe that this is a political move to try to gain back some voters that he might have lost," Meskers said. "And me being a female student-athlete myself, I was not going to give my endorsement to someone who I felt didn't have the same support for me."
Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Stephen Curry have taken high-profile stances on hot-button topics and political campaigns in recent years, but college athletes are far less outspoken — even if money is available, according to experts in the NIL field. Being outwardly political can reflect on their school or endanger potential endorsement deals from brands that don't want controversy. It can certainly establish a public image for an athlete — for better or for worse — or lead to tensions with teammates and coaches who might not feel the same way.
There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday's ballot.
Still, such steps are considered rare.
"It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don't even take that chance because they haven't made it yet," said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.
"And these individuals still have to figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted," she added.
College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in next week's presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company's partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week.
He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.
"Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service," he said. "So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way."
Giving athletes a voice
Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.
A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.
The Team's executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama's administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.
In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don't immediately take stands on controversial issues, it's important for them to learn how.
"It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they've never had a chance to practice," Solomon said. "We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?"
Shut up and play?
Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.
There have been very few since.
The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.
Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.
"I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements," she said. "I just think it's messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it's really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself."
Walsh said it's easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to "educate, energize and protect Black voters" — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women's rights and reproductive freedom this year.
"They have very established brands," Walsh said. "They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that -- there's always going to be haters, but they're also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say."
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.
"They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans," Gillespie said. "The data is less conclusive about whether or not they're persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?"
Athletes as influencers
Still, campaigns know young voters are critical this election cycle, and athletes offer an effective and familiar voice to reach them.
Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday's ballot.
The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.
A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.
For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women's sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester's campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn't want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.
"As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level," a Tester spokesperson said. "He has never voted to allow men to compete against women."
Meskers said she believes using influence as college athletes is good and she is in favor of NIL. She just doesn't think the two should mix specifically for supporting candidates.
"I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use," she said. "So I think if you're encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that's a great thing."
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