LISA SNELL
The CUJ
MISSION – Youth Services Manager Kendall Rosario needs you to understand what she does and why it is important.
She manages the Title VI Indian Education program for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR).
“When I first started, there was a really negative idea of what Title VI was, why we were here,” she said. “Parents didn’t see and didn’t reap the benefits of what Title VI is. They kind of had no idea coordinators were in the schools or if they did, they didn’t know the purpose of them.”
Rosario said Title VI is when the federal government provides grant money to support Indigenous students in public school systems. “Basically, the government is providing this money as an apology for what they’ve done in the past,” she said. “And those that own the grant are allowed to offer that support in the best way we can for our students.”
She is three years into a five-year grant to increase school readiness, increase cultural identity and awareness, enhance problem solving and cognitive skills development, increase school attendance and decrease school dropout rates. She said she is also driven to increase graduation rates, career readiness skills, and college enrollment.
“We do a lot. We sponsor and introduce prevention activities and encourage parent participation. We introduce Native American language instruction programs and offer support for at-risk students,” Rosario said.
Each year has been a building year for the CTUIR’s Title VI program. Each year the team evaluates its goals, how it met objectives and how to best tailor its services to the individual schools it serves.
“We’ve shifted from just offering ‘Indian Education’ classes to being more intentional and increasing student’s sense of community. We’re teaching them all these different cultural things in order to help them create their own identity. And in doing that, increase their confidence, increase their sense of community and therefore increasing academic success through one way or the other,” Rosario said.
Culture and Identity
Wynema Thurman is the Title VI coordinator for Pilot Rock and Athena-Weston schools. She recalled discovering that not everyone in her program who claimed to be Native actually knew or understood where their people came from.
“I asked them to tell me what tribe they’re from and we were going around the room. One said ‘CTUIR and Lakota Sioux’, another said ‘Warms Springs and Umatilla.’ But I had two claim to be from ‘the Round-Up tribe’ and one said, ‘I’m from the inter-tribal tribe.’”
“In all seriousness. That broke my heart,” Thurman said. “I had to explain that those weren’t tribes.”
The discovery prompted Thurman to launch a tribal map project. She searched for, and found, a tribal nations map showing geographically where most of the tribes residing in the United States and Canada originally lived. Many of the tribes are also identified by their own names, not their colonizer names.
“My project is totally volunteer, but I want students to sit down with their families, if they don’t already know, and have a conversation. ‘What tribe or tribes am I?’ I want them to ask. Write it down. ‘Where is your tribe from?’ Write it down. I also want them to list some traditional activities they like to do, like beading, sewing, hunting, fishing or gathering,” she said.
Students will add dots to the maps to mark their tribe(s) and Thurman will create a legend to track the tribal ancestry of the school’s students, updating it each year to reflect the student body and start conversations.
“We have somebody that’s Cheyenne here. ‘What’s the Cheyenne tribe? What’s that about?’ Or we have an Arapaho, wow. ‘What do they do differently than I do?’ Each year I’m going to add another legend, and we’re just going to see how it changes. We had 15 Navajo students. Wow. Now we have 20 Seminoles, etc. I just want kids to understand there’s more [tribal cultures out there] than what’s on the rez,” Thurman said.
Her maps are going up not just in her schools, but in all schools in the CTUIR’s service area.
“This map project is so important to show our kids and give them more knowledge than what they’re going to get in the books right now. My goal with this project is to make sure that kids, number one, know where they come from properly. Know where they come from and can feel comfortable within their identity – that they’re not just going to blend in with everybody. That they’re important. That they are enough. That they are somebody and this is the tribe they’re from,” she said.
For Rosario, identity is a healing tool.
“I think a lot of our students kind of just float through the system having no clear direction, not knowing who they are, where they come from and where they’re going. So, the goal is to help students formulate who they are, whatever that means, by providing them exposure to AIAN (American Indian Alaska Native) culture – whether that be through CTUIR or other tribes we service. We have 25 different tribes at the very least. We service and we have about 530 students in the program. There’s a lot of variability there and we want to make sure that those kids from Kansas or are Alaska Natives are all represented and that we provide them their own culture as well as have an opportunity for them to share their own culture as well,” she said.
In addition to composing and circulating a monthly Title VI newsletter to inform parents and the community about the program’s offerings, Rosario has a created a needs assessment survey for parents to reciprocate and tell her how best to serve the community.
“The survey has been posted since March last year and I’ve only had one response,” she said. “I believe the community should have a say in how our students are supported and I truly want – and need – to hear what they have to say.”
To access the survey, clink this link or email KendallRosario@ctuir.org and request a survey link. For more information about Title VI, its programs and the survey, download or view the February newsletter below (two sections/two files).
If your student, yourself, or a grandparent is an enrolled member of a Federally Recognized Tribe or Band or if your student is a descendant of a parent or grandparent who meets these requirements, your student qualifies for Title VI services. Request Form 506 from your school to enroll.
