12 Michigan’s Efforts
During my research on this subject I was fortunate enough to speak with Senator Jeff Irwin, a member of the Michigan State Senate and an enrolled member of the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians. The above quote was in response to a line of questioning from me about a recent bill he has cosponsored in the state senate which would strongly encourage schools in Michigan to include curriculum about Indian Boarding School histories. The quote above was more specifically in response to a question I asked about why it has been so difficult to get this bill passed.
The bill in question was first introduced in 2022 by Senator Wayne Schmidt as Senate Bill 0962, which aimed to, “strongly encourage inclusion of learning objectives concerning Indian boarding schools,” (MISB0962). After failing to qualify for a hearing in the Committee on Education and Career Readiness, the bill was reintroduced as SB 876, without any evident alterations. In order to avoid the issue of the “local control” model preventing any real change this bill stipulates that in addition to the requirements for, “accreditation under section 1280 specified in that section, if the board of a school district wants all of the schools of the school district to be accredited under section 1280, the board shall provide to all pupils attending public school in the district a core academic curriculum in compliance with subsection (3) in each of the curricular areas specified in the state board recommended model core academic curriculum content standards developed under subsection (2),” (SB876). Regarding teaching of Indian Boarding School history, the bill states:
“The state board is strongly encouraged to ensure that the recommended model core academic curriculum content standards for history for grades 8 to 12 include learning objectives concerning Indian boarding schools. The state board also shall ensure that the state assessment program and the Michigan merit examination are based on the state recommended model core curriculum content standards, are testing only for proficiency in basic and advanced academic skills and academic subject matter, and are not used to measure pupils’ values or attitudes…. ‘Indian boarding schools’ means entities that had or have as their purpose the cultural assimilation of Indigenous children through the forceful relocation of these children from their families and communities to distant residential facilities where the children’s American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian identities, languages, and beliefs were to be forcibly suppressed. It is the intent of the Legislature that the amendatory act that added this subsection serve as recognition of the following:
(a) That many Indigenous children spent the entirety of their
childhood in school systems without seeing their parents or
families for many years.
(b) That Indigenous children have suffered physical, sexual,
cultural, and spiritual abuse and neglect and have experienced
treatment that, in many cases, constituted torture for speaking
their native languages.
(c) That Indigenous children have lost their lives at Indian
boarding schools due to abuse, malnutrition, starvation, neglect,
inadequate medical care, and disease.
Despite this bill’s introduction being in February 2022 and this piece being written in April of 2024–over two years later—the bill has yet to be passed or make any real progress. When asked why the process of getting this bill passed has taken such a long time and whether it had anything to do with resistance to its content, Senator Irwin responded:
“I think the objections are… at least twofold. One is just that there are some of my colleagues who don’t want to talk about racism, don’t want to talk about the elements of our American history that are ugly. And they see that as some sort of, like, attack on their patriotism or their manliness or something. But they hate it and they just see it as all part of like some sort of effort to change the country into one that they don’t like— a multicultural one— and so there’s that there, there’s that sort of opposition which we see and I think that’s partly born out of racism. It’s partly born out of just the ignorance that people have because of the lack of this education in previous generations; They don’t even know about the Burt Lake Burnout, or that the Indians were marched out of Michigan by force. They don’t know about that. And so I mean, it’s all bad.
Another thing that I take a little more to heart, I guess is that there are folks in the educational community, educators themselves, teachers, others who say, look— the legislature is not the right body to decide. Let’s have curriculum decided by a group of people who are going to be less political and more academic; I think that argument is generally a strong one. The problem is that you know, sometimes the legislature has to get a little bit more involved when you know it’s something that’s important to the public interest that isn’t happening. And so that’s kind of, you know, my perspective on it, I think that that criticism is valid. I mean you know I think that the legislature should be reluctant and careful about writing laws that stipulate what’s taught in school. I just, I think it’s dangerous ground. And when we walk out on that dangerous ground we just have to be very careful and I think that this proposal factors that in.
I don’t think there’s any damage that’s done by this. I think it’s an important element that needs to be called out. So for instance, in the Michigan law right now, there is an element that requires that students get teaching on the Holocaust, for instance. And so this is something that—I’m struggling for the right word here— but if there’s a section of law that, you know, covers things like that, that are all of that kind of content, this fits there along with that.”
“This idea is up against right now more than anything else is that there is a limited space on the agenda, and there’s a limited amount of opportunity that members have to vote on anything. So there’s always a bit of a filter in terms of what gets on the agenda and what doesn’t, and I think one of the challenges we face with this is that because there are a lot of folks involved—school establishment, communities that aren’t very excited about it—that makes it a little bit hard we to crowd out whatever it’s competing with to get it on the agenda. In terms of where we stand with the votes, I think that we’re probably in better shape now than we ever have, but our big challenge now is to just get it on the agenda.”
-Senator Jeff Irwin
Apart from this bill, another effort to introduce curriculum on Indigenous histories and issues has been the inclusion of this content in the most recent Michigan Social Studies Standards Guide. In 2019 Michigan’s K-12 Social Studies Standards Guide was updated to include reference to Tribal governments and introduce new content referencing Indigenous peoples post-1900. While a study entitled “Manifesting Destiny: Re/presentations of Indigenous Peoples in K-12 U.S. History Standards”, found that, “prior to 2019, none (zero) of Michigan’s 39 standards mentioned Indigenous Peoples or life post-1900, these new standards contain 51 standards that reference Indigenous Peoples and 25 of them are post-1900,” (CMTED 2021, p. 10). The Confederation of Michigan Tribal Education Departments—an organization composed of representatives from each of the twelve federally recognized Tribes in Michigan—“advocated for and endorsed a total of 51 standards, of those, (39) were approved. Beyond these 39 Indigenous-specific standards, additional content related to Indigenous Peoples historically and contemporarily was also expanded in the example sections throughout the Social Studies Standards,” (CMTED 2021, pg. 9).
In an effort to expand the implementation of these standards, “the state School Aid budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year will allocate $750,000 for the Michigan Department of Education and the Confederation of Michigan Tribal Education Departments (CMTED) to collaborate and develop optional student curriculum and teacher support materials to help students learn about the history of Indigenous Peoples in Michigan and the history of Indian boarding schools in the state,” (George 2022). This was made possibly by Article 3 of Public Act 110 (2023), with the intent that the funds, “would support educators’ teaching of the Core Curriculum that already includes standards related to Michigan indigenous tribal history for grades 8 through 12,” (PA110). A portion of this money has gone to CMTED in an effort to aid the creation of a resource manual written by Indigenous leaders.
The result of this effort is Maawndoonganan: Anishinaabe Resource Manual. The manual contains almost one hundred pages of content with some specifically tied to the updated social studies standards, and connects educators with other instructional materials such as books, podcasts, videos and websites. Prior to the manual’s creation, students had been getting a, “second hand interpretation of Native American history absent of any meaningful input from Native Americans in Michigan,”(Simons 2021) because the only resources easily accessible to educators were those which came from primarily white textbook authors—and let us remember that it does not serve white people to properly educate on these subjects. The creation of this manual by leaders of these Michigan Tribes has given educators the opportunity to instruct their students with content written by those with a genuine interest in portraying these narratives accurately, and this narrative specifically addresses histories and issues important to the peoples who have called Michigan home long before settlers who now dominate American history arrived.
Unfortunately, very similar to the issues in getting Since Time Immemorial implemented in Washington State, these updated standards have yet to be adopted in the majority of Michigan schools. Michigan—like Washington—is a local control state, so school districts have the option of whether they would like to revise their curriculums to reflect new materials. While it may appear that school districts are resistant to including these materials because of low adoption rates, this is probably not the main culprit—resources are.
During a conversation with my former AP World History teacher, who still teaches US history and AP World History at my former high school in Michigan, he revealed that he has never even heard of this resource manual, and was unaware that the updated 2019 standards included additional content relating to Indigenous peoples. It was not a huge shock to hear that he had not revised his courses to reflect these standards given that I graduated high school in 2021—two years after the update—and did not have this content included in my classes, though I was surprised to hear that he was not even aware of these updates. I specifically reached out to him out of all my former teachers because I knew that he was very excited to innovate in his classes as much as possible and was a very open-minded educator, so I knew during this conversation that his lack of awareness on these standards was part of a larger issue—not that he was just an old-school teacher scared of teaching any potentially controversial subjects.
My former teacher explained to me that the problem in implementing the new curriculum is first that communication of these updated standards goes through a very long and complicated process before it even reaches the district level, with a major stop right before reaching the district being at the county level. He further explained that the entire district containing the high school he works in has just one employee dedicated full-time to curriculum and instruction, and again just one full-time curriculum supervisor at the district level. While there is a team of curriculum consultants established at both the district and county level, these consultants primarily have other full-time positions and offer their time evaluating curriculum without compensation. This means the responsibility of implementing updated standards from the state— as well as all other curriculum related issues—is left to just two full-time individuals with one overseeing an entire district of nine schools and the other responsible for an entire county of twenty-eight districts.
Apart from literal man-power, a lack of financial resources is another major obstacle to implementing this curriculum. While $750,000 sounds like a lot of money in certain contexts, my former teacher explained this sum was probably barely enough to cover the creation of the Maawandooganan guide, let alone distribute it throughout the state. More funds are needed for any major curriculum update for resources like educator training seminars, updated textbooks, consultations with local Tribes, and updated learning materials. Given that Michigan has 2,959 public schools as of 2022 (Ballotpedia 2023), this works out to just about $250 per school—without factoring in the costs of the multi-year long process of creating Maawandooganan in the first place.
While these updated standards have largely been ignored, some progress has been made since my time in a high school U.S. History class. My former teacher noted that more content on Indigenous peoples is now included in 9th grade American History as part of the “social movements” unit. This unit lumps LGBTQIA2S+ movements in with that of more recent Indigenous empowerment movements like the occupation of Alcatraz. The unit also covers a somewhat random assortment of issues like the Indian Removal Act, some content discussing reservations, and some coverage of “identity politics.” Unfortunately, because this unit is conveniently situated at the end of the year’s curriculum, according to my former teacher, “not saying the themes taught at the end of the year are less important–but we know they’re most likely to get cut.” Additionally, the well-known Trail of Tears history is now covered in 8th grade social studies, though similar histories more specific to Michigan Tribes is notably lacking.
This lack of attention to coverage of Indigenous peoples in the curriculum has led to students of Michigan Public Schools graduating with a fractured level of knowledge in this area. When I asked two professors in the Native American Studies department at the University of Michigan about their students’ base knowledge on these topics coming into their collegiate-level classes for the first time, they both had very similar responses. Cherry Meyer— member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and Assistant Professor teaching an introductory course in Native American Studies— replied with a simple, “like none,” while Amy Stillman—a Native Hawaiian and director of the Native American Studies department— responded with a similar sentiment, “oh zero.”
Both professors expressed that while many students came in with little to no actual knowledge relating to Indigenous issues, they were very aware of the stereotypes surrounding these peoples and communities and were quick to, as Cherry Meyer puts it, “put Natives on a pedestal for how they have retained a traditional way of life in modern times.” This well-intentioned but misinformed appreciation of Indigenous peoples commitments to keeping certain traditional elements as part of their ways of life completely ignores their contemporary presence in society, but is a clear reflection of the K-12 education many of them obtained which portrayed Indigenous peoples as “of the past,” stuck in a pre-1900 time capsule if they survived into the 20th century at all.