CHRISTINA CALA, HOST:
Today, a story about a school and how some other schools failed some students over and over again.
PRECIOUS TRAVERSEE: I just had this history class, and one of the vocab words was reservations, and, like, a bunch of these kids just didn't know what it was. They were like, the definition of a reservation? And it's just like - I have lived on a reservation most of my life.
CALA: That's Precious Traversee (ph). She's 17 years old. Her brother, Matthew White Mountain (ph), is 16.
MATTHEW WHITE MOUNTAIN: When I went to school, 4 out of 7 of my classes were substitutes, which - I didn't learn or do any work because I couldn't because they were substitutes, which, like, weren't really teaching.
CALA: And their sister, Alanna LeBeau (ph), is 17, too.
ALANNA LEBEAU: I was bullied for how dark I was, and I was never called, like, Native American. They thought I was Black or Mexican, and, like, they would make so many racist jokes about it.
CALA: Matthew loves skateboarding, Alanna loves reading, and Precious - she loves hanging out with her family. They're the kind of siblings who are also best friends - laughing and joking the whole time we talked to them. We met them at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, just outside of the biggest town, which is actually a pretty small town of 569 people, according to the 2020 census. It's called McLaughlin.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SEQUOIA CARRILLO, HOST:
It was a Thursday afternoon, and they left school to come talk to us. We sat on the dirt floor of a domed structure, facing each other. The air smelled like cedar from all the fresh wood around us, and you could see bright blue sky through an opening in the roof.
CALA: Outside, the wind was kicking up dirt and dust everywhere. But inside, it was warm and peaceful.
CARRILLO: The serenity of the space didn't quite match the stories we heard from the kids about all the schools they'd been to in communities around South Dakota, on and off the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Reservations.
LEBEAU: A lot of Dupree kids, they, like, really think, because they live on the res, that they have a right to make fun of Native Americans and stuff. So, like, recently, they made a video of them dancing outside a gas station, like, just making fun of us.
M WHITE MOUNTAIN: Down in Eagle Butte, everyone's like - they're in that mind frame of, like - they're just stuck there, and there's - like, there's no good on the outside world or on the reservation just because how they've been treated in their life and what they've seen.
LEBEAU: During ball, a lot of Native Americans struggled to play it in Dupree because they were being harassed by white people and white parents because they were better than their white kids. A Native American can't be better than a white kid, or else they just get sat on bench.
CARRILLO: Both of these schools are on the reservation. Dupree High School has an enrollment of about 100 students. Around 87% of those are native, and 10% are white.
CALA: So being at a majority-native school didn't make that much of a difference.
CARRILLO: Yeah, they were getting bullied on the reservation and off, too.
CALA: But maybe worse than that is the indifference these kids said they experienced from the adults around them. Alanna remembers one teacher.
LEBEAU: And, like, she handed us these big old Lakota books, and she was like, pick ten words and write the definition out, and then just leave it on my desk. So we did all that, and then she just, like - she looked at it, and she counted, like, how many papers were there, and she just, like, threw them away - like, didn't bother to look at the words we wrote. She just counted to make sure we did it.
CALA: Going back more than a hundred years, education for Native kids has been like this, which brings us to this question.
CARRILLO: If you've tried many, many schools, and they all suck, where do you go?
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CALA: I'm Christina Cala.
CARRILLO: I'm Sequoia Carrillo.
CALA: And this is CODE SWITCH From NPR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CARRILLO: It's a warm, sunny day. You could paint the whole scene with mostly yellows and browns and bright blue for the sky. And just outside of McLaughlin, down this dirt road - well, actually, there isn't a road at all - it's just dirt - there's this big, brown mound jutting out of the earth.
CALA: A brown mound that will soon have a neighbor.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT RUNNING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Now get it up.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Hey.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: You going to dig them holes?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: No, to...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: All right. So this bevel is our mark.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: ...So the posts are level.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Oh.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: The floor...
CALA: I'm a producer on CODE SWITCH.
CARRILLO: I'm an editor on the education desk, but you might have heard me on here a few times before.
CALA: And a few months ago, I heard about this school that was being built on Standing Rock. It's a direct descendant of one that was started during the pipeline protests that got national attention a few years ago. And I thought, given it was all about education, Sequoia would be the perfect person to report this story with me.
CARRILLO: I was obviously immediately hooked, and off we were to the Dakotas.
CALA: OK, it took a little bit more than that. But, after a few layovers, we made it to Bismarck, N.D. And from there, we drove 2 hours south, down a two-lane highway, to a windy, grassy 40 acres of land on Standing Rock to meet some people who are trying to build that better school - literally.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT RUNNING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: All right. Back up a little bit.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Set it down.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: OK. Back in.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Watch your feet.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: OK. Roll that. Roll it. Roll that thing off.
CALA: They're building an earth lodge, a traditional domed structure of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes.
CARRILLO: And community members from all across the reservation - adults and kids - are helping to build a second one for the Mni Wichoni Defenders of the Water School.
CALA: Mni Wichoni, by the way - that means water is life in Lakota.
CARRILLO: And when it's finished, it will be the site of a brand-new school with the goal of transforming how kids like Alanna, Precious and Matthew - Lakota kids - experience education.
CALA: Eventually, they'll have these earth lodges built and students aged 12 to 19 attending their middle school and high school. But when we visit, it's not quite there yet.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: OK, do you like it?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: All right, we're making our first hole?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: It's there.
CARRILLO: So let me set the scene. There's open fields almost as far as the eye can see. McLaughlin is off in the distance, and then there's this one earth lodge and just a ton of construction equipment.
CALA: Standing outside, it's windy and dusty.
CARRILLO: Between that and trying to not stare into the sun while talking to folks, it's a whole thing.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: This isn't a game.
CARRILLO: I felt like I was in a dance with the wind. Like, I just kept moving my body with it.
CALA: Uh huh. We're fighting the elements. And while that's happening, this group of guys is scoping out the construction site.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: We're doing good and getting paid to do it. How do you - you can't beat that.
CALA: They've leveled the dirt in front of us, so there's this big, flat square of earth.
CARRILLO: The construction site itself is a lot of cedar beams right now. There's ones over there where they've burned the bottom, which is a practice they do to keep bugs off when they stick them in the earth.
CALA: And we've got two - tractors?
CARRILLO: They weren't tractors. They were, like, plows - like, little...
CALA: OK.
CARRILLO: ...Earth movers.
CALA: They're called skid steers. We've been informed.
CARRILLO: Skid steer. I will never forget that word. And the reason that we care about what a skid steer is is because Precious was driving one right in front of us.
(SOUNDBITE OF SKID STEER RUNNING)
TRAVERSEE: I'm working part-time.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: There you go.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: I just lost my job...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Can't even hold that windshield down.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: ...And it's been part-time part-time working.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Oh, yeah.
CALA: This 17-year-old girl, literally being a boss, shifting some logs from one side of the site to the other.
CARRILLO: And she looked so at home behind the wheel of this heavy machinery. I felt like I was a lot more scared than she was.
CALA: Oh, my gosh. Same.
CARRILLO: Everyone on the site was so cool, and they are all like family, so it's a very safe place.
CALA: Some of them actually are family. Precious' uncle is leading the build. And, yeah, like Sequoia was saying, everyone is so supportive. They're guiding her. They're telling her what to do. That's the whole atmosphere of the construction site.
CARRILLO: Yeah, we were standing off to one side of the site, chatting, holding our microphones, and this guy, Jody Hunt (ph), came over and just started reciting poetry - definitely one of my favorite parts of our two days on the worksite.
Hey.
CALA: Hi.
JODY HUNT: Are they ready?
CARRILLO: Yeah.
HUNT: I got one for you.
CALA: Amazing.
CARRILLO: OK.
HUNT: OK.
Here's a place, separated by race, held together by pride, where the last warrior rode his last ride - a place where hate is reconciled by respect for prophesized fate. It was said long before, but most can't relate. Wait. Life up south for most is clear. The end of the trail ended here, to leave these boundaries instilled in our head as fear. Up south, you see, it's more to me. I don't see clear unless I'm here. Real it must be.
That's "Up South."
CALA: Like, who was expecting to get poetry recited to them on a construction site? Not me. Awesome.
CARRILLO: And it was pretty good. It was, like, good poetry.
CALA: Yeah, it was. And, you know, the fact that the kids are participating in the building of the school site where they'll be learning - that's a part of the philosophy behind Mni Wichoni.
KIMIMILA LOCKE: It's like aunties, uncles, parents - like, we're all parents (laughter), and we're all, like, you know - have our children who struggled in the school systems. And we're all saying, like, hell, we're smart as hell, and we're educated up the wazoo, and we have degrees up the butt. Let's do it (laughter). We already know this. We know their way. We know our way. Like, we can do it.
CARRILLO: That voice you just heard is Kimimila Locke.
CALA: Kimimila is a veteran teacher with a master's in education, an activist, a mom, and more recently a co-founder of the Mni Wichoni Defenders of the Water School.
CARRILLO: She's part of a team of about six who have been working on this for years.
CALA: Kimimila and Alayna Eagle Shield - we'll meet her later - have been leading the charge and have decades of experience between them as educators and as carriers of Lakota culture.
CARRILLO: And Mni Wichoni really turned this idea of learning upside-down. It was a dream that first formed five years ago, during the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline - or, as they call it, NODAPL - when thousands of people lived in a big camp here to protest the pipeline.
LOCKE: I feel like we had the real privilege of witnessing it at camp. I wish there was a way to translate wauspe, 'cause it's not education. Wauspe is a state of being and knowing, and you're learning. Like, you're becoming - in a state of learning all the time.
CALA: When we first met Kimimila early that morning, she pulled up in a car with a dashboard and back windshield entirely full of sage. And she had some behind her ear, too.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOOR SHUTTING)
LOCKE: Hello.
CALA: So nice to meet you. Oh, sorry. Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
CARRILLO: I'm Sequoia. Lovely to meet you.
LOCKE: I don't know what you go by - can I just...
CARRILLO: She steps out of her car, pulls up her sunglasses, and starts laying out what we're going to be doing. She set up some meetings for us at the earth lodge on the school site, and people will be coming to meet us there over the next few days.
CALA: She's wearing jeans, a blue T-shirt and a hoodie. Her hair is pulled up in a clip. And even though she's dressed casually, she instantly commands attention.
CARRILLO: Yeah, she has this kind of seriousness to her, but she's also cracking jokes the whole time.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: Hey, can somebody check to see if this is straight?
LOCKE: Everyone had their own spoons and a...
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: ...Spoons and forks to dig a hole.
(LAUGHTER)
CARRILLO: And after some time walking around the construction site and meeting people, Kimimila takes us into the earth lodge.
CALA: So there's this horizontal log on the far side of the lodge. It's the first thing you see as you walk in and your eyes adjust from being outside to being inside, and it serves as a bench. It's where many people sit for interviews throughout our time there.
CARRILLO: Kimimila tells us that this is where students will gather most days, and it does not look like any classroom I've ever been in.
CALA: Me neither.
CARRILLO: Yeah, there are no desks, no chalkboards, no cubbies for backpacks.
CALA: No lockers, no AC, no heat.
CARRILLO: No concrete walls, either, or school bells.
CALA: Kimimila tells us that instead, kids will fulfill an English credit with a prayer journey up to the Black Hills or learn science collecting medicinal herbs in the surrounding areas.
CARRILLO: They'll earn a biology credit on a buffalo hunt and learn history from elders in the lodge. And students will also help design their own curriculum based on their interests.
CALA: I want to go to this school.
CARRILLO: I completely agree.
CALA: And as we're admiring the construction and talking about all of it with Kimimila, these little kids show up with their teacher.
(SOUNDBITE OF RECORDER)
CALA: One of them is playing a recorder, another one is playing UNO.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: Who wants to play?
CARRILLO: It was so cute. There's this little line of them walking into the Earth Lodge, and then they spread out all over and just started playing music and just, like, playing in the dirt in general.
CALA: And everything they were saying was in Lakota, and Kimimila just lit up watching them.
LOCKE: Wakanyeja, that's our word for children. And it means sacred beings. So these are the sacred ones. So how do you treat the sacred ones?
CALA: Yeah.
LOCKE: (Laughter) What do you do for the sacred people or the sacred beings?
(CROSSTALK)
LOCKE: Yeah.
CALA: Definitely makes you look at them a little differently, even as they're being silly and playing.
LOCKE: Right?
CALA: (Laughter).
LOCKE: I used to struggle with classroom discipline, like, a lot, and then when I switched from calling students students to thozan or thoska, michinca, my child, my niece, my nephew, it all shifted in the classroom, too. I'm their auntie (laughter). You don't talk that way to your auntie.
CALA: Kimimila would know. She's been teaching for more than 20 years.
LOCKE: Was in the system, and I know of so many kids who have not made it through. Oh, that makes my stomach hurt. So that's why. That's the why, you know, that's - the system isn't made for us.
(SOUNDBITE OF RECORDER)
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: Wash your hands (speaking Lakota).
CALA: When she says that the system isn't made for Native kids, I mean, we have the receipts and we've talked about a lot of this stuff on CODE SWITCH before.
CARRILLO: Native students drop out of public schools at a rate of almost twice the national average. And for most of U.S. history, the government has actively been trying to erase Native identity.
CALA: Like, with residential schools.
CARRILLO: Also known as boarding schools.
CALA: Established in the 1800s, kids that attended those were punished for speaking their languages or openly practicing any of their culture.
CARRILLO: And then in 1883, the Code of Indian Offenses fully took away the First Amendment right to religious freedom for all Native people.
CALA: So they went underground.
CARRILLO: Yeah, until 1978. That was the first time Native parents could choose legally not to send their kids to boarding schools.
CALA: Thanks to the Indian Child Welfare Act. That same year, with the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, they got the right to practice their religion openly - rights every American is supposed to have.
CARRILLO: So for this community, starting this school isn't just a matter of building a new space. Building a school like this in a Native community...
CALA: That is native run...
CARRILLO: ...With Native teachers...
CALA: ...That teaches in Lakota and incorporates cultural practices...
CARRILLO: ...It's a huge deal.
CALA: It's a matter of taking ownership of a culture, history and a way of being that was stripped away for hundreds of years.
CARRILLO: This school represents an effort to get back to those traditions. Five years ago, during the #NoDAPL movement, Native parents and teachers imagined a different model of how school could not suck for their kids.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Through this school, we made it OK to just be who they were every day.
CALA: After the break, how the Standing Rock movement showed the Lakota what sovereignty could look like.
LOCKE: Are you guys ready to break the law with me?
CARRILLO: And how they're bringing that power to the classroom.
CALA: Stay with us.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CARRILLO: Sequoia.
CALA: Christina.
CARRILLO: CODE SWITCH.
LOCKE: So if you cross this bridge, you're leaving Standing Rock.
CARRILLO: After a full day at the build site for the Mni Wichoni school, Kimimila Locke, one of the co-founders, offered to take us to the place where it all started, the fields where the pipeline protest movement took root.
CALA: After all, the idea for the school didn't come out of nowhere. It started like so much of the energy and movement still happening on the rez, when nations and allies from all over the country came together in Standing Rock five years ago.
CARRILLO: We said goodbye to everyone at the construction site, hopped in our car and followed Kimimila for about an hour. The sun was low, and the road was pretty empty. But it was kind of always empty. And eventually, we pulled over on the side of the highway and parked.
LOCKE: You guys ready to break the law with me?
CALA: OK.
(LAUGHTER)
CALA: Once we leave the road, we cross a downed wire fence and enter federal land. We had actually passed this area coming into Standing Rock, but we didn't know this was where it all went down five years ago.
CARRILLO: It looked so nondescript, just a big, wide open field next to a bunch of other big, wide open fields. Some hills in the distance. There was a river. We could hear lots of bugs and birds chirping. And it's really quiet, except for the occasional car that drives past us.
CALA: But five years ago...
LOCKE: So then, like, imagine so - like, camp all the way to the edge of the water. And then...
CALA: These rolling fields of red and yellow grass housed thousands and thousands of people from all over the world. They came to fight the building of a pipeline and to protect water rights.
CARRILLO: I remember when Kimimila told us that. I tried to count how many people I had seen total on Standing Rock up until that point, and it was maybe 30, 35. Thousands and thousands all on the same field is so hard to imagine, but it happened.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Overnight, protesters in North Dakota vowing they're not backing down after an evening of violent clashes with law enforcement.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Because we're not going anywhere. We're cold. We're shaking. We're wet. We're in pain. But we're still here.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) Mni Wichoni.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Mni Wichoni (vocalizing).
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LOCKE: So this was Flag Road. that's where they put all their - the streams of flags. That was, like, the main entrance. What they call Facebook Hill - that was Facebook Hill. That was the only point that we could get any access to our cellphones.
(LAUGHTER)
LOCKE: And then the school was, like, in that area over there.
CALA: In that little dip right there?
LOCKE: Yeah.
CALA: If you look at pictures, you see this wide open landscape covered in tents, cars, trailers. At its peak, it was North Dakota's 10th largest city, complete with a horse track, kitchens, medic tents and a school - Mni Wichoni.
LOCKE: Got a glimpse of what happens when you put your minds together for the good of the kid - for the next generation. So now we just have to execute it.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRUCK HONKING, LAUGHTER)
LOCKE: (Vocalizing).
CARRILLO: I wish I could take you all to that moment you just heard. We were standing with Kimimila in the middle of this wide open field. It's peaceful and quiet. And then this beat-up pickup truck drives by, honking like mad. And the driver just raises his fist out the window towards us. It was like, yep, we're still fighting. We'll never forget that miraculous thing that happened here.
CALA: And there's this feeling of taking that energy forward, too. The movement at camp brought people together from all over the world in solidarity, but it also connected people from around Standing Rock in a new way, like Kimimila and Alayna Eagle Shield.
(CROSSTALK)
ALAYNA EAGLE SHIELD: You look so good.
CARRILLO: Alayna is one of the six co-founders of the school. On our second day out at the construction site, Kimimila introduces us.
LOCKE: Alayna was at camp. She was the one that, like, a lot of the aunties and uncles were - you know, like, as she was going around, they kind of had a lot of conversations. And she pulled a lot of us in. Hey, hey.
(LAUGHTER)
LOCKE: That's exactly what happened. Yeah, so Alayna Eagle Shield.
EAGLE SHIELD: Hey (laughter).
CALA: Alayna is on the shorter side and full of smiles. She's also pregnant. When she comes to meet us at the earth lodge, she brings her husband and son along with her. She's splitting time between Washington state and South Dakota while she gets her Ph.D. in Indigenous education and health at the University of Washington.
EAGLE SHIELD: Hi. Sorry I'm late. I wanted to join you guys this morning, but it's just a lot going on. I just had an ultrasound. Yeah. Hey (laughter). Helping to rebuild the nation (laughter). Just kidding (laughter). Hey.
CALA: Even though she and Kimimila grew up on Standing Rock and are both teachers, it wasn't really until the NoDAPL movement that they reconnected. In 2016, Alayna was a language specialist on Standing Rock.
EAGLE SHIELD: At the time, I was like, I don't know what to do. I feel like I have to be out there. So I took leave.
CARRILLO: And she headed to the Dakota Access site. Alayna ended up getting arrested not long after, and she had to spend the night in jail, away from her family. When she tells us this story, she's sitting on a bench inside the earth lodge. Her young son stays close and holds onto her. She comforts him as he comforts her. Not long after she was arrested, some more people from Standing Rock set up camp. As the campsite grew into the hundreds and then thousands, Alayna kept going there almost every day after work and eventually started organizing visits for students. After some time...
EAGLE SHIELD: More and more aunties and grandmas were like, hey, what about our kids? You know, we know that the first thing the government comes after is our kids. It's almost - you know, it's end of August. School's going to start. They're going to want to take our - make our kids go to school. So what do we do next?
CALA: Alayna and others didn't want their kids back in school, away from the movement where they were learning so much in real-time about their culture. So she established a school on the Oceti Sakowin camp site where kids could learn side by side as the movement was unfolding around them. She helped parents fill out home-school papers, something she already did for her kids. And she started to set up a curriculum they could follow.
EAGLE SHIELD: I was, like, so Western at the time 'cause I was like, OK, 9 a.m. slot - got you down (laughter). 10 o'clock, cool, Tuesday - never worked out that way. Oh, my gosh.
CARRILLO: Eventually, students from all over the country who are participating in the movement ended up traveling between different tribes' camps to learn from elders and tribal members. They'd also go down to the water and pray every day. But even the students weren't ready for this new type of school.
EAGLE SHIELD: So through the school, we made it OK to just be who they were every day because even in the beginning it was like, everything was funny. You know, if we talked Lakota, if we said a story, they're like, you don't - we don't talk to animals. Or we - that's not true. You know, they would say things like that. And then by, like, the first week, they were, like, asking to pray.
CALA: Almost a year after the first people from Standing Rock decided to camp, the governor of North Dakota told water protectors they needed to leave. The movement lost.
CARRILLO: Yeah. I remember that day really clearly. I had been following the movement for months, along with other Native students at my college. And when people were forced to pack up in the snow, it was incredibly heartbreaking. And then construction for the pipeline just continued.
CALA: And then in June 2017, oil started flowing through a completed pipeline.
CARRILLO: It's gone back and forth in the courts since. Ultimately, a judge ruled that the company behind the pipeline needed to complete a thorough environmental impact review, which they skipped the first time around, but that the pipeline could keep transporting oil in the meantime.
CALA: I remember when President Obama halted construction on the project. Then when Trump came into office, his administration started it up again, and people were really hoping President Biden would reverse that. But he hasn't. It's with the Army Corps of Engineers now.
CARRILLO: And most people don't think about the pipeline fight as still happening in the Dakotas. But on the Standing Rock Reservation, it's very present.
CALA: And it was during the weeks and months and years after what everyone thinks of as the movement that the ideas gradually took shape for the school that's coming together some 50 miles from the campsite.
EAGLE SHIELD: We just have to believe that there was experience and this was real. And the ceremonies that were happening and the prayers that were being put out were real and were there. And so they - and they always told us, too, like, it's not seeing is believing. It's believing is seeing.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY WHIRRING)
CARRILLO: I'm sitting in the earth lodge with little kids running around us. We were starting to see it.
EAGLE SHIELD: I'm hoping to be, like, a translator for stuff that we're already doing. We're reclaiming our lifeways by building this earth lodge, you know? We're reclaiming our language by just calling each other by kinship terms. We're reclaiming our ceremonial practices just by offering food and offering tobacco or smudging whenever we get on the road or when we pray for somebody. And so I really do feel like - I don't feel like education is everything. But our education is - eh? - if that makes sense.
CALA: But a lot of getting a school up and running is less exciting and more logistical. Kimimila and Alayna have been working with other co-founders to write up a budget and secure their own funding. But they don't want any state or federal funding. So some of that is coming from grants and private donations.
CARRILLO: Right now they said they have about $200,000, which is a ton of money. But it's less than half of what they need to get the school going for the coming school year.
CALA: So even though money is still a bit up in the air, there's a lot that is working.
CARRILLO: Yeah. They figured out a system for granting middle- and high-school credits that works for them. And they've developed a two-year course that will focus heavily on buffalo and, of course, Lakota language and traditions.
CALA: Alayna and others also wrote a book about their experience teaching at Standing Rock. And the founders have been reaching out to build a network of support and expertise - educators and activists and funders who also focus on creating new education models for Native students.
CARRILLO: Alayna, Kimimila and the other four co-founders behind Mni Wichoni really want the school to give students a place to feel safe, but also challenged and fulfilled. But now the question is, what does that look like in practice?
CALA: In many ways, the team has accomplished a lot of what they wanted to do. They presented their plan for the school to the tribal council, got approved for a 30-year lease on 40 acres of land.
CARRILLO: That's the land we visited that the earth lodges are now on.
CALA: And they pulled their first students out of public school and are actually integrating their ancestral practices into their curriculum.
CARRILLO: Like, they recently took the students on a pilgrimage, or prayer journey, in the Black Hills to teach ceremonies and live history, rather than just read about it.
CALA: But one thing is still very up in the air.
LOCKE: We ran into this, you know, struggles, like raising money and not having the state funds, the federal funds. We decided we don't want that because then that gives regulation. If we want to be sovereign, we have to have our own money. We have to raise our own money.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY WHIRRING)
CARRILLO: The school still isn't technically open. Right now these first few students are functioning with a modified home-schooling model in preparation for their official opening this fall.
CALA: And for a while, Kimimila, Alayna and the other founders didn't quite know how to grade the students or prove they were meeting state standards.
LOCKE: The state centers are the most basic.
CARRILLO: Like math, science, history.
LOCKE: That's the most minimal. So yeah, so this is a much higher standard, much higher education.
CALA: Kimimila believes that her school will be going above and beyond those state standards, and now they're accredited through the Commission for Oceti Sakowin Accreditation.
CARRILLO: This commission works to offer a more culturally relevant education to Native kids, and they've set it up so other schools like Mni Wichoni can also apply for accreditation. So it's essentially their version of a high school diploma.
CALA: Exactly. It really looks like the school is becoming real and they have a whole community behind them making it happen.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT)
CARRILLO: As we hang out at the site over two days, so many people drive up and stop by to visit, almost like they can't believe it themselves. Council members, elders, even Kimimila's mom hangs out for a few hours and supervises the build.
CALA: They have so much to say about what it means to get this place up and running.
LONNIE WHITE MOUNTAIN SR: That means that our language is going to thrive.
CARRILLO: That's Lonnie White Mountain Senior, the chairman of Bear Soldier District.
CALA: Where the school is located. He's also the kid's grandfather, and he's excited to send his youngest son to the school when it opens to learn in Lakota.
L WHITE MOUNTAIN: I want him to grow up to be able to pass that on to his children. You know, so that's very important to me that he learns our ways.
CARRILLO: So many people on Standing Rock kept telling us over and over, it's not just about a new way of learning or preserving their language, even. It's about creating a whole new generation of rezzers. Here's Alanna.
LEBEAU: We're all rezzers. And to - for us to be, like, coming together for something like this, it just - it's just so beautiful.
CALA: So what's your hope for the next generation? What do you want your kids generation to look like?
LEBEAU: For me, what was so pivotal about the Water Is Life movement was that we got to experience things that we've always heard our elders talk about in, like, real time, in real life. But I remember thinking, like, wait a minute, we don't have to ask for permission. You know, we could just do this. And that's what I want for our kids moving forward. I want them to know that who they are is enough and know that what needs to be done in the communities is up to us.
CALA: This question of what's next is one everyone's thinking about. And on that second day, when we got to talk with some of the students who will be going to school here, we asked them about their hopes for the future.
CARRILLO: Do you guys dream of this could be like a job? This could be, like, a family. What are your dreams?
They were all sitting in a line on the bench in the lodge, and we were on the ground. And Alanna started first, then their sister, Kris, then Matthew and Quentin.
LEBEAU: I grew up and, like, I was from house to house all the time. Like, I never had one secure home. I was always, like, moving around. And then I just kind of built this anger up. And then I, like, found out, like, recently, I really like to write poems and stuff. So then that's the way I release my anger. I hope I can, like, write more poems and then bring more awareness to Native Americans.
KRIS: After I graduate high school, I plan on going to Kansas University. And so after I graduate college, I always wanted to be a Native American author and talk about our culture in the books.
M WHITE MOUNTAIN: After I graduate, I - anything you could do at a skate park, basically. Like, as - when I was a kid, everybody would go to the skate park. But now you only see, like, two kids there. Like...
QUENTIN: I'm more of actually going to, like, a college and then, you know, actually going out and then, like, doing good in the world and then giving back to the community and give more activities to do around the community, like how my parents are doing with the teen center, the school and everything.
CALA: After a while, Kris, Quentin, Matthew and Alanna pile into the van they came in. Kris is on the volleyball team and can't be marked absent if she wants to play in the game later that afternoon. Precious stays behind, ready to work on the second Earth Lodge.
CARRILLO: Within two weeks of our visit, it'll be finished, right next to the first one. And in the meantime, word of this thing being built is spreading across the community, and more kids and community members are coming by and joining in. A movement five years later is still growing on Standing Rock.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CALA: And that's our show. You can find more about this episode on our website, npr.org/codeswitch.
CARRILLO: Special thanks to Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, who visited Standing Rock with us and helped us gather sound. Thank you also to Eric Whitney and Christine Trudeau for their extra ears.
CALA: And thank you to Kimimila Locke, Alayna Eagle Shield, Memory and Hokshiela (ph) White Mountain, and everyone we met on Standing Rock who generously shared their time. Though we didn't interview him for this story, Nick Estes' book, "Our History Is The Future: Standing Rock Versus The Dakota Access Pipeline, And The Long Tradition Of Indigenous Resistance," was an indispensable resource for us.
CARRILLO: This episode was produced by us and edited by Leah Donnella and Steve Drummond. It was fact-checked by Nathan Pugh.
CALA: Shout-out to the rest of the CODE SWITCH fam - Gene Demby, Karen Grigsby Bates, Jess Kung, Alyssa Jeong Perry, Summer Thomad, Kumari Devarajan and Tinbete Ermyas. Our art director is LA Johnson.
CARRILLO: I'm Sequoia Carrillo.
CALA: I'm Christina Cala. Hasta pronto.
CARRILLO: Bye, y'all.
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