Author Archive for Jamie Oppenheim
Interactive Timeline: Indian Schools
For many American Indians, formal education has been a sorrowful experience.
Refuge on the Reservation
The stories of three American Indian students trying to make it in tribal charter schools.
Life on the Rez
Leah Carrick, 14, is a member of the Ojibwe Indian tribe and grew up on the Bay Mills Indian Community in Brimley, Mich. She currently attends the Ojibwe Charter School. She said she chose the 100-seat charter on the reservation as a refuge from the public school because her teachers were “cranky” in Brimley. She [...]
Reservations About Traditional Public Schools
Native Americans have historically had a contentious relationship with the public education system, beginning with the so-called “boarding school years” in the 1870s, when they were placed in Indian-only schools and often by brute force, made to shed their language and cultural beliefs. Now, they have the highest dropout rates of any minority students. A [...]
Life on the Reservation
The 13 students in Kristina Hansen’s third-grade class want students in Detroit to know they do not live in teepees.
Not Your Run-of-the-Mill School
Like ducks following their mother, seven kindergarten and first-grade students walked closely behind their culture teacher, Jennifer Anziano, through the woods in the back of their school to the student-built wigwam — a dome comprised of several tree branches and rope with a plastic tarp overhead.
