Indigenous KC: a highlight of the local Indigenous voices

Driving down to the Plaza for his yearly visit to Kansas City, SM Northwest alum Ryan RedCorn was instantly filled with a sense of dread as he spotted the police lights through his rear-view mirror. But after being pulled over to the side of the road, several officers called to the scene for backup surrounded the car. The situation escalated from a simple traffic stop to what RedCorn remembers as a hostile, almost dangerous altercation with the officers — traffic stops historically have severe consequences to natives, as they are statistically more likely than any other race to be killed by a law enforcement officer during police encounters, according to CDC data from 2009-2019.

The reason he was pulled over? The officer didn’t recognize his tribal tags on the license plate and thought they were fake. 

“I get pulled over every time — every single time,” RedCorn said. “And that’s embarrassing for the police. How do the police not know about tribal tags? There are 39 tribes in Oklahoma, several of which were moved out of Kansas. The police officer that pulled me over had never even heard of Osage before.”

RedCorn points partial blame towards the education system’s lack of native education. Incidents like this one are products of the erasure of native people in the curriculum. Had the officer known about tribal sovereignty — the self-governance of native nations, which includes motor vehicle registration — RedCorn believes that he would probably never be pulled over in the first place. 

Additionally, RedCorn notes that the negative attitude towards Indigenous students while he was enrolled in the Shawnee Mission School District caused him to go through numerous uncomfortable encounters. RedCorn became used to seeing banners reading “Kill the Indians” or “Scout the Indians,” referring to SM North’s previous mascot of the Indian, being usually the only Indigenous student in his classes and having students do the tomahawk chop whenever they saw him in the hallway. Being exposed to this not only made him feel unwelcome, but ruined his faith in the system he once trusted to educate him and his classmates. 

“I have kids now, there’s no way in hell [I’ll] put them in that school district,” RedCorn said. “I would never want them to go through the things that I went through. My kids go to an Osage immersion school now. I can tell you, they’re not being bullied for their culture, and they’re not being bullied for who they are. The teachers that are operating there understand how important that is to the development of our people.”

For Haskell Indian Nations University professor and Pueblo woman Rhonda LeValdo, education about Indigenous history begins with kids and students educating each other. She says that glossing over Indigenous history in schools isn’t only detrimental to the general perception of native people by non-natives, but it prevents native youth from learning about their own history. 

“Our history books don’t tell the real history of what happened,” LeValdo said. “It’s very whitewashed and sanitized because, ‘God forbid [the curriculum] tells about the massacres that happened and how our people were killed off, and how our kids were stripped away from their families and sent away to boarding schools. That they had their hair cut, had their clothes changed and how they were punished if they spoke their own language.’” 

For some native people, they aren’t able to learn about their culture from their relatives either, as many native people don’t have any knowledge of their culture due to the boarding school systems and how it eliminated many of their ancestors. Sarah Preu, an Anishinaabe woman and owner of local business WildCraft Co., recalls her grandfather’s forced assimilation to white culture in a residential school.

“He tried to blend into the white world,” Preu said. “So he left the reservation so that he could essentially erase that traumatic experience [of the residential school system]. And it wasn’t until his later years that he began to reconnect with his culture.” 

It was years before Preu was able to learn from her grandfather and connect with him and their shared culture. She believes that this rekindling of Indigenous culture is essential for healing from intergenerational trauma — the lasting effects of suffering caused by colonization that is passed down through each generation.

Along with this rekindling comes positive change — on an individual basis, but also addressing the systemic issues. 

“I think now, in the last generation or so, there’s an awareness around all of this, and I think we’re starting to see the culture wake up,” Preu said. “Earlier this year, the first native cuisine restaurant opened in Minneapolis called the Sioux Chef and it’s all pre-colonial food. That’s pretty revolutionary. In my grandfather’s day that couldn’t even be imagined — he couldn’t imagine being able to go and [eat] ancestral foods or speak in an ancestral language in a public place.” 

Another aspect of culture that is being brought back is language. Melinda Williamson, a Potowatomi woman and owner of Morning Light Kombucha, works to preserve her nation’s language for future generations. 

“We have one fluent speaker left in our community,” Williamson said. “We work closely with her every day to learn our language and get it out to teach the community. Language is the foundation of our tribe. Once we lose our language, we lose a part of our identity, our stories are passed down through the language — our prayers, too.”

SM North’s recent mascot change from the Indians to the Bison was fueled by a greater awareness of cultural insensitivity after the Black Lives Matter protests.

In 2005, a group of her students and LeValdo herself founded “Not In Our Honor,” an organization that fights for Indigenous education in the Kansas City community. One issue at the forefront of Not In Our Honor is campaigning for the renaming of the Kansas City Chiefs.

In recent years, LeValdo feels that her organization has made strides in the process — such as the removal of the horse named “Warpaint,” the discontinued use of a traditional drum and the ban of headdresses worn by fans within Arrowhead Stadium. However, LeValdo still believes that there are still problematic areas.

”We still need to educate people on the harm that these native names and appropriation [of] our culture does to our young people,” LeValdo said. “Healthwise, it affects their self-esteem and how they see themselves. Our young people have the highest rates of suicide. And if your self-esteem isn’t there, it affects your mental health. I would love for us to have a time where our kids don’t have to have this fight, where they don’t have to deal with people doing the tomahawk chop in a restaurant, or down the street or in your face.”

RedCorn and many others call on SMSD, as well as the American public education system in whole, to include native culture in the curriculum. LeValdo advocates for the name change of the Chiefs and the end of the tomahawk chop. These systems in place can either be the cause of native issues, or they could make way for large-scale, systemic change.

To make a change on an individual basis, RedCorn suggests looking into native issues, not only during the month of November, but all year round. Similarly, Williamson emphasizes the importance of supporting local Indigenous business, like her Morning Light Kombucha business or Preu’s WildCraft Co.

“A percentage of sales goes back to Native communities,” Williamson said. “We’ve sponsored basketball teams [on the reservation] and we’ve given back to the Native American Rights Fund who’s doing a lot of work on the ground to protect native peoples’ rights across the country. We’ve donated to local Boys and Girls Clubs on our reservation and beyond, and to different tribes that are fighting pipelines. When you support Indigenous businesses, oftentimes you’ll see their businesses are really bigger than them. And so it’s really nice to see more people supporting businesses like mine.”

LeValdo leaves readers with one message: listen to native people as they offer systematic change and offer help wherever possible.

“We’re trying to make [non-natives] aware that we’re human beings too,” Levaldo said. “We matter. Our people matter. What we want matters and we deserve to be respected and have our wishes respected.”