Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Native Americans make case to Nevada lawmakers to allow cultural regalia at public school graduations

'Our Voice Matter' Unveiling

Ohitikahwin Beautiful Bald Eagle, a fancy shawl dancer from the Mincoujou Lakota Tribe, is pictured in cultural dress Oct. 13, 2020, at the Las Vegas Indian Center. Assembly Bill 73 would fix into Nevada law guarantees on “traditional tribal regalia or recognized objects of religious or cultural significance” at any public school graduation.

After the Lyon County School District began allowing Native American students to adorn their graduation caps with beads and feathers six years ago, the Yerington Paiute Tribe resumed its ceremony bestowing eagle feathers upon its youths completing high school.

Delmar Stevens has conducted the ceremony for the past two years for the Yerington and neighboring Walker River Paiute tribes. Last year, the teens included his son, Kutoven.

Native Americans who follow tradition hold the eagle feather as a sacred connection to the Creator, with a reverence that a Catholic might attach to rosary beads.

“When Ku wore his beaded cap and when he wore his feather that he earned, he did so with dignity and grace and honored our traditions, honored our ancestry,” said Stevens, the Yerington Paiute Tribe’s vice chairman.

Not every Indigenous student in Nevada has that option because dress codes for graduations are made locally. In the Clark County School District, acceptable graduation attire is up to each high school principal.

Assembly Bill 73, which cleared its first hearing in the Assembly Education Committee on Tuesday, would fix into state law guarantees on “traditional tribal regalia or recognized objects of religious or cultural significance” at any public school graduation, including but not limited to high school.

The proposal is not strictly for Indigenous cultures, although the majority of the roughly 30 people who spoke in support of the bill identified as Native American, mostly from Nevada tribes. Nobody spoke in opposition.

Adrian Tom, an education specialist for the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, said many young people who live on the reservation don’t graduate. Those who do have earned a feather. Beadwork is also an honor and can be expensive and time-consuming.

“We are ceremonial people,” he said.

Colton Desimone, a member of the Walker River Paiute tribe, said he was told he could not wear a beaded cap to his Minden Douglas High School graduation last year, although his older brother did. His brother has graduation photos that Colton could not replicate.

“I look at these pictures and see how I was told my culture was a distraction,” he said. “I am deeply disappointed that the state (which) prides itself on Native American education does not already protect and sanctify the Native American culture. However, this bill brings new hope.”

His cousin Sydney Williams, soon to graduate from Douglas High in Northern Nevada, said high school was hard enough after the pandemic closed campuses.

“As a Native American who grew up off of my reservation, I already feel as though I am not doing enough to stay connected to my culture, and I know that I am not the only one,” she said.

The Las Vegas-based Asian Community Development Council hosts “GraduAsian” for local college students to attend in cultural garb to “be able to honor their ancestors’ sacrifices, their families’ sacrifice, to be there,” said Eric Jeng from One APIA Nevada, which also advocates for people of Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) heritage.

About 7% of Nevada’s schoolchildren are AANHPI, and Jeng said he wanted the same respect for them that college graduates received.

Evan Robinson, a Black and openly gay UNR student who graduated from Las Vegas’ Rancho High School last year, helped lead a campaign to allow students to wear cultural items at graduation at his school.

The students circulated a petition, talked to their administrators and the CCSD School Board, and staged a demonstration. They won when Superintendent Jesus Jara delegated the decision on graduation dress to principals.

Robinson said he wanted that standardized around the state.

“Although this bill cannot make up for the years of mistreatment my people have suffered in America, it is one of the many necessary protections that are needed to begin healing racial problems within our community,” he said.

Assembly Bill 73 says that cultural adornments can be worn with or attached to customary academic caps and gowns as long as they aren’t likely to cause a “substantial disruption of, or material interference” with the graduation ceremony. They can represent the traditions of any group of people, not just racial or ethnic groups.

“Good policy’s oftentimes a confluence of a desire and need from our constituents from our community, and also a problem that has an easy solution,” said Democratic Assemblyman Reuben D’Silva, who is also a Rancho teacher.

Kutoven Stevens, the tribal vice chairman’s son, graduated from Yerington High School, where about 1 in 10 students is Indigenous. Yerington High is only about 10 miles from the reservation, and about 50 miles from Carson City and the Stewart Indian School, where the federal government once forced assimilation into white society on Native children.

Kutoven Stevens, a state cross-country champion for the Yerington Lions, founded the Remembrance Run, an annual run of healing between the reservation and Stewart, which is now a museum and cultural center that acknowledges the campus’s painful past.

The run traces the path of Stevens’ great-grandfather, who ran away three times to return to his family after being forcibly confined to a state-run boarding school that took indigenous children from their families in an effort to erase tribal identities.

The eagle feather that Stevens wore when he graduated from Yerington High connected him to his great-grandfather and other forebears. It would do the same for other Indigenous youths and honor them directly, too, Delmar Stevens said.

“Thank you so much,” for considering the bill, Delmar Stevens said. He added, “Pesa u,” which is thank you in Northern Paiute.