BILLINGS - From shining a light on dark times in American Indian history to showing today’s students how to build a teepee facing the rising sun in the east while withstanding strong western winds on the plains, Montana's Indigenous education curriculum is setting the bar nationwide.
At Lewis and Clark Middle School in Billings on a brisk October day in 2024, just a few days before Columbus Day, also widely known as Indigenous People’s Day, it is a cultural and structural lesson day for 7th-grade students as they learn how to set up a teepee properly.
It's all part of the Billings Public School system’s Indigenous Education program.
As the sound of a hammer echoes across the middle school’s courtyard, wielded by Rumeal Good Luck, a Crow cultural specialist, this is what Montana’s Indian Education for All Act looks like in action 25 years after it was officially cemented into Montana’s constitution with attached funding in 1999, and 50+ years after entering the state constitution without funding attached to support the program in 1972.
"There's so many students that are here in Montana and in Billings. We're the fifth largest urban Indian population in the country, and we have so many students here that are connected to our community,” says Jacie Jeffers, Indigenous Education Instructional Coach for 6th - 12th grades at Billings Public Schools.
The connections are geographically closest to the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations, with thousands living off-reservation in Billings, Montana's largest city.
“Our goal is for them to know as much about Northern Cheyenne and Crow as possible, then obviously Montana, and we want to take them beyond that as much as possible into the United States and North America as much as we can,” says Jeffers.
She notes additional historical information such as which tribes simply traveled through Montana during the four seasons to hunt bison vs. which were originally from the Montana geographical area. She says the majority of Montana’s tribes today were displaced to Montana reservation land.
The Little Shell Tribe near Great Falls, which Jeffers notes does not have an official reservation, may be the only original tribe of the Montana geographical area.
The information is based on language origination and points to Crow and Northern Cheyenne being from different areas of the United States where their languages originate from.
Jacie Jeffers is a member of the Little Shell tribe and she is a big part of the Indigenous education team for Billings Public Schools, coaching teachers on Indigenous curriculum.
“It's important to see how the Native Americans interacted with the land and how they used the teepee on the plains as a means of traveling across and following the buffalo,” says 7th Grade Lewis and Clark Middle School geography teacher Scot Washington.
In Montana, Indigenous education is not only important, it’s required in Article 10 of the state Constitution enacted in 1972. It is a stark contrast to the rest of the United States, as Jeffers points out, because Montana is the only state with a constitutional mandate.
“We teach about the holocaust, why wouldn't we teach about American Indian genocide?” said Jeffers.
Many states, however, don’t teach the history of the Plains Indians and beyond through Indigenous education programs, and as Jeffers also points out only about 15 states including Wyoming and the Dakotas have laws but not constitutional backing regarding Indigenous education, meaning Montana teachers are leading the way nationwide.
“When you go into the teepee it is like going into someone else's home. You show respect.”
The words can be heard by dozens of students in the school’s courtyard by an additional cultural specialist who focuses on oral history as Ramile works with a smaller group of students to set up the teepee.
The lessons move quickly through the years, teaching multiple subjects, even math.
“When you introduce the science and the math teachers to what's behind that with the Pythagorean theorem and the circles and those kinds of things, and what plains Indigenous people did with the math and science, it kind of blows people's mind and it just is really interesting,” says Jeffers, adding that a group of Montana teachers is headed to a professional development conference in New Orleans to teach educators about the thermodynamics of a teepee, spreading the importance of indigenous education nationwide.
Montana’s Indigenous education lesson plans are catching on nationwide while changing cultural dynamics along the way.
Jeffers says Montana’s constitution continues to evolve with a significant addition to the Indian Education for All Act in 2006: the seven essential understandings regarding Montana Indians, designed to shape curriculum and educate the state’s youth. They are tribal diversity, individual diversity within tribes, the persistence of traditional beliefs and spirituality, the concept of reservations as tribal land, understanding federal Indian policy, viewing history from American Indian perspectives, and the principle of tribal sovereignty.
“They're basically a guideline or guides for people, and it's great. Not all tribes are the same. Not all tribal members are the same. Culture is alive and thriving. Reservations are lands that tribes reserve for themselves. Federal policies are affecting tribal people today. Oral history is as valid as written history and sovereignty is inherent and wasn't given to tribal people by the United States government. We were here before, and so it's something, we think of the reservations as lands that are states within states, and we have relationships with the United States federal government, not with the states,” said Jeffers. “These are things that we work on helping students to better understand so that when they're adults and they're making decisions and voting, that they better understand, and just for better relationships with tribal members and tribal people.”
