History Of Native American Education And Rough Rock Demonstration Schools

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Native American Education and Rough Rock Demonstration School As the first indigenously run Native American school, the development of the Rough Rock Demonstration School was a turning point in Native American Education. With its new forms of cultural and bilingual education, its foundations, and its success, the school inspired its tribes and other groups nationwide to fight for their children’s education. However, it is not that simple because historically, Native American schools were segregated institutions that erased indigenous peoples’ culture. Against all odds, the Rough Rock Demonstration School broke boundaries and became a testament to the power excellent education holds in giving generations of indigenous children the opportunities …show more content…

Those kids got the message that no matter what they learned at home in their tribal cultures, it was wrong. The worst part was, some of the people teaching and working at those schools abused them”(Pearson et al. 11). The adage is a adage. It was clear that the goal of these Native American Boarding Schools was to assimilate young generations of indigenous people and erase their cultures from American society. To add, the “educators” themselves were complicit in even violating the law. Furthermore, in the 1950s after the revolutionary case of Brown v BOE, Native American communities in all parts of the country protested for access to public schools. Released in 2021, the book Integrations: The Struggle for Racial Equality and Civic Renewal in Public Education by Lawrence Blum and Zo Burkholder details the hostile occurrences indigenous children and families had to overcome. In the South, in mid-January of 1958, the Ku Klux Klan had a meeting in which they “preached hate against local Lumbee Indians” as they fought for their children’s education. Enraged, a group of Native Americans infiltrated the meeting with weapons (Blum and Burkholder