REVERSE ASSIMILATION
Darrell Robes Kipp was a Blackfeet tribal member who refused to ever be on the tribal council. In fact, he instructed his friends that if he should ever run for that office, they should take him to a mental hospital.
He was also one of the most generous, thoughtful, moral examples of the best of indigenous people who dare to be educated at Harvard where his major was sociology and Goddard College where he studied poetry. I cared about him, imposed on him, learned from him, and was inspired by him. I saved a big box of 3 ring notebooks containing his immaculately typed letters from across the country and joking postcards of edifices where he marked X as the room of the place he was staying. This was something he learned from his uncle, who did it while he was in the military. But James was also educated to be a teacher, so they may have been from college.
This was a friendship between Darrell and I, but it was also something else, a conversation between two cultures at a time that began in the Seventies when the times were changing enough for us to share many ideas about education. We were both aspiring writers but neither of us really knew enough about getting books made to be able to share. Darrell’s house had a big white basement space that he remodeled to create and in that space he arranged a writing corner where he set up his computer, lit a scented candle, and waited for inspiration. When he got too frustrated, he fired up his lawn mower and mowed whatever lots with tall grass he found. He said he was revealing the golf course that was originally under the reservation.
At the time the first “one-room” school house was built on Moccasin Flats with the help of Bill Grant (1987), we often sat batting ideas back and forth like badminton players. Shirlee Crowshoe, listening while she worked, called us the “two philosophers.” This was the time of seminal books. The ideas were not specifically tribal, School District #9, which was locked in by history and the state, but from a swarm of ideas in the Harvard/Goddard orbit.
- John Holt — How Children Fail (1964)
- Ivan Illich — Deschooling Society (1971)
- Alexander Sutherland Neil — Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing (1960)
- Neil Postman — The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (1995)
- Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner — Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
- Carl Rogers — Freedom to Learn: A View of What Education Might Become (1969)
“The free school movement, also known as the new schools or alternative schools movement, was an American education reform movement during the 1960s and early 1970s that sought to change the aims of formal schooling through alternative, independent community schools.” . . .
“Their philosophical influence stemmed from the counterculture, A. S. Neill and Summerhill, child-centered progressive education of the Progressive Era, the Modern Schools, and Freedom Schools. Influential voices within the movement included Paul Goodman, Edgar Z. Friedenberg, Herb Kohl, Jonathan Kozol, and James Herndon, with titles such as A. S. Neill’s 1960 Summerhill, George Dennison’s 1969 The Lives of Children, and Jonathan Kozol’s 1972 Free Schools.”
My education and sympathies were also aligned with this material, which made our exchanges possible and fruitful. At first Darrell and Dorothy Still Smoking tried to revive the Blackfeet language through the public school district but finally realized that its public strategy was to pretend to agree and underwrite, but then to block anything from happening. They were assigned a little off-campus office and told to prepare curriculas. One day Darrell just lost patience, went over to a primary school room where he knew the teacher and asked her to go have coffee. That took the lid off as the kids erupted into learning new Blackfeet words. Boy. Girl. Apple.
Because of growing sympathies with indigenous people and the work of the free school movement, it became possible for Darrell to use a network of benefactors to pay for the first little school and then later the larger Cuts Wood School in Browning where it often was used for ceremonies and for a Summer Lecture event organized by Rosalyn LaPier. Featuring indigenous authorities, often from Canada, this was an extension beyond the language movement, a full-scale cultural turnaround.
https://www.pieganinstitute.org/our-partners
The original conception of Piegan Institute included an archive of materials created by graduate students and professors by studying the Blackfeet, but that had never been copied for the people themselves. The council had no academic wing. The Museum of the Plains Indian had no money and a narrow vision.
Two personal qualities kept DRK on track. One was a kind of poise that could be interpreted as stoicism because he absorbed insults and failures without reacting. Fender-benders, teasing that went too far, suspicions about corruption, just went out into space and dissipated because he barely paid attention to them. This ability came from his father, Tom, who was a rancher and railroad worker.
Every morning he loaded his wallet with five dollar bills so when needy people begged for help, he could give them money without comment or IOU’s. The $5 “loan” idea was from his mother, who had been a tribal stenographer in a pool that shared their assets when one of them came up short. Thus he earned ground level credibility. This side of him made him an accepted tribal judge. Most were female, but if they got into a case that was really difficult and maybe dangerous, they turned to Darrell.
The second quality was a maniacal sense of humor, constantly fed by ignorant whites and hang-around-the-fort Indians. We were both merciless about the absurdity and raw stupidity we saw. He and Shirlee were asked to come to the Southwest Museum when the Autry acquired it, so as to evaluate the materials of Walter McClintock. The workroom they were given was full of Kachinas, which are said to change the weather if they were moved, but had to be pushed out of the way to make space on the table. They joked about people suddenly being rained on or snowed in.
Traveling around two countries, US and Canada, to raise money and spread the word, finally took a toll. Even his cabin up at St. Mary’s was not always a safe haven. As the pressure built, we grew apart. I had to leave for some years. Once he came to Portland for some conference and we met for an evening but it was a mismatch. He wanted access to pop music and his generation’s culture. I wanted to show him my animal control world, access to the edge of a dangerous culture that finally attracted the recent destructive insurrection. He finally just frankly directed me to the music store I hadn’t known existed.
When I came back briefly 1989–91, Darrell was still friendly and said — when the school administration was after me again — “I do have a sword, you know. And I can use it if you need it.” It was enough for me to stop weeping. His wife and son moved to Browning and became more active in his life, finally taking over when Darrell had died.
As he became more ill, he became more attached to his mother’s cherished Catholic church and wore a large wooden cross. It was not jewelry. I didn’t weep at his funeral mass. We were all just stunned. To some degree, I still am.
