Molly Hootch and the Tobeluk Consent Decree

Delilah Hodge

Educ 506

The Lower Kuskokwim delta is in the south west corner of

Alaska

My school district covers 21 villages and the hub city of

Bethel.

Each site is provides students with a K-12 education

but this has not always been the case

Traditionally in Yup’ik culture,

the qasgiq (men’s house) was the social

and ceremonial center of village

Young men received an essential part of their education as they

listened to and observed the older men talking and carving tools, weapons, bowls, kayaks, and

elaborate ceremonial equipment.

                                                                                                                                                                The remainder of their training was hands-on as they helped the men hunt, fish, and store meat for the winter.

In 1885, five Moravian missionaries started a

school in Bethel in order to convert

children to Christianity

The children were now spending the majority of the day being taught by people who viewed the world in a very different

way and had values that were contradictory to their traditional way of

life

In 1921 the Bureau of Indian Affairs extended its services to more remote sections of the

Alaskan Territory and established elementary schools in many of the villages.

                            

They provided a rudimentary K through 8th grade education.

Students who graduated from the

village schools in the Lower Kuskokwim Delta and wanted to pursue a high school

diploma had three choices.

One option was to move to a larger urban area such as Bethel or Anchorage, and live

with a host family while attending a territory-operated high school.

Anchorage high school @ 1962

An alternative to that was attending one of the three boarding schools in the state of Alaska. Mt. Edgecumbe, founded in 1947, was a BIA run high school in Sitka; St. Mary’s, a Jesuit

mission school in the city of St. Mary’s, or the William E. Beltz School in Nome

Mt Edgecumbe

Beltz School

Chemawa Indian School, Salem, OR

Chilocco Indian School, Chilocco, Oklahoma

Once the Alaskan boarding schools reached full capacity or if students

preferred leaving the state, they could attend

either

or

All three options sent students hundreds of miles away from their homes

Drop out rates for these programs were HIGH. Almost 25 percent of the students left during their freshman

year and others left during the summer. Only 46 percent of those who chose to go made it through the

first two years of any boarding program.

In 1972, a 16-year-old girl named Molly Hootch was the first to sign a petition asking for the creating of high schools in her Yukon River village of Emmonak and two others in the Lower Kuskokwim Delta

Molly began high school with a host family in Anchorage, four hundred miles away from her village. “In her boarding home she was treated as an unpaid servant and babysitter. On the school bus and at school, she was teased and picked on because of who she was and where she came from.” (Cooke, 2004, p.3) After two years Molly was through. She dropped out of school and returned to her village.

Alaska Superior court ruled that local high schools were not required

In 1975 another suit was brought against the State of Alaska headed by a different girl’s name from the Lower Kuskokwim Delta.

Anna Tobeluk, 18 years old from the 400-person village of Nunapitchuk, wanted to continue school, but was

unable to leave her village. The case of Tobeluk v. Lind claimed the state,

“was discriminating against Native kids in

rural villages by failing to provide them with

local schools.”

After hearing the arguments, the state proposed a settlement. The Tobeluk Consent Decree was signed in October 1976 and 105 villages across Alaska

received local high schools.

The high school drop out rate for the Lower Kuskokwim Delta has gone from somewhere around 85% during the BIA/Boarding school

era to 11% in 2005.

I think the Molly Hootch case/Tobeluk Consent decree was the greatest thing that ever happened to rural Alaskan

education

It improved educational opportunities for students in the

villages of the Lower Kuskokwim Delta and gave

everyone access to a high school diploma.

Tobeluk Memorial School