Tara Tindall and the Native American Readiness Module: Setting The Record Straight
Tara Tindall is the Title VI coordinator for the Madison Metropoliotan School District and works to imbue truthful information about Native people into MMSD’s curriculum
Part 1 of 2
By Jonathan Gramling
Tara Tindall, the Native American lead teacher for the Madison Metropolitan School District and the coordinator of the district’s Title VI efforts, has been busy trying to promote equity and to remove the barriers that prevent Native students from fully taking advantage of their career at MMSD schools. The district had implemented a Ho-Chunk language class at East High.
“Because of COVID-19, we were having trouble finding a person to fill that slot,” Tindall said. “And then there were complications because we have to have a MOA with the Ho-Chunk Nation. And that is a lot of paperwork and follow through. And so this year, we don’t have a Ho-Chunk language class for the first time in three years. Like I said, it was challenging because they were meeting online and then the students had to wear masks when they were back in school. The tutor — she was actually a teacher — said she couldn’t see their mouths. She couldn’t see their mouths, so she couldn’t see how they were saying the words. That was a bit of a challenge. We also had a hard time getting the students to enroll in the class. We’re going to have to go back to the drawing board and figure out a way to have that going again.”
Tindall also lent support to the Native students who pushed for land acknowledgement at each of the Madison public schools.
“It was started by two students, Isa Saiz and Marina Fox Baker,” Tindall said. “They were advocating for a plaque at their schools through the Native American Student Association. Isa is a West High School Student and Marina is an East High School student. They came to the parent committee and the parents were supportive. The parents were going to start doing fundraising. However COVID-19 hit and once it hit, then
everything stopped. I believe it was in December 2021 when we coming back to some normalcy.
The Title VI parents meet with the superintendent every December. That’s a standing tradition. They went to the meeting and Dr. Jenkins was there. This was online. And we talked about land acknowledgement. He was all for it. He really appreciated how the students were advocating for it. He supported them and gave them encouragement and told them to go big. What happened next was the students and the parent committee talked about it and decided to go big and to cover all the schools.”
The result was that over the next three years — beginning in Spring 2023 — the schools will hold land acknowledgement ceremonies and install plaques at their schools.
And one of the biggest Native student activist pushes was on the Native logo and mascot issue.
“Native American mascots have been a big issue here in Madison and across the state and the country,” Tindall said. “Here in Madison, I believe in 2014-2015, they enacted a dress code, which prevented students from wearing anything that was a Native American mascot, especially the Washington mascot. That was banned from schools. If a principal or teacher saw a student wearing one, they would be sent home and have to change. That’s been a big issue, but of course the mascot has been changed. Gabe Saiz helped with creating a film called Understanding the Harm. You can watch it on YouTube. It’s really well done. I think it is 30 minutes. It’s also on our website somewhere. You might have to look hard to find it.”
These efforts are important, but the change really happens when Native culture and history are integrated into the MMSD curriculum so that all students learn about Native people.
In 1989, ACT 31 was enacted in response to the Chippewa spearfishing controversy when mobs of white people protested at the Ojibwe boat landing sites.
“Landing protestors were holding signs that had racist slogans on them like ‘Save a Walleye, Spear an Indian,’” Tindall said. “They would also have the head of a Native on top of a spear. These images went across the world. And then Wisconsin started to take action.”
ACT 31 mandated that all Wisconsin public schools incorporate Native history and culture into the elementary school curriculum at least twice and high school curriculum at least once in order to reduce the ignorance that fueled the spearfishing controversy.
The WI Dept. of Public Instruction was granted the authority to enforce Act 31 and had a budget to implement the enforcement. But in subsequent state budgets, the enforcement budget was removed and ACT 31 essentially became a recommendation instead of a requirement.
“There really hasn’t been very much progress in the classrooms,” Tindall said. “Here and there throughout the state there are teachers who implement Act 31. But the state states that it should be schoolwide.”
One of the barriers to implementation of Act 31 has been the availability of quality and accurate resources about Native Americans.
“It’s up to each school if they decide and a lot of times other things take precedence,” Tindall said. “Even every day in the elementary classroom, it is easy to focus on the required content with math, reading and writing and then social studies and science are maybe taught once per week. As a former classroom teacher, I had to make deliberate effort to plan social studies. And I would usually combined it with writing, for example. There are ways to offer it. When I was a parent in Black River Falls and my kids were attending school there, I was always advocating for American Indian content in the curriculum. There was always the refrain that there is not enough classroom resources. And so there are no lessons. There are no books. And in the textbooks that existed — and they still exist — there is very little written, very little included about American Indians. Maybe there might be a unit about history, but then it would be like one paragraph about American Indians. So this is an ongoing problem. It’s been many years to deal with the problem about a lack of American Indian content in the schools. And it’s not just in this state. It’s also across the country.”