Molly Hootch 1

Running head: MOLLY HOOTCH AND THE TOBELUK CONSENT DECREE

Molly Hootch and the Tobeluk Consent Decree of 1976

Delilah Hodge

Western New Mexico University

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Introduction

In 1976, rural Alaskan education was changed forever. Starting with the signature

of a young girl named Molly Hootch on a petition to sue the state of Alaska for a high

school in her small village of 400 people, the Tobeluk Consent decree has become, “the

largest settlement in the history of American education litigation,” (Cotton, 1984, p. 2)

resulting in 105 new high schools across rural Alaska. Prior to the decree, students who

finished 8th grade were forced to relocate hundreds of miles away from their homes in

order to attain a high school diploma.

I teach in the Lower Kuskokwim School District (LKSD). It is the largest rural

school district in Alaska, in number of sites, teachers, and students. Spread over an area

the size of West Virginia, LKSD is comprised of twenty-one village schools as well as

five schools in its hub city, Bethel. 352 teachers educate approximately 3800 students in

kindergarten through grade twelve. 68% of the students in this district are Alaska

Native/Native American, 26.2% are Caucasian, 6.9% are multiethnic, 2.1% are Korean,

1.7% are Hispanic, 0.9% are black, and 0.5 list Other. Approximately 27.44% of these

students live below the poverty line, and the dropout rate for the 2004 - 2005 school year

was 11% (Lower Kuskokwim School District, 2006).

Because of its remoteness, the district is accessible only by air from the larger

Alaskan cities of Anchorage and Fairbanks. In the winter once freeze-up occurs, travel

between the villages and Bethel is possible through twin-engine aircrafts, snowmobiles,

dog sleds, and a car or truck (if one is brave enough to drive the frozen Kuskokwim river

highway). After break-up, boats and airplanes provide the only means of transport.
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Although it’s hard to imagine, thirty years ago there was no LKSD. Elementary

schools led by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) provided a rudimentary education for

students in the villages and the Bethel public schools were run separately by the state.

The Molly Hootch case and subsequent Tobeluk Consent decree made my school district

what it is today.

Statement of the Problem

The purpose of my research is to investigate the impact the Molly Hootch

Case/Tobeluk Consent Decree of 1976 had on rural Alaskan education, more specifically

the Lower Kuskokwim Delta, and whether or not educational opportunities for students

in the village have gotten better or worse since 1976.

Literature Review

Education up to 1927

The lifestyle of the Yup’ik people inhabiting the Lower Kuskokwim Delta

evolved slowly over 10,000 years. From 8,000 B.C. to 1884 A.D. the people cultivated

artic survival skills such as: hunting; fishing; gathering; boat making; skin sewing; and

dog sledding. “The qasgiq (men’s house) was the social and ceremonial center of village

life…. Men spent their spare time in the qasiq talking and carving tools, weapons, bowls,

kayaks, and elaborate ceremonial equipment.” (Fienup-Riordan, 1994, p. 34) “Young

men received an essential part of their education as they listened to and observed the

older men at work.” (Fienup-Riordan, 1994, p. 37)

On June 20, 1884, the Moravian Church established a mission in Bethel. One

year later five missionaries, led by John H. Kilbuck, started a school in Bethel. Although

Yup’ik was established as the language of the Moravian Church in Alaska (a policy that
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continues to the present day) the focus of the schools was to instill a westernized belief

system and convert the children to Christianity. (KYUK, 1985) This meant 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 terms of the entire Lower Kuskokwim Delta, a relatively small number of students

attended the mission school.

BIA/Boarding schools

In 1921 congress gave the BIA authorization to spend money for the, “general

support and civilization,” (Rosenfelt, 1973, p. 495) of Native American children.

Although the federal government had no legal obligation to provide educational services

to Native Alaskans, they proclaimed:

When public schools are not accessible because of geographical isolation,

nontaxable status of Indian lands, or for other reasons, the Federal Government

recognizes its responsibility to continue to meet the educational needs of Indian

children until such time as the states are able to assume full educational

responsibility for all of their children. (Rosenfelt, 1973, p. 502)

After this declaration the Bureau extended its services to more remote sections of the

Alaskan Territory, establishing elementary schools in many of the villages.

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. An alternative to that was attending one of the

three boarding schools in the state of Alaska: Mt. Edgecumbe, founded in 1947, was a
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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. Once the Alaskan boarding schools reached full

capacity or if students preferred leaving the state, Chemawa Indian School in Salem,

Oregon and Chilocco Indian School in Chilocco, Oklahoma served as learning facilities.

(Ray, 1958) If a student did not wish to leave home, their education ended.

“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 made

it through the first two years of any boarding program.”(Kleinfeld, 1985, ¶ 13) While

some of these boarding students left school altogether, most shuffled from program to

program, still unhappy. With over half of village children choosing not to attend high

school, the graduation rate of village high school students was somewhere around 15%.

No exact numbers are known.

Molly Hooch Case

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. (Hootch v. Alaska State-Operated School System,

1972) Molly began high school with a host family in Anchorage. “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.

The state contended that, “it was both financially incapable of providing village

high schools and that it had a ‘compelling reason’ for not doing so  namely, that village
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high schools were ‘ ill-conceived,’ ‘marginal,’ and would have ‘potential adverse

effects’.” (Cotton, 1984, p.5) In 1974 the Alaska Superior court sided with the state and

ruled that local high schools were not required. In May 1975, The Alaska Supreme court

upheld the decision and effectively squelched the Molly Hootch case. (Cotton, 1984)

Later that year 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.”

(Cotton, 2004, p. 2) They brought in records proving the state had established high

schools in small predominately white communities, where the students had daily access

by bus to a biracial city school, but the parents were complaining about, “their children

attending school with natives,” (Cotton, 1984, p. 5) even as requests for local high

schools in larger, more remote areas in native communities were ignored.

“While the state had managed to provide local high schools for 6300 Native kids

statewide, it had failed to do so for 2700 others, leaving close to one-third of

native high-school aged kids without local high schools to go to. But with 28,000

non-Native high schoolers in the State, only 120 – less than one half of one

percent – did not have a local high school to attend.” (Cotton, 2004, p.5)

After hearing the arguments, the state proposed a settlement.

The Tobeluk Consent Decree was signed in October 1976 and, “communities with

eight or more high school students were given the choice of creating a school or sending
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their children elsewhere.” (Abbott, 1980, p.2) At the cost of over $137 million 105

villages across Alaska received local high schools.

Methodology

In trying to answer my question of whether or not educational opportunities for

students in the village have gotten better or worse since 1976, I conducted unstructured

interviews with three staff members at my elementary school. The first interview was

with our school librarian who attended the William E. Beltz School in Nome during its

conversion from a boarding school to a regional high school in the early 1980s. The

second interview is with a 2nd grade teacher who has taught in the Lower Kuskokwim

Delta for over 25 years. The final interview was with our Yup’ik language teacher who

went to a boarding school from grade 6-8, transferred to the local Bethel high school, and

later became a dorm parent for the newly formed Bethel Regional High School.

Results

Dora’s Story

I had the choice to go away for school at Mt. Edgecumbe, where my mother and

uncles had gone, but my family at the time had relocated to Nome. It made more sense to

stay there. My family is originally from Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island, so Nome was

a big change. The interesting thing I remember my freshman year at the high school is

that, and I guess it wasn’t intentional, but there seems to have been like segregation. I

remember I came from the village and all the villagers sat on one side of the room and the

all of the town kids, the non-native kids, sat on the other side of the room, The teachers

never made an attempt to integrate. They never said oh let’s mix it up or came up with
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innovative ways to have the class mingle. I just remember half and half. The year after

thee were a lot less village kids, so it wasn’t as noticeable.

They had very high expectations in the Nome Beltz School. As a matter of fact it

was one of the first schools in the state that created a vocational school inside of the high

school. When I went there they had so many programs that aren’t available today

because there’s a lack of funding. They had house building classes where kids could

build a whole house in the high school and they had home ec. classes, where often times

it was the girls who got to go in a decorate the houses and wallpaper them. I was one of

those girls (laughs). They had airframe building classes; they had mechanics, aircraft

mechanics, and auto mechanics at different levels. I mean these are really good hands on

kinds of classes that kids need in rural Alaska, and they don’t have those today. When I

went to high school, there were 7 languages offered at that high school. Today there’s

only 1. I got to take Latin, Russian, German, French. I got to take all these different

classes and I feel like I got a really good education at that high school… and today I just

don’t see the same quality of education that we had. Which is really disappointing. When

they incorporated the village schools that took away money and staff, so was that a good

thing or not, you know? It’s hard to say. I mean they’re with their families in the villages,

but then they give up a quality education, I think.

An Interview with Nelson

D: When you were teaching at the K-12 school in Chevak, @ how many high school

students did you have?

Nels: When I was out in Chevak we had about 70 high school students.
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D: In a larger high school, teachers can specialize. How were you able to teach 3 or four

science classes, math classes, etc.?

Nels: We had 4 teachers, one took care of all the science, one took care of all the

language arts, one took care of all the social studies requirements, and one took care of all

the math assignments.

D: So did you teach AP classes also?

Nels: We did not have AP classes. We just did classes for high school credit.

D: Do you honestly feel that when the students graduated from the village schools that

they were prepared for college?

Nels: Some were prepared and went to college and are teachers out in Chevak right now,

I know and a few are teaching in Holy Cross right now.

D: Do you think setting up schools in the village so more students had an opportunity to

attend high school was better than students attending boarding schools where they offered

a wider variety of courses?

Nels: I think it worked out well for both. Some kids wanted to stay and be at home by

their families while in high school. Others were willing and did well when they went of

to Edgecumbe or St Mary’s. When we were at Chevak I know they had a vocational

department that was a part of the cultural heritage department and they taught the

students how to make traps. They made boats, and sheds, sleds, and lots of traditional

things. They made masks, taught the kids how to carve ivory and soapstone, those kids of

things.
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D: I think that’s wonderful when it comes to building students self-esteem and helping to

maintain a culture that’s rapidly eroding, but do you think it prepared them for life

outside the village?

Nels: I don’t know… I always felt the students had to sort of prepare themselves. I don’t

see where any high school really prepares you for anything much. You make the most

and take what you can from it. Either you can adapt when you get to college or it’s sort

of “sink or swim”

Ruby’s Words

Do I think village high schools are better than boarding schools? Yes and no. Um,

It’s better that they are with their parents. Their parents can deal with them. Their parents

know their ups and downs. It’s better that they learn their culture and the ways of

hunting, sewing, cutting fish… surviving. They learn through observing their parents.

They speak the language. That’s one very good reason to stay home. To learn along with

the parents. Because parents are the first teachers.

It’s funny (laughs) my older brother was in Edgecumbe and when he finally came

home, my little sister said, “When are you going home?” Here he was home and our little

sister didn’t know who he was. She thought he was a visitor. The parents still recognize

their children, but the little ones don’t. The thing the parents don’t know is the change

they [boarding school students] have adjusted to when they have gone to city life. Like

coming back to honey buckets and no running water, hunting for food, and the

subsistence way of life. They lose all that when they are gone. Critical years are when

they are teenagers and the parents need to show them all these things. They miss out on a

lot. They will know how to fish because they can learn that if they come back in the
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summer. But the winter stuff will be lost. After four years of being away, they will have

to get accustomed to the way things are done.

Parents were not supportive of going away to high school, and I know that. My

dad was going to send me back home, because my mom had to go to the hospital in

Anchorage for three months. My dad finally decided that another family was going to

live with them. My cousin, his wife, and their children, they all moved to my family’s

house, while my mom was away, to take care of the kids so that I could go to school for a

whole 9 months at Wrangle Institute. I was real young then. That’s the first time I was

away I missed Christmas with my family and I was very sad. We didn’t have a lot of

money. May dad’s only income was fishing in the summertime. And after fishing he

paid for the yearly barge order that lasted us through the winter. So there was no money

for me to have a ticket home. I am glad I had the experience, because I know how it feels,

and there were others like me at the school. I saw little kids there 6 and 7 years old

because their village had no school. Can you imagine how they felt? Here I was crying

over my parents at twelve and they were half my age. I still talk to some of those people

today.

In the school they taught us how to study and do chores (laughs) lots of chores to

do. We had chores in the morning, then breakfast. We went to school. Lunch. Then go

back to the dorm and do more chores. On the weekends we had to clean up lots of things.

Upstairs, downstairs, the rec. hall, our rooms. We had lots to do, but it was worth it. It

was a good experience. I’m glad I did it.

After Wrangell, I came here to Bethel for high school. I didn’t want to go to

Oregon and I didn’t want to go to Oklahoma. Those were the schools that were open back
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then. Mt. Edgecumbe was a choice, but I wanted to be closer to home. When my husband

and I were going to school in Bethel, we ended up getting married. We got married in

December and we were going to graduate in May. We weren’t supposed to get married,

but we had to get married and my son was born in June. In the fall they put us, as

newlyweds, in a cottage with 9 girls. We weren’t officially dorm parents yet, but they

had us look after them. Maybe three of them were older than me and I know one or two

were older than my husband. So, we didn’t know how to take care of drinking kids then.

All the problems that happened, we didn’t know back then, but we survived that year and

we had fun. Those girls helped me a lot. A couple years later we became dorm parents

when the regional high school opened up here. The dorms held 90 boys and 90 girls. All

those kids (laughs) and we stayed on for nine years.

Conclusion

Educational opportunities for students in the villages of the Lower Kuskokwim

Delta have definitely gotten better since 1976. During the BIA/Boarding school era there

was an 85% drop out rate. In 2005 it was 11%. Questions about the quality of education

at local village high schools versus that of boarding schools and whether village students

are prepared for college are issues for a different paper. I think the Molly Hootch case

was the greatest thing that happened to students in the villages, because it gave everyone

access to a high school diploma.

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References

Abbott, J. (1980, September 13). Legacy of Molly Hootch. Anchorage Daily News.

Retrieved April 21, 2006, from

http://www.alaskool.org/native_ed/MollyHootch/AND/2legacy.htm

Cotton, S. E. (1984). Alaska's "Molly Hootch" Case: High Schools and the Village

Voice. Education Research Quarterly, 8, 30-43.

Cotton, S. E. (2004, February 27). Thirty Years Later: the Molly Hootch case. Speech

presented to the University of Alaska Symposium. Retrieved April 16, 2006, from

http://www.alaskool.org/native_ed/MollyHootch/Papers/Cotton_Thirty%20Year

%20Later_final.htm

Fienup-Riordan, A. (1994). Boundaries and Passages: rule and ritual in Yup’ik Eskimo

oral tradition. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.

Getches, D.H. (1977). Law and Alaska Native Education: the influence of federal and

state legislation upon education of rural Alaska Natives. Fairbanks: Center for

Northern Educational Research, University of Alaska.

Hootch v. Alaska State-Operated School System, C.A. No. 72-2450.

Kleinfeld, J., & Bloom, J. (1973). A long way from home: Effects of public high schools

on village children away from home. Center of Northern Educational Research

and Institute of Social, Economic and Government Research, University of

Alaska: Fairbanks.

Kleinfeld, J.S., McDiarmid, G.W., and Hagstrom, D. (1985). Alaska’s Small Rural

High Schools: Are they working? Center of Northern Educational Research

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and Institute of Social, Economic and Government Research, University of

Alaska: Fairbanks.

KYUK TV Productions (Producer). (1985).We of the River [Motion picture]. (Available

from KYUK TV Productions, P.O. Box 468, Bethel, AK 99559)

Lower Kuskokwim School District [Web site]. Retrieved April 16,2006, from

http://www.lksd.org.

Ray, C.K. (1958). A Program for Education of Alaska’s Natives. Fairbanks: University of

Alaska Press.

Rosenfelt, D. M. (April 1973). Indian Schools & Community Control. Stanford Law

Review, 4, 489-550.

Tobeluk v. Lind, C.A. No. 72-2450