Locally, in a school district not too far from the university here in La Crosse, there is a case in point. In an article that was published in the La Crosse Tribune on Saturday, November 1, reporters Matt Johnson and Tim Hundt reported about a school play that is currently being protested in the Viroqua School District, in Viroqua, Wisconsin. The play that is being protested by members of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse’s Native American Student Association, titled “Little Mary Sunshine” was scheduled to run at the Viroqua High School from November 14-16. Because of the protest, the school district has chosen not to sponsor the play, yet the play will be moved to another venue in the town, with the sa

School attendance was enforced, students were not allowed to speak their tribal languages, and tribal traditions were first labeled “works of the devil,” and later, “enemies of progress.” Had the goal of coercive assimilation been reached, there would be no culturally recognizable Indian people today. However, many Indian children did not succeed in schools that did not recognize their language and culture, and many older Indians worked strenuously to preserve their heritage. Despite the fact that whites have usually tried to force Indians to conform to white ways, there have been relatively short periods of time when Indian languages and cultures received some support. Because neither coercive assimilation nor missionary efforts were completely successful, the goal of cultural obliteration and complete assimilation was questioned over the years and has now been moderated (Reyhner, 33).

Boarding schools, particularly those built away from reservations, were the government’s most powerful weapon against tribes and tribal cultures. To prevent the transmission of Indian languages, religions, and cultural values from one generation to the next, the BIA took Indian children from their families and enrolled them in government boarding schools for three to five years. Not only was instruction exclusively in English, but the schools forbade the use of tribal languages and the practice of tribal religions and allowed the students little or no contact with their families (Riney, 7). Students spent summers living in the homes of local farmers.

Indian students and Anglo teachers have little direct experience with one another’s activities. Thus, their shared knowledge is less than that between Anglo teachers and Anglo students. Through all of these ways Indian children experience a culturally alien environment when they enter the school. It is little wonder that they withdraw from classroom interaction as they do (Philips, 128). Philips (1983) states that Indian teachers will be less likely to misinterpret Indian children because of the cultural background shared by teacher and student, thus inferring that an Indian teacher would be better for Indian students. Philips also states that just because a teacher is Native American will not automatically guarantee a better relationship with the students that an Anglo teacher would have. Mostly because, often times an Indian that becomes a teacher would have become so assimilated to the Anglo world in order to get their education that they too are culturally quite different from the children they teach.

The dropout rate for Indian youths continues to be unbearably high. The matriculation rate to higher educations decisively low and the high school completion level is abominable. According to the most current Department of Education data, the attrition rate for Indian youth is 35.5 percent at the sophomore level in high school—and that is for the ones that have made it as far as high school (Reyhner, viii).

The reason that this play is being protested by the student organization, in the words of Matt Stewart, co-president, is because, “Public schools shouldn’t be the place to host…racist content.” Apparently, in the play, an American Indian named Yellow Feather kidnaps a title character in the play. Controversy revolves around the kidnapping because some claim that the original version implies an attempted sexual assault.

While it is important that Indian children know the values and beliefs of the core American culture as embodied in its literature and history, it is equally important that Indian children be taught the content of their tribal cultures, including, if their parents desire, a knowledge of the tribe’s language and oral tradition, which constitute the literature and history of many tribes. Critical literacy is the highest level of cognitive development because it requires that students learn to use the knowledge, concepts, and s

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