Jesse Taken Alive Meeting the Needs of the Seventy Percent

The challenge is out there, the challenge is out there today as they speak, and it has been for a while, and that is 70% of our native children sadly and unfortunately aren't able to graduate or drop out of high school or drop out of school totally and We have to ask ourselves, where do they go? They just don't disappear. What happens to them? We need to we need to think about that and we need to all get together and say let's put something together at least for that 70% now, this is not going to affect and shouldn't affect the 30% you know and we're hearing today from educators that oh my we can't do nothing We don't want to do anything different and we understand that and we respect that because they've obviously Dedicated their lives, their professions to be instructors, teachers, administrators So we're saying to them, it's we're not asking you to change We're just asking you to to be a part of this, come sit at the table, come feel you're part of the circle and contribute to this task of putting together a system that's fair and that's appropriate for that 70% Because as we look look at that in history And we ask ourselves, is this the 70% that our people talk about saying the prophecy is going to come back? Are these the ones that have these gifts and are having a challenging time Trying to understand them and yet sitting down in the classroom With what we call academics right now because there is a difference, the vehicle is different You know to learning math and reading because we know that that's the push now is to do math and reading I believe that's common core Push math and reading, reading and math, math and reading and why does that have to be? Because no child left behind us, so that you know and it's really interesting to see this chapter unfold because I've always said this over the years that When we look at education, it's kind of like raising cattle Because if you don't graduate by the time you're 18 There's something wrong with you. If you graduate when you're 16 or 17, you're gifted You're awesome If you graduate when you're 19 or 20 or later Oh, he or she overcame these challenges and and they're there there's always got to be something wrong with you and This shouldn't be, that shouldn't be the case Because the Creator created all of us, but today that frame of thinking Has been there for generations and decades Got to be 18, got to go to school in the September, got to be done in May There has to be a paradigm shift in thinking if you will about education And that's what we want to work with as partners with the with the federal offices, with the state offices and let them know and share with them that Give us a chance now as native educators Give us this opportunity now Because the demonstration projects have been here at least for the 70% Since in the case of SouthDakota since 1889 March 2nd The demonstration project called education has been with us and it hasn't worked with us for at least The minimum 70% that's a lot of, that's a lot of humans. It's a lot of children, a lot of young people. So it's time for us to back up and look at that and maybe hopefully someday we'll hear comments that hey these folks know what to do. We feel that we do but again we don't want to force it on anybody. We want to do it as partners and I feel that we're at that juncture right now as I speak today December of 2014. We've seen some advancements working with the state office. We're grateful for that and we realize that we have to do our part in Indian country through our tribal governments, our education departments, etc. and I know we can do it and I really feel happy. So as we look at that 70% I'm reminded of that comment that the education instructor told me back in the day when I was taking classes at Black Hill State. He said that 70% of what you learn in the classroom you'll either forget or you'll never use and I don't know there's irony in those numbers I don't know but it's time to do that in education. It's time to sit down and expend more resources to give us an opportunity to take a look at that because back in the day the Miriam report back in the 1930s shows that and if you were to take all the dates out of that and put it in front of you and look at the Miriam report we haven't moved in terms of success as far as number of graduation number of native children graduating. I mean I encourage everybody to look at the Miriam report where they're saying you should do this this this this this and we're still doing that today and now it's time for us to do a Lakota Miriam report if you will to say here's what we can do we believe that this is going to work and if you want to call a demonstration project we'd gracefully ask for 125 years to do it as well to prove its success but at any rate we it's it's we see these things evolving you know and and exciting and we do this in a respectful way because like I said as a tribal government official um it's it's it's a human rights violation to not put something in place that's fair and appropriate for for that 70 percent and uh in my time I I feel optimistic you know enough to say this that we will see some of these things what what am I talking about opportunity to have charter schools on Indian reservations opportunities to look at immersion schools with our languages opportunities to look at a Montessori type of a learning system not only teaching but learning ways that would be fair and appropriate for for our children the reason I'm saying these things is because when we talk our language and we go to interpret it we interpret it backwards in English so this is why it's imperative that we look at something fair and appropriate and the edge I want to go look up we're talking about things now that when we look at concepts we we talk about issues there's a lot of good things attached to it these are the this is the way a Lakota thinks it's just not one size fits all if you will there are a lot of wonderful and that's the beauty of life so what I just did in my best way is to interpret what I said in Lakota and I had to do it backwards I had to do it backwards.