Excerpt
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now the substantial problems that Native Americans in the U.S. face, particularly with education.
That was the focus of a new report issued today and a meeting President Obama had with Native Americans in Washington. The President announced a series of initiatives to prepare young American Indians for college and the work force.
They include a push to strengthen tribal control of education on reservations. The Federal Bureau of Indian Education is responsible for educating nearly 50,000 students in 23 states. The high school graduation rate is for Native Americans the lowest of any ethnic or racial group. The bureau is part of the Department of the Interior.
And Interior Secretary Sally Jewell joins me now.
Welcome to the “NewsHour.”
SALLY JEWELL, Secretary of the Interior: Thank you very much.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, we know the problems in the Native American community, they’re deeply entrenched. They go back a long time, to the very beginning of this country. What are just a couple of the ways the administration thinks it can make a real difference?
SALLY JEWELL: Well, the report that the White House just issued on Native American youth does a very good job of chronicling the challenges.
And they are deep-seated. They have been around for, not just decades, but literally hundreds of years, policies that tried to kill the Indian to save the man, policies of assimilation, of squishing cultures. And, in so doing, they really diminished the confidence and the pride of Native Americans.
What the President has done — and he’s charged his Cabinet with this — and this was really powerfully brought home to him in a visit with young people at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe — is that he doesn’t want to stand by and let this happen anymore.
So, he’s charged his administration very directly with being part of the solution, with charting a different course. And that’s what we’re doing.
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