Extensions of Remarks

January 10, 1991 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS 575 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS NAVAJO ACADEMY atmosphere and, if you blur your eyes a bit, "we get students who are at fourth- or fifth looks like a down-at-the-heels New England grade reading levels.'' prep school transferred to a bleak section of Clark recounts that some of the students HON.Biil RICHARDSON the Southwest. find the work too tough at the academy and OF NEW MEXICO The school was started in 1976 at the time leave to attend public school. "But then they IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES when the Indian Self-Determination Act was come back because they miss the structure," passed, when the Federal Government was he says. This was the case with Steve, a Thursday, January 10, 1991 encouraging Native Americans to take their slight boy with spiky hair who sits in the Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, I would education into their own hands. Until the back of Clark's class. He dropped out of the like to takl this opportunity to acknowledge 1970s, the dominant principle of the Bureau academy last year and enrolled at one of the the important work of the Navajo Academy, a of Indian Affairs was assimilation, and the local public high schools. The reason, he government was content to let Navajo cul says, was "because I thought it would be preparatory school in my district that has en easier." But public school proved too easy. couraged better education for native American ture wither away and die. Although the U.S. government has had a "I couldn't learn over there," he says. Steve students for the past 15 years. trust responsibility since 1868 to provide for wants to go to college, and he says he has a Mr. Speaker, this educational institution is Navajo education, it has done a sorry job. better chance if he graduates from the acad one of a kind. It provides many students with Native Americans in general, and Navajos in emy. More than 80% of the school's grad the education and encouragement they need particular, have one of the nation's highest uates go to college, an extraordinarily high to continue on to college. Often those individ rates of illiteracy and high school delin percentage for Native Americans. uals who continue their education return to the quency. The average Navajo adult has re Paulette was at a public school before com reservation to pass their knowledge on to the ceived only five years of schooling. Today ing to the academy. "Here the students real half the Navajos on the reservation are ly care," she says. "The kids at public school next generation of native American students. I are rezzed out." This phrase provokes snick invite my colleagues to learn more about this under the age of 20, and perhaps a quarter of those teenagers are not in school. A third of ers from the class. Rezzed out means being organization and insert a Time magazine arti all high school-age Native Americans are provincial, unsophisticated, too much of the cle into the RECORD for their review. classified as educationally handicapped. reservation. Those kids, she implies, don't [From Time, Dec. 3, 1990] From the start, the academy sought to care about studying. Claude, a barrel-chested tackle on the football team, came to the AMERICAN SCENE: FARMINGTON, NEW provide a supportive environment for Nava jos, in contrast to public schools, where they academy from a public school in Arizona. MEXICO-CAUGHT BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY "At the public school," he says, "the guys (By Richard Stengel) were routinely treated as second-class stu dents. But beyond that, according to head would just drink and party. Here is a better "It was the medicine men," the teacher master Samuel Billison, the academy had a atmosphere." If a student at the academy is tells the class, "who came up with the reli special mission: to educate young and gifted caught drinking-or smoking dope, which is gious beliefs that are the backbone of our rapidly replacing alcohol as the abuse sub Navajo culture." Lloyd House speaks in a Navajos to be able to survive in the wider stance of choice among teenagers-he or she gravelly voice, has a boxer's much broken culture without losing their own. The school is immediately sent home. nose and wears a traditional turquoise neck aimed to create a generatfon of Indian lead The students have grown more assimilated lace around his neck. "The medicine man we ers who would understand the outside world over the years, says Martha Amedeo, who are talking about today was called but not envy it. has taught literature and drama at the acad Naahwitbiihi-which means the 'man who al The school grew slowly and steadily. It of emy from the beginning. Today the Navajo ways wins.' Sounds like Frank Sinatra, fered small classes and recruited a corps of language is a foreign tongue to more than doesn't it?" he says, and chuckles. solid, no-nonsense teachers, some of whom half the students, who must struggle through The high school students, all Navajos, all are still there. To be admitted, Navajo stu two years of the difficult, tonal language of shy and soft-spoken, all wearing high-topped dents had to score at or above the 40th per their forefathers. Amedeo notes that a few sneakers and distressed blue jeans, don't centile nationally-that is, better than 39% years ago the girls wore their perfectly seem to know or care who 01' Blue Eyes is. of all U.S. students. That may not sound too straight black hair long and natural. Now all On this spring day they are more interested stringent, but those young Native Americans the girls in her class sport frizzy in completing their model hogans, the round, who could meet that requirement were permanents. age-old Navajo structures whose doorways among the top fifth of all Navajo students. When it comes to mainstream America, must always face east, the direction of dawn, Pale sunlight streams into the spare class the students feel ambivalent-or; as a medi the region of all beginnings. room of Richard Clark, an Anglo English cine man might put it, caught on the hori Until last summer, House, a former Marine teacher. Clark, an austere-looking man with zon, part of neither Earth nor sky. Curious Corps and All-Service welter-weight boxing a crew cut and a deeply lined face, has been but wary, they regard American culture as champion, was one of two instructors in Nav teaching at the academy for nine years. At though they were gazing at it through a ajo language and culture at the Navajo Acad the blackboard, several sophomores are dia ritzy department-store window. They appre emy in Farmington, N. Mex. This fall there graming sentences. A timid girl with glasses ciate the academy in part because it is insu are three, but House is no longer among identifies a predicate phrase modifying a lated from the outside world. Although near them. The academy draws its students from compound verb. When she's finished, Clark ly all of them intend to go to college, most the vast, mostly desolate Navajo reservation scans the room and says with a wry smile, say they will return to the reservation after next to this charm-free oil-and-gas town. "Paulette, you're the next volunteer.'' Pau ward. For Denneilia, a clever, pretty girl The school has a Navajo headmaster and an lette, a tiny girl with large pompadour, duti who was last year's senior-class president, all-Navajo board of trustees. It is the only fully marches to the blackboard and, in a the sky is the limit for what she could Native American college-preparatory board spidery hand, diagrams a sentence with a achieve in the outside world. Yet she admits ing school in the U.S. nonrestrictive relative clause. that she will probably return to the reserva The academy, which will celebrate its 15th Clark is strict but sympatico. "We're mak- . tion after college. The real world is preju anniversary at the end of this school year, ing up for all that they didn't learn on the diced against Navajos, she says, adding that has 176 students in grades 9 through 12. Al reservation," he says. "But they learn fast." it is important that she not forsake her cul most all are Navajos-the Dine, as they call The curriculum at the academy, which in tural heritage. themselves, which means the "People." This cludes four years of a foreign language, is The Navajo Academy was growing steadily year there are also three Anglos, as whites considerably more rigorous than that of pub until about four years ago, when tensions be around here are invariably called. Nestled lic schools on the reservation. Clark says tween the academy and the Methodists re against a high shelf of rock, the school con that when the students arrive at school, sulted in a rupture. The mission wanted sists of a snug quadrangle of dilapidated fresh off the reservation, they are often more rent. When the academy would not or buildings on the grounds of a turn-of-the shamed by their lack of education and are could not pay it, the mission tried to evict century Methodist mission. It has a pleasant painfully reticent. "Every year," says Clark, the school. The academy went to court, get- •This "bullet" symbol identifies statements or insertions which are not spoken by a Member of the Senate on the floor.

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