Recognition of Montana's Indians is long overdue

Our nation's greatest monuments and the world's most recognizable symbols of freedom were built by people who were not free. The U.S. Capitol building, the White House and the Washington monument were all constructed primarily by slaves.

I pointed out this startling irony to the Montana Senate a few years ago when the legislature approved making Montana the 50th and last state to recognize Martin Luther King Day.

We were probably last because less than 1 percent of our state population is black. No significant constituency pushed for Martin Luther King Day in Montana, and so we ignored the day until national attention focused on us for doing so. We then acted as a result of pressure from outside our state rather than from within it.

Recently, the legislature acted to recognize a minority group whose constitutional rights we have ignored for more than three decades. Montana ranks fourth among the states in the percentage of our population which is American Indian. An estimated 12 percent of our school age population is Indian.

In acknowledgement of our large native minority, the Montana Constitution uniquely requires that instruction in Indian culture and heritage be part of the educational goals of our state. Perhaps some introspection is required on the part of each of us to understand why it took more than three decades to begin to implement this unambiguous and very specific provision of our state constitution, which is so clearly relevant to us.

In addition to the hard-to-ignore size of the minority in Montana, there are some hard-to-ignore facts that we need know. A few days after Sept. 11, 2001, I happened to be driving through Browning. On nearly every house, there was an American flag. In spite of the fact that they were legally relegated to second-class citizenship, not even given the right to vote until 1924, American Indians have been the most vigilant of our citizens in protecting our freedom.

Montanans are arguably either number one or number two among the states in terms of military enlistments per capita. But notably, an even higher percentage of Montana Indians than non-Indians are veterans of the armed forces of our country.

Probably the most familiar symbol of the American fighting spirit is the dramatic Joe Rosenthal photograph of the soldiers erecting the flag over Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima during World War II. Perhaps the best known of them was a Pima Indian from Arizona named Ira Hayes.

However heroic, the flag raising was a re-enactment. Three young GIs had hoisted the colors on the mountaintop earlier that day. Soon after, all were killed in the intense fighting to secure the Japanese island fortress. One of the three who was not in the right place at the right time to attain immortality, but who gave his life for his country, was Marine Pfc. Louis Charlo, an 18-year-old Flathead Indian from Arlee and great grandson of the historic Chief Charlo.

Better known than Indian patriotism is Indian poverty. Indians are Montana's poorest people. Unemployment is 70 percent on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Several other Montana reservations are not far behind.

The symbiotic tie between Indian poverty and poor quality of education is also painfully apparent. The general student population in Montana tests well above the national average, but the "achievement gap" between white and American Indian students in our state is equal to the gap between minority and white students in the nation's most troubled inner city schools.

Soon Montana students will begin to learn more about our misunderstood minority, as Indian education for all becomes a reality. MLK Day recognizes the goal of equal rights within our nation. The implementation of the Indian cultural and heritage provisions of our state constitution is the overdue beginning of the same recognition in Montana.

All Montanans now have a new opportunity to work together to make Indian education for all a living monument worthy of the culture and heritage our state constitution appropriately honors.

Bob Brown is the former Montana State Senate President and Secretary of State, and he is a Senior Fellow at the University of Montana's Center for the Rocky Mountain West.