Education and Empowerment: Narragansett tribal learning

Of all the words of strength and unity heard in Indian Country, “empowerment” is one of the loudest. Stemming back to the Indigenous civil rights movements of the 1960s, empowerment represents a sense of self and civic pride — the reclamation and preservation of tribal governance, identity and community after centuries of loss and erosion. At the core of Indigenous empowerment is the value of education, and across the nation, tribal learning programs are spreading messages of social cohesion to anyone wanting in on the party. 

In RI, the Narragansett Indian Tribe runs adult learning programs out of the reservation’s administrative center in Charlestown. Undiscriminating and open-ended, the initiatives are designed to assist adult learners in becoming “employable, productive and self-sufficient,” whatever their stage in life. At the top, mature students wanting to complete high school are eligible for the adult education program (coupled with a course in cultural awareness), with financial and tutorial assistance provided to encourage as many students as possible. The higher education program works on a similar principle, assisting Narragansett students working toward bachelor and graduate degrees with financial support to offset the cost of tuition and educational expenses, along with career and guidance counseling. 

Taken together, the adult education program and higher education program forms an effective learning partnership. Past graduates have gone on to study and work at Community College of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College, Washington County Adult Learning Center, Rhode Island Educational Opportunity Center and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, among many others.

For those with an eye on a trade, the Adult Vocational Training (AVT) Department provides employment and training services to any Indigenous person facing “barriers in their search for full-time, satisfactory employment.” Their work runs deep, policing employment discrimination on or near the reservation, while equipping attendees with vocational guidance, testing and job opportunities. As with the adult learning programs, the AVT provides financial assistance – funded by the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) – toward all forms of vocational training at any accredited institution in the country. Closer to home, AVT also sources employment exclusively on the reservation. These jobs are largely in construction projects, but lead abatement initiatives, funded by an EPA grant, also are offered. 

The focus isn’t only on adults, either. The Johnson O’Malley program provides academic tutoring, counseling and workshops for “any federally recognized Indian students and their parents,” with the intention of addressing “unique and special needs … not met by other departments or agencies.” Off the reservation, Nuweetooun School, founded in 2003, was an educational resource designed to provide dual learning paths for Narragansett children of all ages. Students were instructed in Indigenous skills and practices, as well as given lessons formed around federal education systems. School founder Lorén Spears (current executive director at Tomaquag Museum) explained that while “the economy and the historic floods forced us to close its doors, [Nuweetooun] had its impact in its time, nurturing Native American youth and empowering them through education that included their own culture, history, language and arts while integrating educational norms of today.” But the school’s closing did not end the learning, and Spears’ efforts continue with gusto through youth education programs run at the museum in Exeter.

Just don’t underestimate any of it. In Native America, education means empowerment, and empowerment leads to education. The two coexist and grow together, just as Indigenous people exist in a world with two communities. Tribal education supports and provides instruction in both, nurturing traditional ways and values to contrast with the lessons of 21^st century America. This, in turn, empowers Indigenous students with two sets of skills, buttressed by the ability to manipulate both.

Want to see it in action? Look no further than the US Congress, where two Indigenous Democrats, Deb Haaland of the Navajo and Sharice Davids of the Ho-Chunk, are at the heart of a movement realigning the balance of western politics. It doesn’t get any more empowering than that.