Survival Schools: The American Indian Movement and Community Education in the Twin Cities

5. Conflict, Adaptation, Continuity, and Closure, 1982–2008

173 C H A P T E R 5 Conflict, Adaptation, Continuity, and Closure, 1982–2008 Early on a september morning, I met Heart of the Earth executive director and culture instructor Johnny Smith for an interview. As we talked, Smith expressed thoughts of leaving the school and retiring. After fourteen years, he thought this might be his last year at the school, that he might leave Minneapolis and go back to Red Lake, his home reservation in northern Minnesota. Making plans to leave seemed to be Johnny Smith’s perpetual state; this was the third time I had met him over a three-month period, and each time he talked as if he were about to pack it in and move on to the next thing. But on this day, he did seem to be reaching some sort of breaking point, and he looked especially tired. The reason, he told me, was his frustration with school politics. He did love teaching, and interacting with the kids; that was the joy of his work, and what had kept him at the school for so long. “The only bad thing about the job,” he said, “is the political climate .” Whether he would stay or leave depended on the outcome of the upcoming school board elections: if “good” people were chosen, he would stay; if not, he was done. Many of Smith’s frustrations centered on Clyde Bellecourt, then chairman of the school board. Bellecourt had become too controlling, Smith said. He had become a “liability” to the school. This surprised me, because when I interviewed Smith two months previously, he had defended Bellecourt against his detractors and asserted that although they had different approaches, in the end they were fighting for the same thing. Smith also CONFLICT, ADAPTATION , C ON T INU ITY, CL OS U RE 174 criticized previous directors for their administrative and financial incompetence . When he became director, he said, he had started making people accountable, which had created some resentment. In the past, Smith said, some administrators had treated the survival schools as “their own personal pocketbook.” In the middle of this troubling conversation, Smith suddenly switched gears.“You know, my wife works here too,” he told me. Without his knowledge , a former director had hired her to make powwow dance regalia for the students. One day she showed up at his office, for what he assumed was a friendly visit. As she got ready to leave, she said,“Well, I have to go to work.”“Oh, where are you working?”Smith asked.“Here,”she replied.“Since when??” he demanded.“Two days ago,” she said. Smith told the story with humor, and it lightened his dark mood. It also spoke to the complexity of the school’s internal dynamics. Even as Smith clashed with those who once had been allies, and though institutional finances had deteriorated, aspects of the school’s identity persisted. Smith’s office still was lined with fancy-dance bustles, ceremonial staffs, and drums. Now that his wife had joined the staff, she also would contribute to the school’s cultural curriculum, and their relationship would expand the Heart of the Earth family circle. The period from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s became one of increasing struggle and conflict for the people of the survival schools. Internal disagreements divided administrators, teachers, families, and community members at the same time that external forces undermined their ability to maintain the schools. The troubles did not begin entirely in this period; some of their roots lay in earlier years. Other conflicts resulted from more recent changes that took place in the 1980s. Whatever their origins, the problems became more acute and more compounded over time, building to a head in the mid-1990s. The two schools emerged differently from this turbulent period: Heart of the Earth survived as an institution, while Red School House did not. Despite devoted efforts to save it, the St. Paul school closed at the end of the 1994–95 school year, and it did not reopen. Heart of the Earth remained open until 2008, when it also closed amid controversy over administrative misconduct. Compared to earlier years, in many ways this was a time of deep crisis. Yet, even as survival school educators struggled with internal conflicts and external challenges, they continued to provide a distinctive educational CONFL ICT, ADAPTATION, CONT INUIT Y, CLOSURE 175 experience for their...