Utah Native students exercise right to wear regalia at graduation

CEDAR CITY, Utah (AP) — She walked up a pink carpet and crossed a stage to just accept her diploma carrying an eagle feather beaded onto her cap that her mom had gifted her.

Amryn Tom graduated this week from southern Utah’s Cedar Metropolis Excessive Faculty. Her household cheered.

For the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah and different Native Individuals, eagle feathers of the range Tom wore are sacred objects handed down by way of generations, used at ceremonies to suggest achievement and reference to the group.

“That is out of your ancestors,” Tom mentioned her mom, Charie, instructed her.

One 12 months in the past, college students in Tom’s college district would have been barred from carrying any type of tribal regalia together with their conventional cardinal-colored caps and robes.

Not this 12 months.

In March, Utah joined a rising record of states in enshrining Native American college students’ rights to put on tribal regalia at their commencement ceremonies.

In Iron County, the place the college district tried to bar two graduates from carrying regalia on the ceremonies final 12 months, Tom and different Native American college students savored the hard-won proper.

“It’s form of big,” mentioned Paiute tribal member Brailyn Jake, an eagle feather and beads dangling from her turquoise cap. Her cousin was one of many college students stopped from donning beads final 12 months.

“Folks don’t perceive our tradition, the that means behind it and the way, once you’re turned down for one thing this massive, it’s form of like, wow,” Jake mentioned.

College students throughout the U.S. typically sport flower leis or flashy sashes at commencement with little controversy. However the guidelines governing tribal regalia at highschool graduations have emerged as a legislative concern in a number of pink and blue states after experiences of scholars being barred from carrying apparel like Jake and Tom’s.

Arizona, California, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota and Washington all lately enacted legal guidelines that both enshrine college students’ rights or bar faculties from implementing costume codes banning tribal regalia. After passing by way of the legislature, a invoice with comparable provisions is being despatched to Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy.

In Utah, Paiute Chairwoman Corrina Bow introduced the problem to state lawmakers after final 12 months’s two Iron County incidents. The district had no formal guidelines prohibiting Native American college students from donning regalia.

Bow famous the commencement fee for Native American and Alaskan Native college students was 74% in 2019, the bottom of any demographic group, and instructed lawmakers that guaranteeing college students statewide the suitable to put on regalia would permit them to “honor their tradition, faith and heritage.”

Related controversies have occurred at faculties in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, suburban Chicago and elsewhere, with graduates being barred from carrying every thing from beadwork and moccasins to sealskin caps. The incidents pit Native American college students and their dad and mom in opposition to directors who say they need to keep uniformity at commencement ceremonies.

Emalyce Kee, who’s Navajo and Rosebud Sioux, was one of many two southern Utah college students instructed to not put on a beaded cap or plumes to her Cedar Metropolis Excessive Faculty commencement ceremony final 12 months. She did it anyway.

Earlier than strolling throughout the stage to just accept her diploma, Kee switched out her plain cap for one with a plume and beadwork by her uncle. Half a dozen members of the family within the entrance row applauded.

“I hadn’t felt that highly effective earlier than that second, standing up with my diploma, with my Native cap on after which shaking my principal’s hand,” Kee mentioned.

At a highschool that used “Redmen” as its mascot till 2019, Kee and her mom, Valerie Glass, mentioned it caught with them how the principal had argued beaded caps would set a precedent to permit all college students to embellish their commencement apparel.

“It’s not ‘ornamental’ regalia. It’s conventional beaded regalia. How will you have the Cedar Redmen for therefore lengthy and never honor your Native American college students?” Glass mentioned.

Iron County Superintendent Lance Hatch was not out there for remark.

Hoksila Lakota gifted his nephew Elijah James Wiggins, who’s of Lakota ancestry, an eagle feather in honor of his commencement from Cedar Metropolis Excessive Faculty on Wednesday. He mentioned eagle feathers — known as wamblii wakan in Lakota — are elementary to celebrating once-in-a-lifetime achievements, with many believing they maintain a connection to God.

“These aren’t one thing you discover on the ground and do no matter with. These are sacred objects given from grandfather to son or uncle to nephew,” he mentioned.
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Metz reported from Salt Lake Metropolis.