Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 185

JUBU.LM piLJ-JiJIJI I 3f "4 (ill K' m- 3 ri. ii 00 if 1 -i-itAtt 1 A string of students stretched out from a class building (background) to the cafeteria for lunch. fit rir 1 -f I I L-iJ. 3iJv' 7 ft 1 i 1 -s I J- I 1 1 Three students shared a book as they studied math. Students often stay voluntarily after class to continue working on assignments.

Some boys sat on a wall at the rear of the school, above a mural of tepees. Children at the school range in age from 9 to 15. ents try not to get too attached to the child in case they have to give him or her up. Others have told him that they take in children only to meet the mortgage and car payments. He blames past abuses of the foster-care system for the problems of some of today's Indian parents.

Many of them are unable to take care of children today because "they were not taken care of themselves. They were given food and shelter (in foster care), but not love. Stuen also said she worries about what will happen to the children if Wahpeton closes. She said many will return to the troubled family situations and peer pressures that sent them to Wahpeton. "When they go back and that's the sad part are they going to get somebody to believe in them?" she said.

"It's so much easier to do what everybody else is for the children. "Secretary of the Interior Mr. Watt and Undersecretary Kenneth Smith (head of the BIA) are guilty of staggering incompetence on this issue," said Dorgan. "All they want to do is cut the budget, and they don't give a damn about people." Shaw said that reservation schools can handle an influx of children from the boarding schools and are prepared to deal with social problems such as drug abuse, single-parent families and truancy. Indian leaders and school administrators said they are not so sure.

The BIA is taking its cue from the Office of Management and Budget, said Dorgan. The bureau has not thoroughly studied the consequences that closing the school will have on the futures of Indian children, according to Dorgan. The BIA argues that the children can return to their homes. But in a preliminary at tempt to notify parents of a possible closing, the bureau was unable even to find some of the parents, according to Ted Weisenburger, tribal judge at Fort Totten, N.D., who has worked with Indian children for four years. Weisenburger said some of the children have lived with grandparents or single parents who have sent them to the school because they can't take 'care of them anymore.

He tells about a mother who brought her six children into the courtroom, pointed to the second oldest and said, "You keep this one. I don't want him anymore." For Indians, sending a child to a foster home is a sign that the family has failed, he said. But sending them to Wahpeton is an accepted "time out," and family ties can be maintained, thus keeping the door open for the child to return if problems are solved. He also said he hesitates to send an Indian child to a foster home because foster par to be proud of their heritage, the money is being withdrawn, he said. Duane Dunkiey, a Wahpeton counselor who was director of Indian education for the Minneapolis School District in the late 1970s, said the closing of Wahpeton is the Reagan administration's first step to free the federal government of responsibil-.

ity for Indians. State-run Indian schools are limping, he said. And now with the federal schools closing, Indians will have no place to get a good education. Wahpeton challenged the BIA decision on the grounds that the agency did not consult with the tribes about closing the schools. The BIA's Shaw disputes that.

He said the agency held hearings in eight states explaining that the off-reservation boarding schools are too expensive. Rep. Byron Dorgan; said he and other members of Congress are concerned that the BIA is closing the Wahpeton school before it has found new places.