“As a Chippewa Cree woman from the Rocky Boy Reservation… I carry with me not just the stories of my community, but the weight of our history. And history has shown us, time and time again, that Native children have rarely been safe in the hands of the DOI.”
By Jillian Raining Bird, National Parents Union, Member of the Chippewa Cree Tribe, Rocky Boy Reservation
When I first heard about the proposal to move Native education programs from the Department of Education to the Department of the Interior (DOI), my stomach dropped. As a Chippewa Cree woman from the Rocky Boy Reservation and as a board member of the National Parents Union, I carry with me not just the stories of my community, but the weight of our history. And history has shown us, time and time again, that Native children have rarely been safe in the hands of the DOI.
For Native families, these aren’t abstract policy conversations. They are memories handed down through generations. They are the voices of our grandparents and great-grandparents, who lived through the federal boarding school era – an era designed under the DOI to erase us. Children were taken from their families, stripped of their language, punished for their ceremonies, and told that everything they were was wrong. That kind of trauma threads itself through families for lifetimes. We still feel it today.
Then there is the land, our land, more than 90 million acres taken under the Dawes Act through DOI. When you grow up in Indian Country, you don’t have to read that in a history book. You see the checkerboard land patterns, the disrupted governance, the lost opportunities, the broken promises. You understand that these things were done to us, not with us.
The ripple effects continue. At Rocky Boy, we had to rely on the Government Accountability Office to force DOI to pay interest it owed our Tribe on mineral royalties. Think about that: a federal agency entrusted with safeguarding our resources had to be compelled to pay us what was rightfully ours. That’s not simply a clerical error. That’s a pattern.
And when I look at the Bureau of Indian Education today, still under DOI, it’s clear that the structural failures remain. Too many Native children attend school in buildings that are literally crumbling. Many don’t have access to qualified teachers. Funding lags. Grants are delayed. Accountability is weak. For generations, Native students have been told to accept less. We cannot allow that to continue.
As Native families within the National Parents Union, we talk about these realities often. We come from many different Nations, but our experiences paint the same picture. We stand together because the stakes are too high and our children deserve better than systems that have historically harmed us. Our Nations deserve to exercise sovereignty over decisions that shape their futures.
We know what it looks like when DOI claims it will “consult” with tribes. Too often, decisions are already made before our leaders even walk into the room. True consultation requires respect. It requires consent. It requires partnership. And it requires change – real, structural change – before additional responsibilities are handed over.
So when I speak out against moving Native education programs to the DOI, I am not only speaking from fear, I am speaking from experience. From memory. From truth. From love for my community and responsibility to our children.
Native people are resilient. We always have been. But resiliency should not be an excuse for anyone to overlook the trauma we’ve endured or the failures that continue today. We shouldn’t have to fight this hard for our children to receive an education that honors their culture and strengthens their spirits. Yet here we are.
What I want people to understand is simple: history is not the past. It lives in us. And because of that, we have every right, and every responsibility, to insist that the federal government does not repeat the mistakes that harmed our ancestors, wounded our communities, and still affect our children.
Our kids deserve better than recycled systems and recycled failures. They deserve sovereignty, safety, and opportunity. They deserve an education rooted in who they are, not in who someone else thinks they should be. And until those conditions exist, until there are real safeguards, real reforms, and real tribal authority, we cannot and should not support this transfer.
I stand with Native families across the National Parents Union. I stand with our tribal nations. And I stand for our children, because their future cannot be entrusted to a system that has already failed us.
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With more than 1,800 affiliated parent organizations in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, the National Parents Union is the united, independent voice of modern American families. We channel the power of parents into powerful policies that improve the lives of children, families and communities across the United States. https://nationalparentsunion.org/