The Chamberlain school board continues to dither, receiving a student petition Tuesday requesting that the school include an Indian honor song in its graduation ceremony May 19 but putting off a response and decision until its May 13 meeting. The Chamberlain administation seems inclined to keep telling the big population of Indian kids in their community to keep their Indianness to themselves in a separate pre-graduation feathering ceremony:
An honoring song is performed during that ceremony, Superintendent Debra Johnson said, and students also can receive star quilts, and eagle feathers and plumes. Asked why the board also doesn’t also allow an honoring song during graduation, Johnson replied, “(the board) wanted to keep the graduation ceremony in the tradition that it has been” [Steve Young, "Chamberlain Agonizes over Native Song at Graduation," that Sioux Falls paper, 2013.04.25].
Chamberlain is agonizing unnecessarily. Young notes that Rapid City, Pierre, and Winner include honor songs in their high school commencement exercises, and little agony appears to have ensued.
Communities, change, Chamberlain. So do traditions.
It seems real strange that white people would have a problem when there is a part of our culture that the Natives think is honorable. People are people so I do not see one group as totally different than another. Sure there are differences and after the autrocities of the past, it is totally understandable that Natives hang on to their pride and old ways. But they are smart enough to see value in being successful in both cultures to a degree.
When one looks at the low graduation rate of most Native tribes from high school, it would be quite prudent that the whites totally agree with tribal leaders when there is effort from their position to encourage teenagers to graduate high school. In the Native cultures, honor is no small thing. It is very important. So if the Chamberlain school board does not embrace this opportunity for leaders from both communities to be united in the goal of Native students graduating from high school, then there is serious reason for the Natives to think that the whites are not satisfied with working together but that the whites just have a selfish goal of total dominance. Other school boards that have learned this lesson long ago should give some encouragement to Chamberlain to help them move into where the twentieth century should have brought them.