SAN CARLOS, ARIZONA — 

After missing 40 days of school last year, Tommy Betom, 10, is on track this year for much better attendance. The importance of showing up has been stressed repeatedly at school — and at home.

When he went to school last year, he often came home saying the teacher was picking on him and other kids were making fun of his clothes. But Tommy's grandmother Ethel Marie Betom, who became one of his caregivers after his parents split, said she told him to choose his friends carefully and to behave in class.

He needs to go to school for the sake of his future, she told him.

"I didn't have everything," said Betom, an enrolled member of the San Carlos Apache tribe. Tommy attends school on the tribe's reservation in southeastern Arizona. "You have everything. You have running water in the house, bathrooms and a running car."

A teacher and a truancy officer also reached out to Tommy's family to address his attendance. He was one of many. Across the San Carlos Unified School District, 76% of students were chronically absent during the 2022-2023 school year, meaning they missed 10% or more of the school year.

Years after COVID-19 disrupted American schools, nearly every state is still struggling with attendance. But attendance has been worse for Native American students — a disparity that existed before the pandemic and has since grown, according to data collected by The Associated Press.

Out of 34 states with data available for the 2022-2023 school year, half had absenteeism rates for Native American and Alaska Native students that were at least 9 percentage points higher than the state average.

Many schools serving Native students have been working to strengthen connections with families, who often struggle with higher rates of illness and poverty. Schools also must navigate distrust dating back to the U.S. government's campaign to break up Native American culture, language and identity by forcing children into abusive boarding schools.

History "may cause them to not see the investment in a public school education as a good use of their time," said Dallas Pettigrew, director of Oklahoma University's Center for Tribal Social Work and a member of the Cherokee Nation.

On-site health, trauma care

The San Carlos school system recently introduced care centers that partner with hospitals, dentists and food banks to provide services to students at multiple schools. The work is guided by cultural success coaches — school employees who help families address challenges that keep students from coming to school.

Nearly 100% of students in the district are Native and more than half of families have incomes below the federal poverty level. Many students come from homes that deal with alcoholism and drug abuse, Superintendent Deborah Dennison said.

Students miss school for reasons ranging from anxiety to unstable living conditions, said Jason Jones, a cultural success coach at San Carlos High School and an enrolled member of the San Carlos Apache tribe. Acknowledging their fears, grief and trauma helps him connect with students, he said.

"You feel better, you do better," Jones said. "That's our job here in the care center is to help the students feel better."

In the 2023-2024 school year, the chronic absenteeism rate in the district fell from 76% to 59% — an improvement Dennison attributes partly to efforts to address their communities' needs.

"All these connections with the community and the tribe are what's making a difference for us and making the school a system that fits them rather than something that has been forced upon them, like it has been for over a century of education in Indian Country," said Dennison, a member of the Navajo Nation.

In three states — Alaska, Nebraska and South Dakota — the majority of Native American and Alaska Native students were chronically absent. In some states, it has continued to worsen, even while improving slightly for other students, as in Arizona, where chronic absenteeism for Native students rose from 22% in 2018-2019 to 45% in 2022-2023.

AP's analysis does not include data on schools managed by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education, which are not run by traditional districts. Less than 10% of Native American students attend BIE schools.

Schools close on days of Native ceremonial gatherings

At Algodones Elementary School, which serves a handful of Native American pueblos along New Mexico's Upper Rio Grande, about two-thirds of students are chronically absent.

The communities were hit hard by COVID-19, with devastating impacts on elders. Since schools reopened, students have been slow to return. Excused absences for sick days are still piling up — in some cases, Principal Rosangela Montoya suspects, students are stressed about falling behind academically.

Staff and tribal liaisons have been analyzing every absence and emphasizing connections with parents. By 10 a.m., telephone calls go out to the homes of absent students. Next steps include in-person meetings with those students' parents.

"There's illness. There's trauma," Montoya said. "A lot of our grandparents are the ones raising the children so that the parents can be working."

About 95% of Algodones' students are Native American, and the school strives to affirm their identity. It doesn't open on four days set aside for Native American ceremonial gatherings, and students are excused for absences on other cultural days as designated by the nearby pueblos.

For Jennifer Tenorio, it makes a difference that the school offers classes in the family's native language of Keres. She speaks Keres at home but says that's not always enough to instill fluency.

Tenorio said her two oldest children, now in their 20s, were discouraged from speaking Keres when enrolled in the federal Head Start educational program — a system that now promotes native language preservation — and they struggled academically.

"It was sad to see with my own eyes," said Tenorio, a single parent and administrative assistant who has used the school's food bank. "In Algodones, I saw a big difference to where the teachers were really there for the students, and for all the kids, to help them learn."

Over a lunch of strawberry milk and enchiladas on a recent school day, her 8-year-old son Cameron Tenorio said he likes math and wants to be a policeman.

"He's inspired," Tenorio said. "He tells me every day what he learns."

Home visits

In Arizona, Rice Intermediate School Principal Nicholas Ferro said better communication with families, including Tommy Betom's, has helped improve attendance. Since many parents are without working phones, he said, that often means home visits.

Lillian Curtis said she has been impressed by Rice Intermediate's student activities on family night. Her granddaughter, Brylee Lupe, 10, missed 10 days of school by mid-October last year but had missed just two days by the same time this year.

"The kids always want to go — they are anxious to go to school now. And Brylee is much more excited," said Curtis, who takes care of her grandchildren.

Curtis said she tells Brylee that skipping school is not an option.

The district has made gains because it is changing the perception of school and what it can offer, said Dennison, the superintendent. Its efforts have helped not just with attendance but also morale, especially at the high school, she said.

"Education was a weapon for the U.S. government back in the past," she said. "We work to decolonize our school system."

This story is part of a collaboration on chronic absenteeism among Native American students between The Associated Press and ICT, a news outlet that covers Indigenous issues.

LINCOLN CITY, Ore. — 

Drumming made the floor vibrate and singing filled the conference room of the Chinook Winds Casino Resort in Lincoln City, on the Oregon coast, as hundreds in tribal regalia danced in a circle.

For the last 47 years, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians have held an annual powwow to celebrate regaining federal recognition. This month’s event, however, was especially significant: It came just two weeks after a federal court lifted restrictions on the tribe's rights to hunt, fish and gather — restrictions tribal leaders had opposed for decades.

“We're back to the way we were before,” Siletz Chairman Delores Pigsley said. “It feels really good.”

The Siletz is a confederation of over two dozen bands and tribes whose traditional homelands spanned western Oregon, as well as parts of northern California and southwestern Washington state. The federal government in the 1850s forced them onto a reservation on the Oregon coast, where they were confederated together as a single, federally recognized tribe despite their different backgrounds and languages.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, Congress revoked recognition of over 100 tribes, including the Siletz, under a policy known as “termination.” Affected tribes lost millions of acres of land as well as federal funding and services.

“The goal was to try and assimilate Native people, get them moved into cities,” said Matthew Campbell, deputy director of the Native American Rights Fund. “But also I think there was certainly a financial aspect to it. I think the United States was trying to see how it could limit its costs in terms of providing for tribal nations.”

Losing their lands and self-governance was painful, and the tribes fought for decades to regain federal recognition. In 1977, the Siletz became the second tribe to succeed, following the restoration of the Menominee Tribe in Wisconsin in 1973.

But to get a fraction of its land back — roughly 1,457 hectares of the 445,000-hectare reservation established for the tribe in 1855 — the Siletz tribe had to agree to a federal court order that restricted their hunting, fishing and gathering rights. It was only one of two tribes in the country, along with Oregon’s Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, compelled to do so to regain tribal land.

The settlement limited where tribal members could fish, hunt and gather for ceremonial and subsistence purposes, and it imposed caps on how many salmon, elk and deer could be harvested in a year. It was devastating, tribal chair Pigsley recalled: The tribe was forced to buy salmon for ceremonies because it couldn’t provide for itself, and people were arrested for hunting and fishing violations.

“Giving up those rights was a terrible thing,” Pigsley, who has led the tribe for 36 years, told The Associated Press earlier this year. “It was unfair at the time, and we’ve lived with it all these years.”

Decades later, Oregon and the U.S. came to recognize that the agreement subjecting the tribe to state hunting and fishing rules was biased, and they agreed to join the tribe in recommending to the court that the restrictions be lifted.

“The Governor of Oregon and Oregon’s congressional representatives have since acknowledged that the 1980 Agreement and Consent Decree were a product of their times and represented a biased and distorted position on tribal sovereignty, tribal traditions, and the Siletz Tribe’s ability and authority to manage and sustain wildlife populations it traditionally used for tribal ceremonial and subsistence purposes,” attorneys for the U.S., state and tribe wrote in a joint court filing.

Late last month, the tribe finally succeeded in having the court order vacated by a federal judge. And a separate agreement with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has given the tribe a greater role in regulating tribal hunting and fishing.

As Pigsley reflected on those who passed away before seeing the tribe regain its rights, she expressed hope about the next generation carrying on essential traditions.

“There’s a lot of youth out there that are learning tribal ways and culture,” she said. “It’s important today because we are trying to raise healthy families, meaning we need to get back to our natural foods.”

Among those celebrating and praying at the powwow was Tiffany Stuart, donning a basket cap her ancestors were known for weaving, and her 3-year-old daughter Kwestaani Chuski, whose name means “six butterflies” in the regional Athabaskan language from southwestern Oregon and northwestern California.

Given the restoration of rights, Stuart said, it was “very powerful for my kids to dance.”

“You dance for the people that can’t dance anymore,” she said.

WASHINGTON — 

The Koi Nation, a small Native American tribe with fewer than 100 members, is moving closer to building a $600 million Las Vegas-style casino resort in California’s Sonoma County, just an hour north of San Francisco.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has released its final environmental impact statement for the proposed Shiloh Resort and Casino, marking a key step in the tribe's application to place 27 hectares of land into federal trust.

The environmental report analyzed the project's potential impacts on air and water quality, wildlife, traffic, and other factors. While most effects were deemed "less than significant," some were classified as "potentially significant." The public now has 30 days to review the findings and submit comments before the bureau makes a final decision.

The Shiloh project faces stiff opposition from California lawmakers, Governor Gavin Newsom and neighboring tribes. Newsom argued in an August letter to the Department of the Interior that the land in question lies outside the Koi Nation’s historical homeland — a key requirement under federal law for gaming approval.

Competing tribes, most notably the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, also oppose the project. They launched a high-profile media campaign earlier this month with full-page ads in major newspapers accusing the Interior Department of undermining tribal sovereignty.

At the heart of the controversy is the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, which sets the rules for tribal gaming and includes guidelines about a tribe’s historical connection to land. The casino must be located on land the federal government holds in trust for the tribe. The act also prohibited gaming on lands acquired after October 17, 1988, unless certain conditions are met.

One such exception applies to tribes with restored federal recognition. In December 2023, the Biden administration announced an updated final rule that made it easier for tribes to acquire land in trust. The rule now permits gaming on lands placed into trust as part of restoring territory to a landless tribe that has regained federal recognition.

To qualify for this exception, a tribe must demonstrate both a historical and contemporary connection to the land.

For the Koi Nation, the fight is deeply personal. In 1916, the federal government recognized the tribe under its former name, the Lower Lake Rancheria, and allocated 56 hectares of land in neighboring Lake County which were largely unfarmable. By 1918, most tribal members had relocated to Sonoma County.

In 1956, the federal government sold off 40 hectares of the Lake County land and transferred the remaining 16 hectares to the sole tribal member still residing there.

The Interior Department did not officially terminate the tribe; through clerical errors, it simply forgot about them. Decades later, the government reaffirmed that relationship.

“The Lower Lake Rancheria have been officially overlooked for many years by the Bureau of Indian Affairs even though their government-to-government relationship with the United States was never terminated,” then-assistant Indian affairs secretary Kevin Gover stated in his December 29, 2000 finding. “I am pleased to correct this egregious oversight.”

The Koi purchased the Shiloh land for $12.3 million in 2021 and applied to the government to place the land into trust. The tribe says that trails their ancestors used in trade pass directly through the site.

“The Koi Nation has been in this region for thousands of years and is fully within its rights to pursue this project,” said Sam Singer, a spokesperson for the tribe.

Singer attributes much of the opposition to fear of competition. Currently, more than 60 tribes operate 66 casinos across California. The Graton Rancheria operates a resort and casino about 17 kilometers south of the Shiloh property and is currently undergoing a $1 billion expansion.

WASHINGTON — 

In the days following the November 5 election, media outlets widely cited NBC exit polls indicating that 65% of Native American voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump.

While Native American advocacy groups acknowledge a trend of Native voters shifting toward the political right, they argued that the polling in this case was flawed and did not accurately represent their demographic.

NBC did not conduct the polling itself. It is one of four major news networks in the National Election Pool, or NEP, which relies on marketing research company Edison Research to question voters as they leave the polls.

Edison conducted phone, email and text message surveys of absentee and early voters in Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Ohio before Election Day and polled exiting voters at more than 300 polling stations across the U.S.

Once polling stations shut down on election night, Edison forwarded the voting data to NEP members so that they could analyze answers and project the winners.

NBC was the first to report exit polling data that included Native Americans. ABC News lumped Native Americans into the "all other races" category, as did CBS News and CNN.

The 65% figure prompted skepticism and confusion among some Native American observers. Native News Online, working with Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and national survey firm Qualtrics, surveyed 865 Native voters and found that 51% of Native voters voted for Donald Trump.

In contrast, 60% of the nearly 5,000 Native Americans who participated in Illuminative's Indigenous Futures Survey in 2020 identified as liberal, and 51% said they were Democrats.

A closer look at the numbers

Stephanie Fryberg (Tulalip), who leads Northwestern University's Research for Indigenous Social Action and Equity collaborative, was puzzled by the NBC calculation.

In a November 8 editorial in Native News Online, she said that the Native voter sample size was too small and couldn't accurately reflect Native voter preferences nationwide. She pointed out that 80% of respondents were from urban and suburban areas, while less than 20% came from rural areas.

In a separate editorial on November 18, Native News Online editor Levi Rickert questioned whether the respondents were legitimate members of federally recognized tribes.

“Perhaps the most challenging aspect of research and data collection among Native Americans is self-identification,” he wrote. “For various reasons, many people claim Native American ancestry. Among Native Americans, a common joke is that the largest 'tribe' in Indian Country is the 'Wannabe' tribe.”

VOA reached out to Fryberg to ask how she arrived at the numbers.

"We wanted to better understand the sample of Native voters that major news organizations were using to draw broad conclusions about voting patterns in the 2024 election," she answered by email. "Reports from the NEP show that only about 1% of these respondents identified as Native American, equating to roughly 229 individuals … underscoring the urgent need for more comprehensive and inclusive sampling strategies that genuinely reflect Native voices in electoral data."

Edison Research Executive Vice President Rob Farbman agreed that the sample size was small, but he told VOA that it met the NEP's minimum criteria for reporting subgroups.

"This is a national survey meant to represent the country, but subgroups as small as Native Americans … are difficult to measure," he said. "It's certainly possible that our survey is underrepresenting people that live on reservations."

He also noted that results at the county level are still coming in.

"And the votes that we've been seeing so far are showing that Trump is doing way better among American Indians than last time,” Farbman said.

Allison Neswood, a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, said that exit polls should be viewed "with a lot of skepticism," and that the Edison poll "should really be discarded."

"Real hard conclusions will take a little bit more time," she said. "We're going to have to get more granular data, below the county level, to the precinct level."