Claremont Native American Fellowship Program – School of Educational Studies
Applications being accepted now for a cohort starting in August 2022
Full funding & living support for Native Americans to earn their California K-12 teaching credential & MA in Education in as little as 12 months.
Post-graduation mentorship while CNA Fellow is meeting payback obligation by teaching in a school that serves a high population of Indian students.
Core online program works in conjunction with hands-on learning while CNA Fellow works in a school under guidance of a mentor teacher. Program can be completed from one’s home community.
“The MITW is a program enacted by Public Act 174 of 1976, which waives the tuition costs for eligible Native Americans in public community colleges or universities within Michigan. Up until 1995, the MITW was fully funded so that public state institutions will be reimbursed by the State of Michigan for tuition for Native American students who fulfilled the requirements. In 1995, then Michigan Governor John Engler sought to eliminate the program, but the state legislature overrode the governor’s decision with inadquate funding.
Tribal leaders have fought since the mid-1990s to have the program fully funded. After her election last November, Governor Whitmer made a commitment to tribal leaders she would put the MITW in her budget. She did so when she submitted her budget in February and the state legislature kept the line item to fund MITW in the budget.”
While distortions and myths of Native American culture plague many schools, textbooks often fail to mention Native history after the 19th century. In a 2015 study, scholars Antonio Castro, Ryan Knowles, Sarah Shear, and Gregory Soden examined the state standards for teaching Native American history and culture in all 50 states and found that 87 percent of references to American Indians are in a pre-1900s context.
#1 Indian Child Welfare Act v. #9 Indian country voting rights
The litigation and public policy juggernaut that is ICWA defeated federal Indian preemption(the previous generation’s juggernaut) with 64 percent of the vote. Indian country voting rights prevailed over Rule 19 with 62 percent of the vote. Where my Rule 19 peeps?
This one is an old-fashioned clash of civil rights.
#4 Indian gaming v. #5 Intra-tribal disputes
Indian gaming beat out internet gaming, barely, with only 90 percent of the vote. In a battle of bad news, intra-tribal disputes knocked out human trafficking with 2/3 of the vote.
Great match-up here. Can we have one without the other? Well, looking back at the ICRA cases of the 1970s, I’d say we don’t need much to generate intra-tribal disputes, heh heh.
#2 Tribal sovereign immunity v. #7 American Indian education
Sovereign immunity beat out alternative energy with 92 percent of the vote. Did it use a sword or a shield? Education, we all need, won with 63 percent; climate change, we don’t need it, was a no-show.
Which came first, immunity or the knowledge that sovereigns are immune? Bill Wood knows, I bet.
#3 VAWA v. #6 Tribal court exhaustion
VAWA took three-quarters of the vote from criminal sentencing. Can’t sentence without convicting first, right?Tribal court exhaustion won almost as easily, with 72 percent of the vote over the new general welfare legislation. Ironically, tribal court exhaustion is all about adjudicating even without jurisdiction. Now I’m confused.
Seems odd to seed this so low, but there’s no significant litigation out there pending (unless the Court grants cert in this), no administrative or legislative action. Depressing. There’s this:
American Indian adolescents in Montana are caught in a school-to-prison pipeline. They are plagued with low academic achievement, high dropout, suspension and expulsion rates, and disproportionate contact with the juvenile and criminal justice systems. This phenomenon has been well documented in poor, minority communities throughout the country. But it has received little attention with respect to the American Indian population in Montana, for whom the problem is particularly acute. Indeed, the pipeline is uniquely disturbing for American Indian youth in Montana because this same population has been affected by another heartbreaking and related trend: alarming levels of adolescent suicides and self-harm.
The statistical evidence and tragic stories recounted in this report demonstrate beyond doubt that American Indian children on the reservations and elsewhere in Montana are moving into the school-to-prison pipeline at an alarming and tragic rate. The suicides of so many children is cause for despair, and the complicity of the education system in those deaths, whether through deliberate actions or through inattention, is cause for serious self-reflection and remediation. This article has been written in the hope that the people of Montana, government officials at all levels, teachers and school administrators, and public interest lawyers will have some of the information they need to take action. Despair, prison, and untimely death should not and need not be the ending places of public education for our most vulnerable children.
Education Week just completed a special package on education in Indian Country. In addition to news stories from Pine Ridge and Morongo and a number of multimedia elements, they have also published Commentaries from four Native authors in collaboration with NIEA. They are illustrated by Brent Greenwood (Chickasaw/Ponca).
Turtle Talk 
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