Havre schools offering Cree language course

Havre Public Schools will be offering a Cree language course next year as part of an increased push to improve cultural education for Native American students in the district.

The course, which was approved unanimously by the Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees in a meeting Monday evening, was set up as part of the state’s Indian Education For All Program with the help of Mahchiwminahnahtik Chippewa and Cree Revitalization, a program based in Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation.

Havre Public Schools IEFA Director Jessica Kennedy-Stiffarm said the goal of her program is to meet the cultural- and language-based economic needs of Native American students, and while they have been making strides in addressing the cultural part of that equation, HPS hasn’t really been addressing language.

After she became director last year, she said, she’s been looking back on how the district has tried to meet these needs and a hole she saw was student input.

She said Havre Public Schools had been trying to address needs, but hadn’t done enough to look at what the students wanted, and one of her goals after taking the job was to change that.

“It’s important for us to understand the population that we serve,” Kennedy-Stiffarm said.

She said she developed a survey for students asking what they were looking for from IEFA 60 percent of Native students, who account for more than a quarter of the student population, said they wanted a language course.

The results of that motivated her to push for this course, she said, not just because it was what students clearly wanted, but because she wanted to make it clear that when the district asks students for their opinion it’s not just a gesture.

“We needed to follow through,” she said.

Sunnyside Intermediate School Principal Pax Haslem, who was the interim-IEFA Director after the death of HPS Superintendent Craig Mueller last October, has also been involved with setting up the course.

Now that it has been approved and added to the course catalog, Haslem said, they can get to work hiring a teacher and developing a curriculum.

Thankfully, he said, Stone Child College has a two-year degree in Cree language, Montana Digital Academy offers it, and Montana State University-Northern just started offering its own class recently, so they have some templates to work off of.

Haslem said Havre High School’s IEFA Coordinator Jacob Criner has a master’s degree in curriculum development as well, so they are well positioned to get a good curriculum.

Kennedy-Stiffarm said language is a really important part of providing for Native American students, as it was an aspect of their culture that was taken from many of their recent ancestors and reclaiming it can be incredibly meaningful for people that have been part of an oppressed culture.

“It awakens the spirit,” she said. “… Makes you feel whole again.”

She said language is a way to connect students with their heritage that can improve their sense of self and where they come from, which can lead to higher self-esteem and better academic achievement.

Kennedy-Stiffarm said they reached out to the program and its executive director, Dustin Whitford, to learn more about what they do and were really impressed by the demonstration they gave.

“We were blown away,” she said.

Haslem echoed her sentiments, saying he was really impressed by the program whose instructors and students demonstrated a sense of community and culture and clearly understood the importance of language in cultural preservation.

He said the Montana Office of Public Instruction has different criteria and guidelines for how language is taught so the district will need to hire its own teacher, but Rocky Boy’s program was extremely helpful in making their proposal for the course work.

Kennedy-Stiffarm said the program’s instructors all have Class 7 Native American Language Educator Licenses and she hopes the education they provide is something students can bring back to their own family and friends.

She said introducing a course like this will encourage knowledge retention as well.

She said the cultural activities she sets up are mostly one-time events, and while that can be part of a larger program to encourage the retention of Native education, they need things like this language course to make sure that knowledge stays with students for a long time.

Haslem said the course is in the district’s catalog and they are looking to get at least one class worth of participants, which he’s confident they will get considering the results of the student survey.

He said they want to offer the course all four years of high school and as a one-quarter elective for eighth grade.