Julie Cajune awarded grant to preserve indigenous cultures

By Lailani Upham

Julie Cajune has been awarded a major grant by the Kellog Foundation. Her work in preserving Montana's indigenous cultures will be served by the grant as she continues to provide curriculum work for the Nkwusm Salish Language Immersion School in Arlee. (courtesy photo)

ARLEE — Salish educator Julie Cajune was awarded a $1.4 million grant by a unanimous decision from Kellogg Foundation’s board to continue work on preserving indigenous cultures.

Cajune, curriculum designer and CSKT tribal member, was recently profiled in a few articles for the work she is doing to incorporate Indian history and culture in mainstream K-12 classes in Montana through the state’s Indian Education for All program.

Utne Reader included her as one of the “50 visionaries who are changing your world” in it’s November/December 2009 issue.

Utne Reader is a digest of independent ideas and alternative culture, which has been in existence for 20 years. A library of 1,500 magazines, newsletters and journals from the cultural front are gathered and put into a few “good” articles from a variety of perspectives.

The million dollar grant will go toward important efforts that will focus on preserving and bringing Indian history and culture in the classrooms across the state and possibly across the nation, says Cajune.

There will be two major parts of the project: the first to include making a film focusing on cultural sovereignty of Indian peoples as well as each tribes’ political sovereignty. “I think a film on sovereignty can provide a background to a lot of things that are in the news about Indian people today,” said Cajune. “Sovereignty is one of the largest misconceptions and the least understood,” she added.

The second major piece of the project would be what she describes as a parallel history, which will discuss American-Indian historical events and contributions on a parallel timeline of events commonly taught in U.S. history classes.

This educational effort will be a ground-breaking initiative in Montana to include American Indians in the state’s history and the educational system that teaches it. “There is very little information out there, which makes teachers unprepared to teach it. We want to give the support that is needed.”

According to an article reported in Miller-McCune, an online publication that harnesses current academic research to address pressing social concerns, very little is known, or understood, about American Indians beyond the Hollywood stereotype of noble savage and sociological portrait of a people victimized. The continent’s first inhabitants have lived an almost unrecorded life. As Native tribes numbers diminished by conquest, epidemic, intermarriage and host of social ills, a record of the history also has been put in peril.

“As an Indian person, it’s time the United States engages in truth-telling of it’s own history. Even in the higher education sector the (Indian) history is distorted; it’s shameful,” Cajune said.

Both historical book and film will be designed so it can be used in any kind of school or public education setting where it has relevance, says Cajune. The grant also includes funds for development of educational materials relevant to the Salish-Kootenai Tribes and the Flathead Reservation.

Cajune has been gathering histories of the 12 recognized tribes in Montana that began when Montana became the first state in the nation to mandate the teaching of American Indian history in its primary, middle and high school classrooms during the passage of the Indian Education for All Act.

Miller-McClune reported that in 1972, during a state constitutional convention in Helena, two Indian students who were visiting the capital asked the framers to consider letting American Indians study their own culture, perhaps even their own language in their public schools they attended. A constitutional amendment was drafted and passed on the near-unanimous vote; it stated “The state recognizes the distinct and unique cultural heritage of American Indians and is committed in it’s educational goals to the preservation of the their cultural integrity.”

Two decades went by and nothing happened. The report went on to state, for a time the amendment’s intent was tied to Montana’s 1973 Indian Studies Law, which required that K-12 teachers living on or near reservations take a Native American studies class. In 1979, that law was amended, relieving teachers of that obligation.

Cajune has been diligently trying to keep the cultural integrity and Indian history intact in the educational system while partnering with a number of sources such as Indian Law clinic professors and tribal attorneys and historians, yet obstacles have held back progress.

Miller-McCune research reported that after years of unsuccessful attempts to acknowledge the constitutional mandate, a coalition of Indian legislators and other proponents pushed through the Indian Education for All Act in 1999, but the act still needed funding, and the state had consistently under-funded schools for years.

After a lawsuit in the late 1990’s by a group of school districts in the state over the inadequate funding, citing the 1972 constitution language that the state be required to provide free quality public education for all students, the leader of the group asked state legislature Carol Juneau, a teacher and member of the Mandan-Hidatsa tribe, to support the districts’ legal challenge. Her amicus brief contended the state never met its commitment to preserve Indian cultural integrity.

In 2004, a state district judge agreed, and the Montana Supreme Court eventually followed suit. By 2005, Montana legislature passed increases in funding for state schools and designated $7 million for Indian Education for All. Governor Brian Schweitzer earmarked another $2 million for the gathering of tribal histories.

The 2005 legislation was an important step but Montana was far from realizing it’s goal, according to the Miller-McCune report. The tribal histories still had to be gathered, which was not easy, and then made accessible to teachers. “No tribal history or culture or language is the same,” said Cajune. Many tribes still rely on an oral tradition to preserve their culture, according to Cajune.

The Montana Office of Public Instruction decided to give the state’s seven tribal colleges funding to gather the histories of the tribes, which would then be given to Cajune, who would make them accessible for K-12 teachers. The challenge of gathering the knowledge consisted in the threads of memory wearing thin when oral traditions are passed down, and language and culture gradually and dramatically fading. The research and study concluded that only a few elders in the tribal communities were fluent in their tribal language.

The tribal history gathering will include the knowledge from elders and a variety of other sources.

The recently funded project will be designed with teachers in mind, “to keep the programs dynamic and to keep the teacher interested,” Cajune said. The grant project will not be only structured for teacher and higher education faculty but will be steered toward a deeper meaning on what students are learning about a tribe and Indian people, according to Cajune.

The project will also include a children’s book and an illustrated calendar book. Seminars and workshops will also be available for teachers.

The Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930 by breakfast cereal pioneer W.K. Kellogg, who defined its purpose as “administering funds for the promotion of the welfare, comfort, health, education, feeding, clothing, sheltering and safeguarding of children and youth, directly or indirectly, without regard to sex, race, creed or nationality” and to guide current and future trustees and staff, he said, “to use the money as you please so long as it promotes the health, happiness and well-being of children.”

The grant is a three-year project and will be administered through Salish Kootenai College.