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127 C H A P T E R 4 Building Our Own Communities: Survival School Curriculum, 1972–1982 On a monday morning in january, Heart of the Earth students and staff members began their school week with a ceremony called “circle time.” In a blue-carpeted, first-floor communal gathering space, two adult men and several male students sat around a large drum. They drummed and sang as students of all ages filed into the room. The youngest children sat on the floor, older children sat in chairs at the back of the room, and high school students and staff members stood along the walls. Some of the older students stayed in the hallway outside the room, lounging against the door frame or sitting on the stairs leading to the second floor. Throughout the ceremony, they fidgeted, whispered, pestered each other, and generally made a point of not paying attention. After everyone arrived, the singers played several more songs at the drum. Some of the youngest students—the five-, six-, and seven-year-olds— jumped up off the floor and danced. A serious-looking, bespectacled boy circled the room with a bowl of burning sage and a fan made of feathers. As he paused at each person, sweeping the fan forward over the bowl, students and staff members cupped their hands and pulled the fragrant smoke across their chests and over their heads. Later in the ceremony another student passed around a bowl of loose tobacco. People took a small amount to hold in their palms as language teachers Ona Kingbird and Velma LaFrambois said prayers in Ojibwe and Lakota. During the assembly, two men addressed the gathering. Johnny Smith, longtime cultural instructor at Heart of the Earth and the school’s current BUILDING OUR OWN C OMMUNITIES 128 director, began by admonishing the high school students in the hallway for not participating in the ceremony. He reminded them of the years of struggle that had made their school possible and allowed them to carry out these cultural practices. He called on the older students to watch out for the younger ones, to set a good example for them. When Johnny Smith finished speaking,he introduced Clyde Bellecourt. Bellecourt rose slowly from his seat along the wall, dressed in black pants, a red T-shirt, a half-zip pullover, and a dark wool coat. He wore his long black hair in a ponytail; it was streaked with gray. He was sixty-six years old. Bellecourt told the students how he loved coming to the Monday morning ceremonies at the school, how good it made him feel to hear the drumming and watch the children dance.He urged them to embrace their Indian identity, to love who they were and to take pride in it. Turning to the high school students in the hall, he warned them to wise up and start taking advantage of what the school offered them. Here at Heart of the Earth, he reminded them, they had something important: a spiritual foundation.“We want to provide you with a good, sound education,” he told the students. “But what good is it if you don’t know who you are?” In february 1976, St. Paul mayor George Latimer honored several Red School House people through the awarding of citations. Charlotte Day— founding parent, board member, and school cook—was named Indian Woman of the Year. Her daughter Dorene Day, then a junior at the school, won the honor of Indian Youth of the Year. Red School House founder and director Eddie Benton-Banai received recognition as Indian Man of the Year. Just five years earlier, a St. Paul public school principal and a Ramsey County social worker had called Charlotte Day an unfit mother and threatened to take her children away. Now, because of her work at Red School House, St. Paul’s highest public official was honoring her. This sharp turnaround attested to the survival schools’growing reputation as innovative and successful experiments in Indian education. By the mid-1970s, both survival schools received increased, and largely positive, local press coverage. In addition to their local accolades, the schools also garnered national recognition.In May 1976,the federal Office of Health, Education, and Welfare named the Red School House one of the top ten Indian education programs in the country.That summer the National Education Association honored Eddie Benton-Banai as its Indian Educator of the [18.116.40.177] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 04...

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