Contact us at: whispernthunder1@gmail.comSpyder Goes to College to Learn. The Ohio National Guard Shoot at Him
~ Ron Leith
In the summer of 1971, while attending Macalester
College in St. Paul, Minnesota, I attended an AIM
Youth meeting (American Indian Movement). I had
been reading about Alcatraz, AIM, and other national
stories on American Indian events in the Akwesasne
Notes, a newspaper produced by the St. Regis
Mohawk in New York.
I wanted to see what American Indian youth were doing within AIM. I was 19 years old. I attended Kent State University in Ohio from January to May 1970. While attending Kent State on an Honors Roll Scholarship, I majored in Art and Art History. I was one of only two American Indian students at the school. I never met the other student; I was told she was from the Mohawk tribe in New York. I wasn’t at Kent State long enough to get to know anyone except my mentor, Journalism Professor Charles Brill.
Charles was writing a book on the Red Lake Chippewa, and he asked me to write the captions to his photographs of life in Red Lake. I was a senior at Red Lake High School set to graduate in May 1970. In January 1970, I went to Kent, Ohio, and enrolled at the University.
This was during the height of the Vietnam War, and troops were moving into Cambodia. Carpet bombing with napalm was a Nixon administration policy of aggression. It was not popular.
Witnessing the horrendous carnage at Kent State was a social, psychological, and political turning point for me. I got to see firsthand the results of fear-based military management, which led to the killing of four innocent and defenseless American youth. This event would shape the remainder of my life as an American Indian and as an American citizen.
The only reason I was spared was that I stood between the pillars of the Journalism building, where the shootings took place. The aftermath was the first real shock of my life. I had come to learn, and learning is what happened. I learned not to trust the government.
I feel very fortunate to have been mentored by the best that Indian Country has had to offer. In 1971, I met and became family with the leadership of the American Indian Movement. AIM had a fresh vision of Indian Education and what it means to the Indian community. They offered a direct solution to the problems that existed in the non-Indian, colonialist educational system. This was important to me because I saw what the current systems provided for Indian youth.
The answer, of course, was Indigenous, native-controlled systems. American Indian administered systems of educational training and learning. This was the system I wanted to be a part of, and I began on the ground floor in the research and development of the American Indian Movement's Survival Schools for Self-Determination. There, I had the freedom to select the best that literature, art, history, science, and politics had to offer and synthesize that work for native students. Between 1968 and 1976, everything changed concerning Indian education, not only in Minnesota but nationally and internationally. The individuals who would become crucial to the new vision were all working within the American Indian Movement. The synthesis of self-determination in education, Native-controlled school systems, educational policy revisionism, and truth in history all emerged during the development of the AIM Survival School systems.
As of this writing, the Red School House is no longer active. But many students have gone on to do great things in Indian Country. Their accomplishments have had long-range effects in many communities. The lessons learned and the lifestyles taught at the school have launched a significant paradigm shift in social, political, spiritual, and cultural arenas. The Red School House effect is still being felt in many families, with its positive impacts becoming intergenerational.
So we say Migwetch, Pidamayedo, and Pinigigi to all who contributed to the Red School House and many other community-based Indian-controlled schools in Minnesota and beyond.