Public schools across Oklahoma would no longer be able to prevent Native American students from wearing traditional regalia if proposed legislation becomes law.
Senate Bill 429, which passed the Senate Education Committee this week by a vote of 11-0, would ban the practice.
Lucyann Harjo, Indian Education coordinator for Norman Public Schools, said the Feb. 7 passage is a crucial step to promoting freedoms for Native American students across Oklahoma.
Currently, 2,700 students in the Norman district, or 16%, are tribally-enrolled.
“Our district in Norman allows our Native students to wear an eagle feather or other important ceremonial items during graduation ceremonies,” Harjo told The Transcript.
Students may wear tribal cords, stoles, feathers, and they may bead their caps to represent tribal affiliation.
“It is a symbol of academic achievement among our community, and our district supports that,” Harjo said.
Norman Public Schools only asks that the families of Native American students who want to alter their robes must inform the principal prior to doing so, she said.
“I know that it’s important throughout our state because there are school districts that don’t allow our Native students to practice that and their religious freedom under the Oklahoma Religious Freedom Act,” Harjo said.
The bill is garnering the attention of prominent Native Americans in the community, including Speaker Lisa Billy, who represents Seat 5 of the Pontotoc District of Chickasaw Nation. She previously represented Norman in the Oklahoma House from 2004-2016.
“I know that a few years ago, our past attorney general, Mike Hunter, issued an opinion on this, which authorized young people to use their tribal regalia in their graduation attire,” she said.
In the opinion from 2019, the former Oklahoma attorney general referred to the Oklahoma Religious Freedom Act to justify prohibiting school districts from banning Native American students from wearing regalia at graduation ceremonies.
“I am the current speaker of the Chickasaw Nation Legislature, so I have students who ask me if I will contact their school or write letters, so I always do that,” said Billy. “We are not talking about someone wanting to put ‘Beam me up Scotty’ on their caps or promote a behavior. We are talking about strengthening an ethnicity or race.”
Gov. John Johnson of Absentee Shawnee said allowing Native students to wear regalia is important to reinforce traditions.
“It shows pride in their culture and conviction,” he said. “A lot of Indian children don’t graduate. A lot drop out, and those that do graduate want to show their pride that they are American Indian and that they accomplished this great feat.”
A few years few years back, Shawnee Public Schools wouldn’t allow students to wear eagle feathers in their caps, so Edwina Bulter-Wolfe, then governor of Absentee Shawnee, visited the superintendent with other tribal leaders and explained why the wearing of regalia is important to Indigenous peoples.
“We had some troubles about six years ago when one of the Shawnee students wanted to wear feathers and ribbons,” he said. “I think it should be allowed.”
Several news reports, including one from Education World, showed Native Americans graduate nation-wide at a rate of 65%, or 10% lower than the national average.
Billy said many factors come to play to explain this trend.
“Education, I don’t think it’s been rooted into our generational thinking, and when education came to us, it came in a formal or colonial setting,” she said.
Many Native American people have experienced, or have family members who have experienced Indian boarding school, which was harmful to students and cultures.
“We have had this thought that education from a white person’s perspective is very negative,” she said.
Billy’s mother-in-law and grandfather were sent to boarding school, and they told her about their experiences.
“My grandfather was sent to boarding school, and he believed boarding schools were inherently bad,” she said. “They killed children, they murdered them, they raped them, they gave them diseases.
“We have this low confidence in education, which I believe is still a part of how we think about going to a school that primarily will be white people teaching you.”
Billy said her father had his head flushed in a toilet because he spoke his tribal language at school, adding that his experience wasn’t unique, and that trauma transcends generations, manifesting itself currently in the form of apathy toward Western-style education.
Given this, she believes all Native Americans should be celebrated when they graduate from high school, and they ought to have the opportunity to celebrate in a manner that suits their family traditions.