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Traditional knowledge helped Sydna Yellowfish succeed

Sydna Yellowfish of the Grayhorse District is Indian Education Elder of the Year

Sydna Yellowfish is the coordinator for Indian Education for Edmond public schools, and the Oklahoma Council for Indian Education has named her Elder of the Year.

The granddaughter of Mary Osage Green, Yellowfish said her grandmother’s traditional teachings formed her, along with those of her mother and aunt. Being involved in Osage ceremonial dances since she was a young child has been very meaningful to her. She said, “I’m very blessed to have been involved in that my whole life,” and attributed her success both to her culture and mentorship from Native advisors in higher education.

While higher education allowed Sydna to bring her traditional perspective to public school education, it was traditional education from family that made her first fall in love with learning. Sydna said she was inspired to enter education because she liked history, and also wanted to share her traditional knowledge.

“The desire [to teach] was always there, and it had something to do with growing up being able to know a lot of things culturally, and those were things I wanted to share,” she said.

She was born in Fairfax, Okla., and is from the Grayhorse District. “I am also Otoe-Missouria, Pawnee, and Sac and Fox. I am full blood of four diverse tribes,” she said. Her father was part of the Indian Relocation program of the late 1950s, which placed Native Americans in urban settings with vocational jobs throughout the United States. So growing up, her family lived in California, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Florida and elsewhere.

“These were several states growing up that we resided in, but we were always grounded in Fairfax, Okla.,” she said. “Our parents always made that point, to bring me and my siblings home so we would not lose that connection. That was always really good … being able to experience other places, as well.”

Yellowfish was on Drumkeeper committees for Grayhorse under Russ Tallchief when he was Drumkeeper and for Jacob Lux, who had the drum for almost 12 years. These experiences furthered her passion for experiential learning, which included learning finger weaving from the late Davy Watts and Chris Brown from Grayhorse.

“There are a lot of things not in our textbooks, that you can’t read about,” she said. “I was very blessed to be on the committee with my grandmother in the 1990s, and I was a cook. Her just sharing stories with me was something that wasn’t openly discussed, but she would say, cultural-wise, ‘This is how we do it here,’ and she would say, ‘You’re not supposed to do that,’ and I’m probably considered old-school, but that’s how I teach my children … Our grandchildren, they say, ‘May I wear this?’ And I say, ‘Nope, not here. Maybe at a powwow.’ So they understand there’s ceremonial ways and then there’s powwow.”

When Yellowfish decided to pursue her dream of sharing her knowledge as an educator, she did so as a first-generation college student and experienced trepidation in taking the leap to higher education despite her diverse exposure to place while growing up. She attended undergraduate in a program called Project Threshold at the University of Oklahoma, which matched Native students with Native advisors, who ultimately helped her adjust, and contributed toward a positive college experience.

“I did have my two older brothers there on campus, but we had different course loads … In the program we were under we had Native advisors and they would just call out of the clear blue, asking ‘how are you doing, do you need anything?’ That was very helpful from the start—and being involved in the Native American Student Association on campus.” At OU, she earned her social studies degree in education and then obtained a master’s in education, also at OU, but didn’t go straight from one degree to the next.

“Between the degrees, I took a little bit of a break and did some substitute teaching. How I saw it, the position I was in, I felt like I needed to go ahead and get my master’s. I worked primarily with Native students, and that was a personal decision, I just felt that would make me a better staff person for the position I was in, so that’s when I decided to get the master’s.”

After completing her degrees at OU, she worked hard to ensure a strong Native education in public schools. “Through the years, I developed one of our first classes we called Native American Expression. From day one, they learned about our tribes, our history, culture, reading, stories, storytelling and that’s what the whole semester was about. Prior to that, I went to a six-week teaching institute during the summertime and was able to listen to other authors like Joy Harjo, Robert J. Conley, Gerald Vizenor. I took that back and the next year put a class in.”

She has also supported Osage language learning by collaborating with the Osage Nation Language Department on a class in Edmond offered since 2007. “When I heard that the language program was getting established up there and going to be having a department, I knew I had Osage families in Edmond who could not go up to Pawhuska to do these classes. So, Vann [BigHorse], I reached out to him at the time and said we had some Osage families, and was there any way we could partner with you all? We worked it out like that.”

The Language Department sent a teacher down to Edmond every week at first. Talee Redcorn, Vann BigHorse and Veronica Pipestem were some of the teachers that Yellowfish worked with until Dr. Herman Mongrain Lookout became the long-term teacher. “Online teaching, with Zoom meetings … that has been a way to reach out to many more families,” she said.  

Yellowfish is a seasoned collaborator, and not only made Osage education connections but also worked with her Pawnee, Otoe-Missouria and Sac and Fox connections, “always reaching out and partnering,” she said. “This past year in September, we were going up to a national JOM conference in Chicago and I knew that I wanted to go up there to the Field Museum and see the collections. With Dr. Andrea Hunter, we went through her office to get permission to see the Osage collections that aren’t shown to the public and the Field Museum gave us a personal tour.”

On this recent trip, she took pictures of Osage artifacts and used these and corresponding notes to create a curriculum from her firsthand experiences with the objects and the museum. “Anywhere we go, I try to do our own photographs, our own pictures, and we come back and we develop our own curriculum, our own lesson plans,” she said. “I tell our new elementary school, every time you go anywhere take your own pictures. Personally, when we go to Chinle, Arizona, we take pictures and put that into curriculum about the Southwest.”

In the same manner, her department has developed a first-hand curriculum from the Pawnees as well as the Pequot Museum in Connecticut, which Yellowfish notes as an excellent museum. “That kind of just brings in our curriculum ties, we write our own lesson plans and create accurate portrayals of our tribes and Nations coming from their stories.” This traditional story-based education approach to curriculum development has allowed Yellowfish to travel and present at colleges, education conferences, and in round table discussions about the ways that Indian education incorporates the teachings of Native people.

In her current role, Yellowfish oversees Title VI and Johnson O’Malley, two federal programs for the school district focused on meeting the needs of Native students in the public school system.

“I am in my 39th year,” she said. “I like it, I’ve received a lot of good support from administration.” Yellowfish is very engaged in her career, focused on interfacing with state, local, national and school districts, and bringing new classes to Native students based on ways of teaching through story. She said one of the highlights of her career has been meeting educators from other Native communities: “I still enjoy learning, if I could know everything about 574 tribes … but that would be a very, very enormous task.”

With Governor Stitt’s decision to de-fund Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs in Oklahoma, and the censorship of critical race theory in primary schools, some of her staff are fearful of continuing to teach the curriculum as-is. But laws cannot be allowed to affect the accuracy of educational programs for Natives attending public schools, said Yellowfish.

“What I tell teachers today, who seem to be a little scared to do that, I tell them: as long as we’re not saying to a child, ‘Your people did this to our tribes …’ And I can’t imagine a teacher saying that, in all my years. I just can’t. We teach the facts. You’re not making a child feel any way as long as you teach the facts. There’s always two sides to a story, and both sides should be taught, whether it be the pioneer side, or the tribal side. We’re just going to keep teaching the class as it is,” she said.  

In addition to accurate history, Yellowfish’s career has also been defined by sharing traditional knowledge, an important area not all Native students have equal access. Mary Jo Webb of Fairfax encouraged Yellowfish early on in her career, sharing her Osage knowledge to help develop a curriculum for Native students. This focus on sharing traditional knowledge in the public school setting is in alignment with her earliest desires to teach, and Yellowfish is proud of the accomplishment.

“That’s one of the big highlights of what we were able to do,” said Yellowfish, who still helps to implement classes as new topics of discussion emerge.

Yet Yellowfish noted that not everything that comes up for discussion in Native education is actually a new topic. “With Killers of the Flower Moon, they say, ‘Why is this not taught?’ Well, we’ve been teaching it for 25 years,” she said. She was able to stay in her role long-term because she had the autonomy to do the job the way it seemed best for the students, and because the job is well-rounded. “If it wasn’t,” she said, “I wouldn’t have been able to stay thirty-nine years.” 

She shared her appreciation for the nomination and thanks the Oklahoma Council for Indian Education. For young Osages considering going to college, she advised that higher education is worth a try: “Without young Osages really knowing what’s out there, they should take that chance, try it to just see, because no matter what age a person is, you can get your education. You can take a gap year, get some work experience, and then think, well, maybe I can do this.”

“I encourage younger relatives to try it. You never know if you’re going to be able to achieve what you want to do if you don’t try, and it’s okay if it’s not for you.”

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Chelsea T. Hicks
Chelsea T. Hickshttps://osagenews.org
Title: Staff Reporter
Email: chelsea.hicks@osagenation-nsn.gov
Languages spoken: English
Chelsea T. Hicks’ past reporting includes work for Indian Country Today, SF Weekly, the DCist, the Alexandria Gazette-Packet, Connection Newspapers, Aviation Today, Runway Girl Network, and elsewhere. She has also written for literary outlets such as the Paris Review, Poetry, and World Literature Today. She is Wahzhazhe, of Pawhuska District, belonging to the Tsizho Washtake, and is a descendant of Ogeese Captain, Cyprian Tayrien, Rosalie Captain Chouteau, Chief Pawhuska I, and her iko Betty Elsey Hicks. Her first book, A Calm & Normal Heart, won the 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation. She holds an MA from the University of California, Davis, and an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts.
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