Anti-Indigenous Graduation Regalia Policies as a Continuation of Forced Assimilation

This is the last edition of our 2021 IfRFA cohort newsletter series. We are so thankful to our fellows Makela Hayford, Nirali Vyas, and Iltaff Bala for writing the previous editions. If you missed them, check out our archive here. Many thanks to Elias for helping us cross the finish line with this necessary contextualization of anti-indigenous graduation regalia policies.
 
In the 1910s, my great great grandmother and her siblings were sent to Thomas Indian School, an Indian boarding school located on the Seneca Nation’s Cattaraugus Territory. They were Seneca, Wolf Clan, and from the lands of the Ohi:yo’. At Thomas Indian School, students were torn from their families and forcibly stripped of their language, culture, religion, and community at the direction of the New York State Department of Social Welfare. The goal of forced assimilation through the boarding school system was simple; as General Richard H. Pratt, the founder of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, often phrased it: “Kill the Indian, save the man.”

Schools in the United States have a long history of active participation in genocide of Indigenous communities and culture. Even now, schools across the U.S. continue to serve as institutions that foster white supremacy and settler colonialism, restrict expression of Indigenous identity and culture, deny Native sovereignty, and actively erase and rewrite Black, Native, and Latine history.

Every year, like clockwork, Indigenous high school and college students are prohibited from wearing traditional regalia to their graduation ceremonies by school districts and ceremony venues. Students are often prohibited from wearing traditional regalia such as eagle feathers and beaded caps, ribbon shirts and medicine bags, appliqued sashes, leis, and mukluks and nasqurrun. Restrictions regarding Indigenous regalia at graduation ceremonies are reminiscent of the boarding schools’ system, granting schools the power to require Native students to leave their Indigenous identities at the door in favor of assimilation into settler colonial American culture. The Lakota People’s Law Project writes: “for too long, schools have been given the legitimacy and power to restrict Native American students’ cultural expression.”

These restrictions also violate the First Amendment rights of Indigenous students, who are routinely denied equal protection under United States law.  For many Native cultures, eagle feathers are religious and spiritual objects, gifted to individuals to mark significant life accomplishments. Wearing eagle feathers and other regalia to graduation ceremonies should be considered protected practices under the Free Exercise Clause and Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. However, there is a long history of the United States denying Native peoples First Amendment rights. In 1978, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) was passed, finally explicitly granting Native peoples the First Amendment right and protection “to believe, express, and exercise [] traditional religions.” However, the protection of AIRFA is limited, and despite guaranteeing a right to religious freedom, Indigenous students are still subjected to school board determinations regarding regalia at school events.

Often claiming a violation of a narrow graduation dress code, school districts routinely cite fears that allowing Indigenous students the right to wear feathers or traditional regalia will require allowing all students to decorate their caps and gowns as they so choose. For example, in 2017, a Chickasaw student was prohibited from wearing regalia to his graduation ceremony because the school board feared that an exception to the dress code for him would lead to other “organizations” attempting to seek similar treatment. School leaders conflating traditional regalia with “decorations” highlights the way that U.S. institutions view Indigenous culture, religion, and sovereignty as comparable to members of clubs gluing cardstock reading “Class of 2021” to a mortarboard.

Courts (also institutions that foster white supremacy and settler colonialism) have routinely sided with school districts, holding that the religious and cultural expression of Indigenous students at their graduation ceremonies are not protected under the First Amendment. Earlier this year, in Waln v. Dysart School District, 2021 WL 1255521 (D. Ariz. 2021), a federal district court ruled that school officials in Sunrise, Arizona, did not violate the First Amendment rights of LaRissa Waln, a Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate student, when she was refused entry to her graduation ceremony when she arrived wearing a beaded cap with an eagle plume attached. The court applied the Hazlewood School District v. Kuhlmeier standard, which dictates that school officials can regulate student speech as long as there is a legitimate educational reason to do so. The court determined that the restrictions were designed to prevent “disruption of the ceremony,” and were therefore reasonable. The court also determined that the dress code was content-neutral and not designed to suppress any students’ religious beliefs, stating:

“[a] graduating high school student’s right to wear a graduation cap adorned with traditional beadwork or an eagle feather to a high school graduation ceremony … was not clearly established under the First Amendment’s free speech or free exercise of religion clause.”

It is hard to ignore the racialization of the term “disruption” and the assertion that prohibiting Native students from wearing eagle feathers does not violate a protection of religious freedom. And it is clear from this ruling that Native students are not provided protection under the First Amendment and are still subjected to assimilationist school policies that prohibit Native culture and identity from even entering school grounds.

From the Indian Boarding Schools to the policies barring Native students from walking the stage at their own graduation for wearing traditional regalia, Native culture and identity has been long targeted by the U.S. educational and judicial systems. As the bodies of our ancestors are exhumed from the grounds of boarding schools across the United States and residential schools across Canada, understand that the legacy of cultural erasure, genocide, and trauma through the boarding school system is ongoing; many of the old assimilation policies have just taken on a new form.

Elias Fox Schmidt is a 3L JD student at the University at Buffalo School of Law. Elias graduated with a Master of Social Work degree from the University at Buffalo School of Social Work in June 2021. Elias is passionate about addressing and educating others on the legal and social issues that affect the trans community. After graduation, Elias hopes to continue serving the trans community in a legal capacity. Elias currently lives in Western New York and has four cats.
It’s hard to believe that summer fellowships are over and that IfRFA is gearing up for Fall 2021 and a whole new year! Again, thank you to our summer fellows and we look forward to sharing our application for our 2021-22 cohort in the coming months.

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