Tag Archives: Native American Teachers

Chalkboard Politician Daniel Kahikina Akaka of Hawaii

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Akaka-072806-18268- 0032Throughout history there have been a number of educators who have gone on to serve in political office. One such educator is Daniel Kahikina Akaka, a Native Hawaiian born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1924.

Daniel Akaka is also a veteran, having served in the United States Army Corps of Engineers during World War II. When the war ended, he used his GI bill to enroll at the University of Hawaii, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in education in 1952 and his master’s degree in 1966. After earning his teaching credential, Daniel was employed as a high school teacher in Honolulu from 1953 to 1960;. In 1960 he was promoted to a position as a vice principal, and in 1969 he became a high school principal. In 1969, Daniel went to work in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare as a chief program planner.

A multi-talented individual, Daniel Akaka was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1976, serving seven terms. In 1990, Daniel was appointed to fill a vacant seat in the US Senate that occurred upon the untimely death of Senator Spark Matsunaga. Subsequently Daniel was elected to that position in his own right, and he served there until 2013 when he retired.

Daniel Akaka, an outstanding chalkboard champion who was also an outstanding politician.

Elaine Goodale Eastman: Chalkboard Champion who Taught the Sioux

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9780803218321_p0_v1_s260x420[1]Elaine Goodale Eastman was a talented teacher who established a day school on a Sioux Indian reservation in the territory of South Dakota. She believed very strongly that it was best to keep Native American children at home rather than transport them far away from their families to Indian boarding schools. She hadn’t taught on the reservation very long when she was promoted to the position of Superintendent of Indian Education for the Two Dakotas. In this capacity, she travelled throughout the five Dakota reservations, visiting the more than 60 government and missionary schools within her jurisdiction, writing detailed evaluation reports on each school she visited.

It was because of her work that Elaine just happened to be visiting the Pine Ridge Reservation when the tragic Wounded Knee Massacre took place. Following the massacre, she and her fiance,  physician Charles Eastman of the Santee Sioux tribe, cared for the survivors and wrote detailed government reports to accurately describe what happened.

In her later years, when America was experiencing a back-to-nature revival, Elaine and her husband operated Indian-themed summer camps in New Hampshire. Read more of the life story of this fascinating educator in Theodore D. Sargent’s biography The Life of Elaine Goodale Eastman, or an encapsulated version in  Chalkboard Champions, both available on amazon.

Indian Boarding Schools: A Cultural Disaster

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9780395920848_p0_v1_s260x420[1][1]While I was conducting research for my book Chalkboard Champions, I was surprised to learn a great deal about numerous types of schools, more than I ever learned in the thirty-odd years I had been teaching. Industrial schools, soup schools, farm schools, normal schools, specialist schools. Where were all these terms when I went through student teaching? I was particularly interested in reading about Indian boarding schools, and the controversies these generated.
Indian boarding schools were created specifically for the purpose of educating Native Americans. Indian children were sent to these schools, sometimes involuntarily, because it was believed the only way Native Americans could ever succeed in a predominantly white society would be if they abandoned their tribal ways and adopted the lifestyle practiced by the dominant culture, and that this assimilation could best be accomplished when the Indians were very young. Most Indian boarding schools were first founded by church missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Later, some were established and run by the U.S. government. The intentions were pure, but in retrospect the results were disastrous. Some historians go so far as to assert these schools were institutions of cultural genocide.
The children, some as young as four years old, were taken away from their families, sent many miles away from home, and forced to give up their languages, customs and religious beliefs, art and music, native clothing, and even their names. These youngsters often found it traumatic when they were forced to cut their long hair, a symbolic act of shame and sorrow to Native Americans. The highly regimented routine and military atmosphere were harsh on the youngest ones. Exposure to diseases to which they had no natural immunities, coupled with homesickness and, in some locations, unsanitary conditions, led to a disturbingly high death rate. In despair, some of the youngsters ran away from their schools, freezing or starving to death trying to make their way back to their home reservations. Such a terribly sad thought for educators who care so much about kids and really believe in the liberating power of schools.
You can read a quick overview of these schools in the book Indian Boarding School: Teaching the White Man’s Way, available on amazon.com. You can also read about them in Chalkboard Champions.

Carrie McLain: A Pioneer Teacher in Northwestern Alaska

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51f8ZZ5X-FL._SL500_SS500_[1][1]Carrie McLain was born in 1895 in Astoria, Long Island, New York. When she was just a child of ten, her father moved Carrie and her four siblings to the fledgling village of Nome on the ice-crusted coast of northwestern Alaska. There she grew to adulthood, became a pioneer teacher, married, and reared a family of one son and three daughters. McLain tells the fascinating story of her provincial life in Pioneer Teacher: Turn of the Century Classroom in Remote Northwestern Alaska. Anyone interested in learning more about rugged existence on the frigid Alaskan frontier would be interested in reading this slender volume  (it’s only 70 pages, including photographs). Pioneer Teacher can be found on amazon.

Tundra Teacher: an Alaskan Teacher and Basketball Coach Tells His Story

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11549-d[1][1]Anyone intrigued by the wilderness of Alaska and the challenges teachers face there would find Tundra Teacher: A Memoir by John Foley a fascinating read. In the remote Eskimo village of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, Foley becomes immersed in the local Yup’ik culture, helping to haul in a whale, keeping an eye out for polar bears on his way to school, and discovering how important it is to earn respect on the basketball court. Later, Foley transfers to the Athabascan Indian village of Tetlin on the Alaska Highway near the U.S. border with Canada, where he teaches and coaches basketball. The author writes candidly but with wry, mellow humor about village life, students, teachers, women, and relationships. You can find Tundra Teacher on amazon.com.