Molly Hootch and the Tobeluk Consent Decree
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Transcript of Molly Hootch and the Tobeluk Consent Decree
Molly Hootch and the Tobeluk Consent Decree
Delilah Hodge
Educ 506
The Lower Kuskokwim delta is in the south west corner of
Alaska
My school district covers 21 villages and the hub city of
Bethel.
Each site is provides students with a K-12 education
but this has not always been the case
Traditionally in Yup’ik culture,
the qasgiq (men’s house) was the social
and ceremonial center of village
Young men received an essential part of their education as they
listened to and observed the older men talking and carving tools, weapons, bowls, kayaks, and
elaborate ceremonial equipment.
The remainder of their training was hands-on as they helped the men hunt, fish, and store meat for the winter.
In 1885, five Moravian missionaries started a
school in Bethel in order to convert
children to Christianity
The children were now spending the majority of the day being taught by people who viewed the world in a very different
way and had values that were contradictory to their traditional way of
life
In 1921 the Bureau of Indian Affairs extended its services to more remote sections of the
Alaskan Territory and established elementary schools in many of the villages.
They provided a rudimentary K through 8th grade education.
Students who graduated from the
village schools in the Lower Kuskokwim Delta and wanted to pursue a high school
diploma had three choices.
One option was to move to a larger urban area such as Bethel or Anchorage, and live
with a host family while attending a territory-operated high school.
Anchorage high school @ 1962
An alternative to that was attending one of the three boarding schools in the state of Alaska. Mt. Edgecumbe, founded in 1947, was a BIA run high school in Sitka; St. Mary’s, a Jesuit
mission school in the city of St. Mary’s, or the William E. Beltz School in Nome
Mt Edgecumbe
Beltz School
Chemawa Indian School, Salem, OR
Chilocco Indian School, Chilocco, Oklahoma
Once the Alaskan boarding schools reached full capacity or if students
preferred leaving the state, they could attend
either
or
All three options sent students hundreds of miles away from their homes
Drop out rates for these programs were HIGH. Almost 25 percent of the students left during their freshman
year and others left during the summer. Only 46 percent of those who chose to go made it through the
first two years of any boarding program.
In 1972, a 16-year-old girl named Molly Hootch was the first to sign a petition asking for the creating of high schools in her Yukon River village of Emmonak and two others in the Lower Kuskokwim Delta
Molly began high school with a host family in Anchorage, four hundred miles away from her village. “In her boarding home she was treated as an unpaid servant and babysitter. On the school bus and at school, she was teased and picked on because of who she was and where she came from.” (Cooke, 2004, p.3) After two years Molly was through. She dropped out of school and returned to her village.
Alaska Superior court ruled that local high schools were not required
In 1975 another suit was brought against the State of Alaska headed by a different girl’s name from the Lower Kuskokwim Delta.
Anna Tobeluk, 18 years old from the 400-person village of Nunapitchuk, wanted to continue school, but was
unable to leave her village. The case of Tobeluk v. Lind claimed the state,
“was discriminating against Native kids in
rural villages by failing to provide them with
local schools.”
After hearing the arguments, the state proposed a settlement. The Tobeluk Consent Decree was signed in October 1976 and 105 villages across Alaska
received local high schools.
The high school drop out rate for the Lower Kuskokwim Delta has gone from somewhere around 85% during the BIA/Boarding school
era to 11% in 2005.
I think the Molly Hootch case/Tobeluk Consent decree was the greatest thing that ever happened to rural Alaskan
education
It improved educational opportunities for students in the
villages of the Lower Kuskokwim Delta and gave
everyone access to a high school diploma.
Tobeluk Memorial School