Teaching Indian Youths to Discover Themselves

Overwhelmed by the endless books packing the stacks of UC Irvine’s library, Amy Locklear didn’t know where to begin. A teacher suggested she look up her American Indian tribe, the Lumbee. The 13-year-old North Carolina girl was doubtful, but agreed to check.

To her amazement--and teacher Jaymee Kjelland’s secret delight--Amy found three books on her little-known tribe, which was not officially recognized by Congress until 1956. One of the books was written by a Lumbee man who lives down the road from her family.

“This girl was flying,” said Kjelland, a language arts specialist from Bakersfield. “I’ve never seen someone so excited to learn about her people and her culture.”

That excitement of discovery is the essence of a special six-week summer program at UC Irvine for 160 gifted American Indian junior high school students that aims to boost their academic skills and confidence and help them succeed in college.

Even for gifted Indian children, the odds of overcoming poverty, racism and inadequate education are grim, say education experts. More than 40% of Indian students never finish high school, and nearly 20% drop out before completing eighth grade, according to researchers and U.S. census statistics.

“These kids are all at risk,” said Kjelland, one of 15 teachers from across the country on the faculty of UC Irvine’s Native American Intertribal University Preparatory Summer Program.

The program--one of a small but growing number emerging around the nation for American Indians--was launched with 50 Navajo seventh-graders in Sedona, Ariz., in June, 1988. It was the brainchild of Corona del Mar philanthropists Richard P. and Sharon Ettinger, leaders of the Navajo Nation and the Cushing Academy, a private college preparatory school in Sedona.

By June, 1989, the number of students had quadrupled, forcing the program to move to larger quarters at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. The next year the program attracted 300 youths from nearly 30 tribes.

Over the years, the $700,000 program has been underwritten by grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Navajo Nation and others. But the primary source has been the Educational Foundation of America, a charitable trust established by Richard Ettinger’s father, a founder of the Prentice-Hall publishing firm, and the Ettinger Family Foundation.

The UC Irvine summer school covers the full range of basic academic skills. The environment and Indian culture are twin threads woven throughout the curriculum, which was devised by the teachers.

Some of the teachers initially questioned the heavy focus on Indian cultures, wondering whether it would be better to concentrate class time on what the children have to do to succeed in school and in mainstream society.

Science teacher Janet Lawrence of Oklahoma, who is half Cherokee, was among those who agreed with the emphasis: “Every person here needs to make these kids understand how worthy they are as Native Americans.”

Most classes are small, ranging from 12 to 16 students, so teachers can work with their charges individually and in small groups.

The challenge facing the teachers, especially those in science and mathematics, is to make the subject matter come alive.

On a recent morning, near a marsh at UC Irvine, a group of students fastened bundles of dried reeds around the willow frame of a narrow canoe under the watchful eye of science teacher Gary Hurd, an archeologist and curator of anthropology for the Natural History Museum of Orange County. Nearby, other students were attempting to build an authentic American India shelter with bark from a willow sapling.

The construction projects became a vehicle for teaching the students about marsh life,the difference between invertebrate and vertebrate creatures, and how inventive early Indians were in using natural resources to survive.

“Something I especially wanted to do was disprove this notion that Native Americans didn’t work very hard,” Hurd said.

The students also have studied the chemical properties of the water in San Diego Creek as it flows out to sea. “Some got so turned on they wanted to do water chemistry tests on the tap water at their dorm and the rain puddles on campus,” said Hurd.

The last major science project will be to make clay pots and analyze the chemicals in the clay at UC Irvine’s low-level nuclear reactor.

Parents, such as Thom Alcoze, say the program has brought about positive changes in their children.

His daughter, Raven Brianne Commanda-Alcoze, has “matured and developed a confidence in her own worth and an identity as a native woman” after only three weeks in the program, said Alcoze, a biologist and director of Northern Arizona State University’s division of native education who has worked with similar enrichment programs elsewhere in the country.

Amy Locklear is still poring over her books on the Lumbee between homework assignments, time on the computers and art and craft activities that keep the students busy from early inthe morning until lights out at 10 p.m.

“I was pretty impressed (to find the books) because nobody here had really heard of my tribe,” said Amy, a straight-A student from Fairmont, N.C., who says she hopes to become a pediatrician or obstetrician. “I couldn’t even imagine it--I saw people from my own county in those books.”

This summer school is proving tougher than one she attended last year at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. Still, she has mixed feelings about graduation ceremonies coming up Saturday.

“I’m having a lot of fun,” she said, giggling. “I don’t want to go home.”