Lessons of a Reservation-Schooled Kid

Much of What I Needed To Know, I Learned by 6th Grade

by Lynne M. Colombe

November 30, 2021

    My favorite picture of myself is of me wearing my older brother's hand-me-down shirt with Big Bird kicking a football on the front of it. That day, I had been to the grocery store and saw a traveling photographer with his pop-up stand. I ran home, and then pleaded to go back and take my photo. Sprinting to my room, I found the Big Bird shirt, threw it on, and told my mom that I was ready. She took one look at me and asked me to change my shirt. I declined. She told me I must at least comb my hair. I obliged. 

    An anecdote to this story is that I have an identical twin sister, who also adored that Big Bird shirt, and we squabbled for years over who was actually in the photo wearing the Big Bird shirt. It is me. 

    From the missing teeth, I date this photo to the summer of 1981, before the start of the third grade. There is an innocence and a happiness to this little girl in the Big Bird shirt; one who barely managed to smooth her hair. There is a definite, "rezziness," that appears in this picture - an anomaly among stacks of family photos with twins in matching outfits and ringlet ponytails; menageries of well dressed children's school photos; and plaited hair (American) Indian kids looking at the camera, smiling faces gleaming with Vaseline. 

    This photo is a visual reminder of who I am as a person - and that I was proud to be that person and represent myself in a way that was meaningful and carefree. Third grade would bring a big change in this child in the Big Bird shirt. There was a shift between second and third grade which taught me much of what I needed to know today.

Me, in my Big Bird Shirt (Circa 1981)

    Preschool (Head Start) was in a dark, brick building that was formerly a school on the Rosebud for our parents and grandparents in the Mission area. We would sit in these booths, all of four years old, and busily work at the tasks that would prepare us for kindergarten. For my twin sister and I, it was the first time that we were separated since birth. They usually had us where we could still see one another though, and we seemed to fair well. My earliest memory is of being sat down one-on-one with a teacher and being given a number of tasks to demonstrate: writing my name, cutting with scissors, and then, I was asked to read. So I did. I was then moved to another group of kids who were older than me. 

    In Head Start, I learned that there were different levels to learning, and that I could move from one level to another - even within the same room.

    

    Kindergarten was a shock to my indigenous, farming, calf-branding, pony-riding, five-year-old world. I had grown up with my bi-racially married grandparents on my father's side, and my great-grandparents who were first generation Lakota/French "mixed-bloods," or "iyeskas," on my maternal side - all of which produced my medium tones of Lakota/French/European (and maybe even Cheyenne) skin. Until kindergarten, I hadn't noticed that some of my friends from our St. Thomas Catholic Church were lighter than me - because my paternal grandmother was White and nobody had ever pointed it out as a color. All of my pre-school friends were my cousins (or cousins of my cousins) - and were either darker or lighter than me in skin tone - and nobody said anything about it. 

    I lived in a very homogenous world until I turned five and got dropped off at North Elementary School in Mission, South Dakota. The noises of hundreds of kids, the bells, the doors closing, the screeching sound of sneakers on tile floors was overwhelming. The immensity of the sanitation of the hallway and floors overstimulated your senses of smell, light, and sound. There were things of great newness, like the texture of the smooth walls as you walked down to lunch, which you quickly learned you were not to touch, "because you will get them dirty;" and the bump of a defiant pencil clicking across the pale, pinkish tile border in the kindergarten hallway. 

    Kindergarten was my first school trauma. The teacher was young, pretty, and very loud. She would yell at my class: to be quiet, to line up, to sit down, to shut up, to speak up, to eat, to hurry up, and to learn. 
    My teachers, prior, were the women of our own community in Head Start; or the quiet voices of my great-grandparents. I lived in a kinesthetic world of watching and experimenting; participating in ranching and farming; listening to my business-owning uncles at dinner tables; hanging out in Grandma Vesta's classroom and digging in her garden; listening to my great-grandparents and uncles speaking and laughing in Lakota; playing outdoors; riding my horses; living with my parents and siblings; and enjoying the company of my cousins. To have an adult outside of my own home or family yelling at me was very upsetting. The adults I knew loved me because I was a little twin, and they gave me gifts. Adults were always kind to me. I didn't understand what the teacher was yelling about. I only heard her voice barreling over an already alien environment. It was like hearing the teacher in Charlie Brown's classroom - with a megaphone.

    At this time, my mother was attending Tribal College; and she was working at the high school. Sometimes, I would bus up to the high school when my classes were over - and wait for her there. It was in the first week or two of school, when I met a nice man who was a high school teacher. I was outside of my mother's door in the hallway, and we began to have a conversation. 
    After the usual exchange of :
        "Who are you?"
        "Where do you go to school?" 
        "How old are you?" and 
        "What grade are you in?"  
        - We got to, "Who is your teacher?"
    After I told him my teacher's name - a whole river of words came out. I told him how much I did not like her; how much she yelled at us; and how much I hated kindergarten. I don't remember his reaction or him telling me who he was. I was probably the most articulate five-year-old he had met - because the next day, I was told to pack up my desk and move across the hall. I was going to a new classroom and was not even given a reason why. I didn't refuse, I just packed up my little things and happily trotted across the hallway, feeling as though I had escaped a small hell. I was too young to worry about the casualties I was leaving behind. 
    In kindergarten, I learned that if you say something to the right people, change can happen pretty quickly.
    

    First grade always comes quicker than anyone expects it to; and I transitioned up the hallway a bit in 1980. First grade at North Elementary on the Reservation was the typical state run school. My first teacher and I didn't hit it off very well, so I was walked across the hallway again after a few days; and I had my very first Native American teacher. Her name was Mrs. Dickson. Of the many good things I can remember, there are three things that stick out: 1) She was the first person who told me that I would become a teacher (and I highly resented this at the time because I wanted to be "a dinosaur scientist"); 2) I learned a Christmas song completely in German and it took 40 years for me to wonder why we never learned a song in Lakota; and 3) My penmanship, no matter how much I sharpened my pencil, would never be as good as Thomas Small Bear's.
    First grade taught me that a Lakota woman could be a teacher, and that a teacher was the boss of her own classroom; but sadly, I also learned that the importance (in schooling) of my own, traditional language was limited to the colors, the animals, and the numbers up to ten on the wall.
    Up until I was seven years old, I didn't understand the color of anyone's skin was much different from anyone else. I obviously recognized that some people were light, some were medium like myself, and that some people were dark in skin tone. It would be in the second grade when I gained my first realization that I am, "an Indian."
    My teacher was young and fresh out of college - and we might have been of her first group of subjects. She was, in my opinion, "mean," but at this point, my mother told me that I wasn't going to be switching classrooms anymore and that I better learn to get along with other people. I was told to be more cooperative and quiet.
    So I was trying this out, this, "going with the flow." There were a number of things that stand out to me about this year - like it being the first year where I would raise my hand to answer a questions and my arm would ache because I was not called on; or maybe when I would race the other kids in the room to the "hand-in basket" to prove that I was one of the smartest - only once I did things wrong and was promptly admonished, corrected, and told to slow down in front of the whole class.
    My best friend that year was the only non-Lakota girl in the classroom. She was blonde and had light skin and eyes. We played together during every recess, and I didn't see myself as any different from her. So, it was hard to understand why my teacher treated me differently than my friend.
    One night, I was in the bath tub, scrubbing my arms until they were red. My mother came in and asked me what I was doing and I replied, "I am scrubbing all of this brown skin off so that my teacher will like me."
    Earlier that day, the teacher had accused the entire classroom of stealing her chalkboard erasers and had turned (nearly) every desk upside down in her tirade. I was horrified when the teacher came to my desk and flipped it on its side right in front of me, spilling all of its contents out onto the floor.  I was in tears when I saw all of my classmates standing by their desks after being all turned over on their metal sides; and the whole room in shambles. Soon, children were all crouched down, picking up their papers and reorganizing all of their things after standing the desks and chairs back upright. I remember choking back my cries because I didn't want to sob in front of my classmates, and I looked over at my best friend because I wanted to know if she was okay.
    My buddy was sitting quietly in her desk, the only desk that hadn't been tipped over. Soon after, the teacher located her erasers behind the map hanging above the chalkboard. 

    I asked the teacher, "Teacher, why did you think we took your erasers? Why did you do this to everyone except for her?"

    The teacher responded, "Because I know that SHE didn't take them." 

    There was an oppressive silence that came over the room after that, an ominous cloud that never lifted. My friend and I continued to play together and her father moved them off the Reservation at the end of the school year. I remember her coming over in the summer before they left town so we could say our farewells.
    Second grade taught me that my skin was brown, and I have never forgotten it.

    I don't remember much about the summer between my second and third grade year, beyond loving my hand-me-down Big Bird shirt, and something changed within me just after school started. Before the third grade, I had always been in separate classrooms from my twin sister, so I was well adjusted to this, but in the third grade I was put into a classroom with mostly new kids. I also entered third grade with no best friend, carried a violin to school once or twice a week (total nerd move in Rez school), and just failed to connect with my peers. I remember being solitary in the third grade, walking around the playground feeling as though I didn't have anyone to play with. I don't really know the dynamics that contributed to this, because before and after this, I didn't have any social struggles where I felt that level of isolation in a school setting.
    Third grade was also the first time that I failed at school. Up to this point, I had straight A's and B's on all of my daily work. I didn't have any test up to third grade that I had ever failed, and every time they handed out attendance or honor roll pencils, I got a pencil. I was bred to perform and I was always at school to show out best!
    Until the day came when I got a, "D," on my Spelling test. (I'm still stumped to this day on how it happened.) But I got one - a big, round, "D."
    So I cried. I bawled all the way through recess. The teacher tried to console me and tell me that it was okay, that everyone gets a bad grade once in awhile, and that it wasn't going to hurt my overall grade. Yet, I was so devastated that when I got home after school, I went straight to my bedroom and flopped on my bed, and languished more.
    We went to my grandparents' to eat that night. I was so sad that I never said anything to anyone all evening. Once the table had been set, everyone filed into my grandma's kitchen and dining room to eat, but I stayed in the living room by myself. My grandfather came up to me, always the quiet one, and sat next to me, asking me what was wrong.
    In a family of four busy kids, nobody had actually asked me until then, so the pent up emotion came out in crocodile tears as I told Grandpa Mose, "Well, today I got a D on my Spelling test, and I have never gotten a single "D" in my whole life!" I hung my head and the tears fell down.
    When I looked up, my grandfather was smiling at me. 
    He said, "Well now, that's not so bad! Don't-cha know that an "A" stands for "Awful;" a "B" stands for "Bad;" a "C" means you're "Clever;" a "D" is just "Dandy;" and an "F" is FANTASTIC!"
    I took one look at this old man, and busted out laughing! Then, we went to eat.
    Third grade taught me how to stand alone early in life; and to not take myself too seriously.

My twin sister, Lisa (L) and Me, (R) 4th Grade

    

    My mother had finished up her bachelor's degree by this time at the Tribal College, and she was accepted into an education master's program at Penn State University - so we moved. It was only my twin sister, my mother, and myself who lived that year together in State College, so that my mom could do the coursework for her second degree. 
    Reminiscing now, I think of the first night in my bed - after my dad and brothers left. I had never lived in an apartment. I had never lived in a city. I had never seen so many trees!
    Pennsylvania sadness is as vivid a memory as the air is crisp in late August. That little bed was foreign, not new. That space that I called a room was no more than a huge closet in our Reservation (ranch) house and someone had a cat that never slept and climbed the steps all night long. I wouldn't sleep because of the darkness, missing my dad, and even, my brothers. Yet, my sister and I rose like the child soldiers of Carlisle Indian School every morning, and "went to get a better education than what you can get on the Rez."
    I'm sure this is what the old ones thought, too, when their children were taken off - across the Missouri River to school. Emotional recollections of my own cannot compare to those students' experiences in the late 1800's and early 1900's - my great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers - those who were born into tipis and put into boarding schools - because I still had my mother and my twin sister. What is comparable, is being thousands of miles away from the only culture that you know. I know the feeling of longing for my father, my house and gigantic yard, my land, my animals, and my pets. This despair feels the same now, as it did back then, when I am at my utmost loneliness in life.
    What school in Pennsylvania taught my twin and I was swift and complex. We met astronauts from the Challenger Space Shuttle crew, competed with our peers in the highest academic groupings, did real Science experiments, and sold Girl Scout cookies that year. We both played in the school orchestra. We went to large museums and ate real, Hershey's chocolate from Hershey, Pennsylvania. Beyond this, we had large libraries full of books. It was in these books that I first met Ruby Bridges, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi.
    I learned in the fourth grade that I didn't like playing second fiddle. Civil rights were introduced to me in Pennsylvania, because my library on the Reservation didn't exist and my textbooks hadn't covered it.  I learned that the world off the Reservation was a big one, with many opportunities, but that I would always long to go back home. I also learned that there was no Easter Bunny.

 
    My last elementary years were completed on the Reservation, as my mother's coursework was finished. I was ecstatic to "get back home," and reunite with all of my friends. The fifth grade went as smoothly as any year did when I had a teacher who resented me for being both brown, and smart. I went to the principal's office for the first time in the fifth grade for behavior - and I was the only student the teacher did not "loop with" for the sixth grade. But there was a school play to star in that year, and tumbling at half time shows in front of a packed gymnasium in fifth grade - so life just went on. We raised money and sold a lot of candles that year to help repair the Statue of Liberty. I have had the chance to visit the statue, and often wonder how many who sold candles from my Reservation made it there. 
    Academically, there were no barriers to learning (other than some bullying) in the fifth or the sixth grade and I looked forward to yearly SAT testing because it was one of the few challenges that I would have in the classroom. I was happy and transitioned into the sixth grade with all of the same friends and felt fully restored after my year away in fourth grade. During sixth grade, I was busy being elected as the President of the South Elementary Student Council, running away from my first boyfriend at recess, and being crowned "Valentine's Day Queen." This, sadly, was my popularity peaking at an early age. 
    There was some learning about injustice when I tried to take my seat as President of the Student Council. Physically, it was only a chair that was placed at the head of the table. Symbolically, it was the place where the President of the Student Council was to sit. The person who ran against me, and lost, would not give up this particular seat. The former year teacher, whom I didn't get along with and whom I had accused of not liking me "because I was "an Indian," had sided with the election-loser.  With conviction, I raised the issue with the school principal (who agreed with me about the chair), and I eventually took my rightful seat. But not without a little shove.
    Experiencing Reservation schooling after leaving the Reservation for a year taught me the differences in academic expectations and gains - and exposed the gap in education on the Reservation. I also learned that positions of power are not easily ceded to women of color, and sometimes, you must create a space in which to be heard.

    Schooling on the Reservation was my mode of education for the majority of my K-12 years. I could expand on schooling beyond the sixth grade, but half of my story is enough. However, I did learn a few other things during my Reservation schooling years, that even without context, may prove useful. The first is to teach yourself. There is no education, anywhere, that will teach you what you need to know without you doing something extra to get there. Second, when you forget who you are - go back to the most unpolished, insignificant photograph of you at a happy age in your childhood and take a good look at that kid - and be that kid in your heart again. If for some reason you don't have that picture anymore, or maybe you never took one, just think about that grade, that year when you were the most like the person you wished you were today - and be true to that person - every, single day.