Oregon tribes emphasize community, language and culture in early childhood education

Eleven preschoolers are scattered throughout a classroom at Shawash-iliʔi Skul, an immersion school run by the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in northwestern Oregon, chattering away, but not just in English.

Their conversation is sprinkled with Chinuk Wawa, a historical language of the tribe — no big deal to the children, but enormously symbolic to tribal members, who’ve fought for programs that emphasize both academics and cultural traditions.

Their teachers, whom the children call “auntie” and “uncle” in Chinuk Wawa, circle the room, helping sharpen pencils or joining in a game.

Getting such preschools off the ground hasn’t been an easy lift.

Two years’ worth of attempts to create a dedicated Tribal Early Learning Hub fell apart in 2023, despite $2 million in state and federal funding, amid concerns about sovereignty for the nine tribal nations in Oregon. Tribal education advocates regrouped, and this year, persuaded lawmakers to pass a bill creating a dedicated fund allowing each tribe to set their own early education path.

It’s an important step, said Angela Fasana, Grand Ronde’s education manager. But, she adds, “there’s always more that can be done.”

A rocky path to the fund

For years, tribal leaders have faced barriers as they work to pass along their cultures, languages and traditions through early education.

Oregon’s financial support for early childhood education — which allows providers to offer free or subsidized services — is routed through 16 geographic hubs around the state. But cutting through red tape to access the money was a big hurdle for some tribal nations, Fasana said.

“We had a hub that was very welcoming to us and was sharing resources,” Fasana said. “In meeting with my other tribal partners in other parts of the state, that was not happening for them.”

State lawmakers tried to fix the problem in 2021 with the creation of a dedicated Tribal Early Learning Hub.

But that was no panacea, said Valerie Switzler, the education manager for the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, with tribes told they couldn’t access the money directly. Instead, she said, everything needed to go through a third party. This process was also plagued by turnover in the Department of Early Learning and Care’s tribal affairs positions, according to reporting by InvestigateWest.

“We decided, ‘Well, maybe the hub is not exactly what we were looking for as tribal nations,’” Switzler said.

The new Tribal Early Learning Fund was born out of a year of discussion among tribal leaders and passed with bipartisan support in June.

“It’s about recognizing that tribes are best positioned to design early learning systems that are rooted in their language, their culture and their values,” said Paulina Whitehat, the state early learning department’s tribal affairs director.

Gov. Tina Kotek’s recommended budget had called for $4.75 million for the effort, but lawmakers, facing a dismal economic forecast, pared that back to approximately $700,000, or $73,880 per tribe, for the 2025-27 biennium, enough to maintain current services, but not to grow.

“There’s probably a general feeling of relief that at least we’re not losing ground, that whatever we’ve built so far to date, we’re able to keep it up and running,” said Councilor Julie Siestreem of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw.

Currently Siestreem’s tribe does not have a dedicated space for early childhood education. If they had access to more money, Siestreem said they would probably use it to build a separate building for the education department.

Fasana said that the nine tribes are talking about how they can “maximize” the dollars, such as opening up training opportunities to all tribes.

Cuts to other early learning funding

Four tribes, Grand Ronde, Warm Springs, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians and Klamath Tribes, also participate in state programs that subsidize the cost of early childhood education: Preschool Promise, the Equity Fund, Oregon Prenatal to Kindergarten. But legislative cuts to the Department of Early Learning and Care’s budget in May threaten some of that funding.

The Equity Fund and Preschool Promise supported the early childhood education of 145 tribal children in the 2023-24 school year, according to the most recently available data from the Department of Early Learning and Care. Those two programs both face a 10% cut.

“I obviously have angst,” Fasana said. “How that’s all going to look, we’re waiting to see because (the Department of Early Learning and Care) has to make a lot of decisions.”

Whitehat said the state agency is still figuring out what the cuts mean for different programs and if that will have any impact on the tribes accessing those dollars.

An Indigenous approach to education

In Shawash-iliʔi Skul, Grand Ronde’s children learn about their natural resources, the importance of community, their history, the tribe’s long-held ethics and their language, said Jeff Mercier, a longtime language immersion preschool teacher in the tribe.

“The identity piece is a big part of this, being rooted in where you come from, who your people are and who your community is,” Mercier said.

Developing that sense of identity is also one of the core goals of Shawash-iliʔi Skul’s administrator, Justine Flynn. She worries that when she puts her young daughter in public school, her daughter might face mockery or confusion for spelling her name in Chinuk Wawa or singing a traditional song, and hopes her preschool experience will make her proud of her heritage regardless.

But providing robust early education services isn’t just about helping children to understand their history and culture or building their sense of person, it also helps set them up for success, tribal education leaders said.

Indigenous students in Oregon have historically struggled in both attendance and on state reading and math tests, according to state data. Studies show that access to quality early childhood education can help, Fasana said.

“We’re hoping to give our kids that fighting chance to really be successful,” Fasana said.

A hopeful future

Fasana and Mercier said that they’ve already started to see more people using Chinuk Wawa as the immersion school grows and more families begin learning the language alongside their children. Fasana said that the language is alive more than ever in her home with her granddaughter enrolled at Shawash-iliʔi Skul.

The Grand Ronde tribe has also been able to expand its number of early childhood education classrooms in recent years. The tribe earmarked money to open at least one more classroom next school year and it’s working to expand the language immersion school too.

“We’ve never not had a wait list for early childhood services,” Fasana said. “So my dream would be that we are able to open up enough classrooms that we’re able to meet the needs for all of our community here in the area.”

For many tribal education leaders, continuing to grow and expand their early childhood support services is critical to the success of their youth, the preservation of their culture and their community.

“This is a part of something bigger than just education,” Mercier said. “It’s both school and lifestyle.”

— Eddy Binford-Ross covers education and politics for The Oregonian/OregonLive.