Sunday, October 14, 2007

Changing Winds

Changing Winds is a Native American organization that works with Native Tribes to prevent the misuse of funding by Non Tribal members in the Public School system.

This is not the only type of work they do, but misuse of Title VII funds has become a real problem within the public school system and which takes needed funding from Native American Tribes.

The public schools promote non tribal members in order to obtain funding for Native American programs within their schools.

If a person is a non tribal member, there is usually a reason, some of which include, inability to prove their Indian lines or blood quantum requirements of the tribes or an inability to prove one's family line back to a specific tribal roll. The most common is an inability to prove a *family story* that one is of Indian descent. It is unfortunate that some families particularly of Mexican/Spanish descent, felt the need to claim they were Indian to prevent discrimination in early years, however, in most cases, these claims by the time they got to the 3rd or 4th generation of the *stories beginnings* were taken as truth.

To allow these same individuals to promulgate the same illusion *of Indian Descent* through our public school system is even more unfortunate.

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