Educator PD: Lowell Amiotte– A Vision for Indian Education in SD

A Conversation with Lowell Amiotte The essential understandings, I'd like to see those required in every school. And another thing I kind of like to see required is character counts. You know, Indian people have always had, I guess, kind of break them down into knowledge, fortitude, generosity, sharing, and wisdom. I always put respect up there, and let that flow from there. I think those things should be taught in school. I know it's hard. You have so much in the classroom that you're trying to get in. That's just knowledge, you know, math, English. That you don't have time for a lot of this, but I think it could all be worked in. People could be taught to respect, and you don't just think about respect as something I do to you. You have to learn to respect your car, your bed. Everything has to be respected, and if you learn to do that, it's gonna last longer. It's gonna treat you better, and I think things are going to be better. So I'd like to see those, that character count program maybe put into the schools. Gee, my dream would be, too, that there would be language programs in the non-Indian schools for the Lakota language. So many times we think that Indian Studies or Lakota language programs are only for Indians. They're for everybody, and everybody should be taking them. Surprisingly, when I was teaching on the college level, I would go in and ask my students, how many reservations do we have in South Dakota? You know, they'd say five, three, no one would ever say nine. You know, so, and but it's even funnier when I was president of Ogalala Lakota College, I had to deal with all the districts, and I'd ask different people who were from Pine Ridge, what are the districts? And they wouldn't know, so I think in education we should also start from a place, where you're at, and what is a, what is it about that place? And the more you learn about your place, I think the more you'll feel at home. It would be more important for you to look at those understandings than an Indian school on the reservation, because they already know it, and you don't know it, therefore you don't understand it, and you might be fearful of it, and it causes misunderstandings, and it causes people to develop maybe prejudices against it. When you think about that whole thing, you, it's kind of like ignorance of today, what's going on with the Muslims. People don't know what that's about. They're basing their ideas on the Muslims, on ISIS, and there was a time when I couldn't get people from Black Hills to go to Pine Ridge Reservation, because they were basing all their ideas on the wound-at-knee occupation, and they thought they were going to be shot. You know, there's a lot of addresses back then, but people just didn't understand. I think if we have people who understand each other, we can do away with a lot of the problems. You know, and terrorism, I'm getting off the subject, it's kind of a two-way street. I was watching the news, and people are writing bad messages to the Muslims. They're throwing pig heads on their ground, because they, you know, pigs are considered dirty or not good, and those Muslim people, who really are good people, are being terrorized with that stuff. So, I think it's just a misunderstanding, and I think that the superintendent would do well to put these understandings into his curriculum, because the whole school system is based on non-reservation things. So, it's about time in South Dakota and wherever the whole world was getting into it.