{"id":31794,"date":"2019-08-22T17:19:08","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T22:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=31794"},"modified":"2019-10-22T15:39:50","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T20:39:50","slug":"sovereign-community-school-is-part-of-a-larger-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2019\/08\/22\/sovereign-community-school-is-part-of-a-larger-movement\/","title":{"rendered":"Sovereign Community School Is Part of a Larger Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/p>\n

Caroline Halter \/ StateImpact<\/p>\n

Phil Gover is Sovereign Community School’s founder.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Sovereign Community School is new charter school in Oklahoma City with a focus on Native American culture and identity. It\u2019s also part of a movement of tribes and tribal citizens using publicly funded, privately run schools to take control over how their children are educated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>


\n

Getting Going<\/strong><\/h3>

Phil Gover is the founder of Sovereign Community School. He belongs to the Pauite, Pawnee and Comanche Nations, and he started developing the school in 2017 after visiting a charter school in New Mexico called the Native American Community Academy.<\/span><\/p>

The weeks leading up to Sovereign\u2019s opening on Aug. 26 were hectic. Building issues delayed the start of school twice, making it difficult to recruit students. Still, some parents have gone to great lengths to send their children to this school.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Caroline Halter \/ StateImpact<\/p>\n

Summer Wesley sits with her 11-year-old daughter, who will attend Sovereign Community School this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Summer Wesley relocated her family of six so that her 11-year-old daughter could attend Sovereign this year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI was raised as \u2018You\u2019re Choctaw first. You\u2019re always Choctaw,\u2019 and that\u2019s where you\u2019re solid and where you\u2019re grounded,\u201d Wesley said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

She wants that same foundation for her daughter, but Wesley says it\u2019s often eroded at traditional public schools. Sometimes, she says it\u2019s because of bullying, but, more often, it\u2019s the general environment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThe dominant culture is considered the default, and so a lot of the things that we do are relegated as inferior,\u201d Wesley explained. \u201cAt Sovereign she’s going to have not only people who look like her, but people who are from similar backgrounds as her.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

Any child can attend Sovereign Community School, but most of the student body is Native. Wesley\u2019s daughter is one of 61 students representing at least 18 tribes enrolled so far.<\/span><\/p>

 <\/p>\n

\u2018Indigenizing\u2019 Education<\/b><\/h3>

The United States has a history of using public education to try to erase Indigenous cultures. Up until the civil rights movement, tens of thousands of Native children were sequestered at federally-run boarding schools with a single goal: assimilation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

For many of Sovereign Community School\u2019s staff, that history is a powerful motivator. Teacher Kendra Wilson-Clements is Choctaw, and she says her grandfather was taken from his family in the early 1900s.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cHe attended what was called then the Goodland Indian Orphanage in southeast Oklahoma for about 10 years,\u201d Wilson-Clements said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Her grandfather rarely spoke about his experience, but Wilson-Clements witnessed the effects. He lost much of his native language and struggled with alcoholism and depression as an adult.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI feel his presence more and more since I have stepped into Sovereign,\u201c Wilson-Clements said. \u201cIt is honoring to my grandfather to educate our kids in the way that they deserve to be educated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

The boarding school era is over, but Gover argues public education still isn\u2019t designed with Indigenous people in mind.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

At Sovereign Community School, Native cultures and histories will be woven into everything, from how it looks to the curriculum.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Gover is adapting some subjects, like literature, from the Native American Community School, where students read books by Indigenous authors. Other subjects, like environmental science, will be infused with Indigenous knowledge to make it culturally relevant. Sovereign students will also take a wellness class that uses the medicine wheel, which is used commonly throughout Indigenous cultures in North America, to teach concepts related to personal and community health.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Gover\u2019s team is also creating a language program from scratch. Students will take a few years of general linguistics before studying their own respective languages. In order to make it happen, he is trying to build a language library with help from local tribes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

 <\/p>\n

The Native Charter Movement<\/b><\/h3>

The number of charter schools primarily serving Native students has grown steadily since the 1990s. In 2017, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools <\/span>counted<\/span><\/a> 46 charter schools in the United States with majority Native students. Their tribal affiliations vary, and s<\/span>ome are more focused on Native culture than others. Many are on tribal lands, while some, like Sovereign Community School, serve areas with large Native communities. More are set to open in the near future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Caroline Halter \/ StateImpact<\/p>\n

Diana Cournoyer is the executive director of the National Indian Education Association, which was formed to counter Indian assimilation policies in the United States.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\u201c<\/span>It’s a tool that is very flexible,\u201d said Diana Cournoyer, who directs <\/span>the National Indian Education Association. \u201c<\/span>Where we’ve been is the \u2018Kill the Indian…Save the man\u2019 mentality,\u201d Cournoyer said. \u201cA lot has changed but not enough, which is why charter schools are a part of the conversation now in Indian country.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

NIEA recently put together <\/span>a guide<\/span><\/a> designed to encourage \u201c<\/span>the growth and expansion of Native charter schools throughout the United States.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI think it is a movement, and it is spreading nationwide,\u201d said Terri Bissonette. She founded Denver\u2019s American Indian Academy of Denver, which she hopes to open in 2020.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Like Gover, Bissonette took inspiration from the Native American Community Academy in New Mexico. NACA seems to have added new energy to the Native charter movement. The school offers assistance to people who want to replicate its model through the <\/span>NACA Inspired Schools Network<\/span><\/a>. Both Gover and Bissonette participated in NACA’s fellowship.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Sovereign Community School is Oklahoma\u2019s second Native charter school. Cherokee Nation has been operating a language immersion charter school <\/span>since 2011<\/span><\/a>. But the state is in a unique position when it comes to these schools. Not only does Oklahoma have the largest Native student population in the nation, it\u2019s one of just two states that allow tribes to directly authorize new charter schools. The <\/span>Pawnee<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Comanche<\/span><\/a> Nations already have plans to open their own charters in the coming years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress<\/span><\/a>, Oklahoma does a better job of educating Native students than other states, but, like other minority groups, they still perform below their white peers. Gover, thinks Native charters can change that, but for him, education is also a matter of survival.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI think educational sovereignty is the next frontier of tribal sovereignty,\u201d Gover said. \u201c We <\/span>survived colonization and modernization and we’re still here. But the only way that I think we can talk about the future, our future as nations, is if we get really serious about how our kids are educated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

Sovereign Community School\u2019s mission statement says<\/span><\/a> it will \u201c<\/span>activate the next generation of Indigenous leaders.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u201cIf they don’t know anything about where they come from, or why they\u2019re where they are now, they aren’t going to be prepared to lead us. The only thing they’ll be prepared to lead us into is, I think, the erasure of our culture.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sovereign Community School is new charter school in Oklahoma City with a focus on Native American culture and identity. It\u2019s also part of a movement of tribes and tribal citizens using publicly funded, privately run schools to take control over the education of Native children.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":205,"featured_media":31798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[1130,1129,1028,1126,1128,1131,1127,1125,1124],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31794"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/205"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31794"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32006,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31794\/revisions\/32006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}