Federal Way legislator explains why she voted no for Native American history requirement

Published 3:53 pm Thursday, July 2, 2015

In late July, social studies teachers across the entire state of Washington will be required to teach Native American history.

But before   Gov. Jay Inslee signed Senate Bill 5433 into law on May 8, the bill that changed teaching Native American history as an “encouragement” to a “requirement” for schools was voted on by the Washington Legislature’s Senate and House chambers.

While the majority voted yes, seven senators voted no in March, and 22 House of Representatives voted no in April.

Among the representatives’ no-vote was Rep. Carol Gregory, a Democrat representing Federal Way’s 30th Legislative District.

“I voted for the amendment that also put tribes that were seeking federal recognition,” Gregory said, referring to requirements of the law that students learn about the closest federally recognized tribe in the region. “I now understand there is tribal politics involved. I looked at educating children.”

Gregory, a current Federal Way Public Schools board of education member and former president, was appointed to fill late Rep. Roger Freeman’s position in January after he was voted into office just days after passing away from cancer in late October.

With the thought that the Legislature could go back and expand the bill, Gregory voted no. But that’s not to say she was  against the intent of the law.

“I thought the bill was a great bill, I just thought it didn’t go far enough,” she said.

Gregory said she grew up being taught by her father to be very respectful of tribal history and the community.

“To me, I have a passion around this,” she said. “I thought I was doing a good thing, I just didn’t know all the facts about why the bill was being introduced.”

The law will take effect July 24.

Because the law is based off of a 2005 law that “encouraged” Washington school districts to adopt a curriculum put forth by the Office of Native Education — a subset of the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction — much of the curriculum planning is already done, according to Michael M. Vendiola, the program supervisor of the Office of Native Education.

But they still have to train teachers on that curriculum.

“We’re certainly making ourselves available,” Vendiola said. “The curriculum is available for free, so certainly school districts could take it and figure it out but a lot of our contracts are asking to provide training.”

The curriculum includes identifying federally recognized Native American tribes near or within schools districts.

According to the final bill report, school districts are then expected to adopt social studies curriculum about tribal history, culture and government of the nearest federally recognized tribe and work with the tribes to develop learning material.

School districts are also required to collaborate with tribe programs and “facilitate cultural exchanges,” while also emphasizing tribal government and history, statewide.

“We feel the inclusion of Native American history, culture and government is just a part of Washington state history and part of the education system,” he said. “It’s something that would naturally be included and that’s what we’re attempting to do, to utilize this program to train teachers.”

The expectation is that the next graduating class, 2016, will have learned some accurate Native American history, as teachers will begin to implement their teaching this fall.

Several Federal Way middle schools are named after Native American tribes or people (Lakota, Sequoyah and Sacajawea middle schools, to name a few), and the district is home to Native American students, too.

Of the 29 federally recognized Native American tribes in Washington, Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and Puyallup Tribe are the closest to Federal Way. According to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, 0.8 percent, or 169 Native American students, in the school year 2013-14 attended school in the Federal Way Public Schools district. There were 22,461 students registered in 2013.

But Maxine Alexander, the school district’s Native American Education Program coordinator, said that number looks more like 500 as many students don’t check the Native American box when filling out demographic forms.

The Native American Education Program was developed in the Federal Way school district to help students and their families in the educational process.

The program’s goals are to improve Native American students’ academic success, increase knowledge of cultural values, traditions and contemporary issues and increase parental participation.

Alexander said for school district’s to get the Title 7 Indian Education grant, they need to count each Native American student in the program who has filled out a 506 form. The registration process is specific to the requirement of each tribe, such as a student must have a quarter blood or a descendent in the tribe.

Last school year, Alexander reported 343 students in the program and prior years reached up to 395.

“But there are a lot more students that self identify as native students,” she said. “Every year, we identify 550-600 students that are eligible.”

What may come as a surprise is most of Federal Way’s Native American students come from outside of Washington state.

Alexander said a federal policy called “relocation” pushed tribes off of their reservations to bigger cities, such as Seattle. Because of this, the tribes where students are from are pretty diverse. However, many, she notes, are from all over Alaska’s 266 tribes.

And making Native American history an “encouragement” to “requirement” was a no-brainer to Alexander.

“The true history of the United States and people will be told because, right now, it’s only maybe one page or two pages and the general population doesn’t understand the sovereign relationships between tribes and government,” Alexander said, adding that it’s often a misnomer that tribes get special hunting rights. “It’s not really special rights, these are treaty rights and I think that’s hard for the general population to understand because they’ve never been taught the governmental relationships and how that plays into the Constitution and how it is written into the Constitution that treaties are the highest laws in the land.”

Alexander said the Federal Way school district is already working on implementing the required Native American history curriculum and will be doing some district-wide teacher training as the start of school gets closer.

“It’s a step forward for understanding and developing relationships,” Alexander said of the law. “It’s something that should have been taught all along.”

For more information on the law or curriculum, visit www.k12.wa.us/IndianEd.