Border-town schools profited from Cheyenne students they failed, even blocking tribal self-schooling.

Evidence

In the last few years, Gail has gone back to that border-town high school that caused her so much anguish. For decades, the majority of Northern Cheyenne students were bussed to the border-town high schools, meaning that the Cheyenne lost control over their children’s educations. Not surprisingly, most Native students dropped out. The local school districts adjacent to reservations get around $6,000 per student to teach enrolled Native students, according to Gail. That is money the school districts don’t want to lose, so they fought the Northern Cheyenne community’s initiatives to start their own school district. But in 1993, after almost 30 years of fighting, the state superintendent of public instruction granted the Northern Cheyenne’s petition for a high school because of the hard work of Native Action and the community at large. In 1997, the Northern Cheyenne broke ground for the Morning Star High School. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 482

Categorization

• XREF: Education-as-control is the same pattern as the colonial craft schools in Along the Archival Grain — education deliberately aimed at producing a service class, with communities structurally losing control of their own children’s formation.