Relationships with Tribal Governments: A Value Add for Any District

Washington State has a powerful story to tell about how all students benefit when state and local governments enter into genuine relationships with tribal governments, and it is a story that all states can learn from. It began with a 2005 statute requiring each district to teach local tribal history to all students in their district. This past legislative session, the statute was renamed the John McCoy (lulilaš) Since Time Immemorial Curriculum to honor state Senator John McCoy, and it marks the first time a Native language, Lushootseed, has been included in Washington State law.

Thus, Washington districts have a legal obligation to communicate with tribes directly on how to best incorporate their history into the curriculum and to sign off annually to make sure they are delivering it to students. Well over a decade ago, the Nisqually tribe began engaging with the North Thurston School district to form what eventually grew into a genuine government-to-government relationship between the Nisqually tribal council and the North Thurston school board. The Nisqually tribal council now meets twice annually with the North Thurston school board to go over business items centered on how they want to educate students collectively.

These communications led the district to invite the Nisqually tribal education department to be a member of the district’s Since Time Immemorial curriculum team. During these meetings, the tribe suggested, and the district agreed, that schools celebrate Billy Frank Jr. Day annually in March. Billy Frank Jr. is a historical figure of the Nisqually tribe, celebrated as a leader during the Fish Wars of the 1960s. In the face of fierce opposition from non-Native interests, Frank asserted the tribe’s right, as laid out in the federal Treaty of Medicine Creek in 1854, to harvest 50 percent of the annual take of salmon in the Puget Sound area. The 1974 court case United States v. Washington, also known as the Boldt decision, affirmed this right and established the state’s obligation to work together with the tribes to manage fish runs for all Washingtonians so that tribes were no longer left out of the negotiations.

The Nisqually tribe’s relationship building with the North Thurston school district was based on this same concept. If the state and the tribes were legally obliged to comanage salmon, shouldn’t tribes and districts also be comanaging education? This approach made Nisqually and district leaders teammates in teaching Nisqually tribal history through a Nisqually lens and with a Nisqually voice and presence.

Their joint agreement cleared the way for all kinds of great ideas. Following the agreement to celebrate Billy Frank Jr. Day was a decision to incorporate a land acknowledgement in the school day. Soon after, the district decided to fly the Nisqually tribal flag at all its facilities. Nisqually representatives began doing classroom presentations, which then led to the idea of professional development for staff at North Thurston High School. This in turn led to districtwide professional development for all staff, which both the tribe and the district saw as a success.

At the same time, the tribe also reached out to the nearby Yelm School District, which also serves Nisqually students, requesting a relationship similar to the one with North Thurston. After years of cultivating that relationship, the Nisqually tribal council and the Yelm school board now meet twice a year. Yelm flies the Nisqually flag at all their buildings. The Nisqually tribal team delivered professional development training to every teacher in the district.

Such trainings are the first in the state to ever be held for all teachers in a district and have led state agencies outside the public education system to seek training from the Nisqually team. These new trainings, now in development, are evidence of the snowballing benefits that can come from districts reaching out to their local tribes to seek relationship.

It takes many people working together, Native and non-Native, to improve our educational system for all students collectively. Students are at the heart of this work, and students benefit the most from it. We see these benefits in the smiles of students displaying their projects at the Billy Frank Jr. Day celebration, their pride in seeing the Nisqually flag flying over their school, and their delight in being tapped to read the land acknowledgment during morning announcements. These things were missing from everyday school experience a decade ago but now are part of the routine.

When we as state, district, and tribal leaders started down this path, our goal was to improve educational outcomes for Nisqually students specifically. It took us all a long time to figure out that when tribes are invited to work side by side with the district, outcomes improve for all students. We found that the best way to improve outcomes for Nisqually students is to improve the entire system.

Tribes have long been asset-based organizations, but government agencies have overlooked community assets for decades, especially in K-12 education. We can change that starting now if we are willing to work together. Leaders at the state board level can catalyze such partnerships by encouraging their local boards to seek genuine relationships with their local tribes.