Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 176

A group of students at the entrance to the Wahpeton Indian School. COLOR Wahpeton Indian School is a home and a hope Staff Photos by Martin Levison By Ellen Foley Staff Writer Wahpeton, N.D. Two brown full moons shine in Jackie Morrow's eyes, reflecting the promise most 14-year-olds see in the world around them. It was not always so. Three years ago.

Jackie, a Chippewa Indian from Cass Lake, said she had stopped going to school and spent most of her day drunk or high on marijuana. '1 was mad," she said. With the help of teachers and counselors at the Wahpeton Indian School, a boarding school operated by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Jackie turned her anger into ambition. Even though none of her famBy's friends or relatives has graduated from coflege, Jackie said she not only plans 1o get a college degree, but also wants to go to law school.

The people at the Wahpeton school say they are trying to create an environment in which Jackie and the other 252 students can dream about futures they hadn't thought possible. Most have "problem parents" or ned time out from troubled homes, according to principal Walfy Diek-man. But the future is bleak for the school itself. The budget-cutting of the Reagan administration has sounded the death knefl for eight of the BIA's 11 boarding schools, which it plans to close by 1 985. Wahpeton, which serves children aged 9 to 15 from six states, including Minnesota, and Concho Boarding School in Reno, were scheduled to close June 15.

However, the Wahpeton Indian School Board sued in federal district court in Washington to delay the closings, and school administrators said they hope Con-gress w9 appropriate money for another school year. Carl Shaw, a BIA spokesman Washington, said the BIA, in addition to wanting to save money, "just doesn't believe that young Indian children 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years old should be taken out of the home and sent to a boarding school." Critics of the school "claim that Indian children should be educated closer to home," Diekman said. "Nobody's going to fault that. But let's determine the difference between a house and a home." Outside his window, little girls and boys, Eke multicolored Playskool people, fit into the regime in the 12 one-story buildings at Wahpeton. Almost mechanically, they take off their shoes before they enter their dorms.

The rules say you can't streak the floor with your tennis shoes. The children hang up their jackets in bedrooms that look ike scaled-clown motel rooms. It's pleasant, but it's institutional. Many of the students had met failure at home or in schools where racial prejudice had borne down on them, Diekman said. They arrive at Wahpeton with derogatory nicknames such as Snake or Stinky.

Some of them had simply stopped going to school altogether. There have been sixth-graders who have already missed about 2Vi years of school and fourth-graders with the reading levels of first-graders, teachers said. Wahpeton has wet-developed remedial programs, Diekman said. p..