Native representation goes ‘beyond powwows and taco stands’ at Billy Mills Middle School

Seven years after a Kansas middle school was named for Lakota Olympian Billy Mills, advocates are taking a new approach to Indigenizing the school system in Lawrence, Kansas.

Billy Mills Middle School, west of the Haskell Indian Nations University campus or a 6-minute drive around the corner from the university, was named for William “Billy” Mills in 2018, with the help of one Kickapoo family.

“It started out as a response, a call to action,” said Carole Cadue Blackwood, who is a Kickapoo citizen and local educational leader. “During that time there was some civil unrest, some racial unrest, in the community.”

In 2016, local Native students came together and presented the Lawrence School Board with a list of demands and evidence of racism they had experienced. The community protested as students at what was then South Middle School testified to the board that a teacher had made offensive racist remarks to students. Throughout the process, Carole said Native students were left out of the overall conversation.

After the meeting, Carole and her father, Steve Cadue, came home and brainstormed what they could do to help.

“My dad goes, ‘Carole, all you need to do is get the school renamed after a Native American, because that land was stolen,’” she recalled.

The family set out on their mission, surveying several Native and non-Native members of the community, and local legend Billy Mills was the recommended name.

In the 1950s and 1960s, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Public Law 47, which allows for the transfer of surplus lands, large tracts of land belonging to Haskell were sold to the City of Lawrence. By 1964, Haskell had lost nearly 70 percent of its original land.

Billy Mills Middle School, formerly known as South Middle School, is located on former Haskell land.

The Olympian remembers the land that Billy Mills Middle School sits on being part of Haskell when he attended.

Billy, Oglala Lakota, was born in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and moved to Lawrence at 15 to attend Haskell Institute Boarding School, its former name. At Haskell, Mills began running and excelling in cross country. It was then that he began to dream of being an Olympian.

“Lawrence became a second home to me,” Billy told ICT.

In 1962 he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and began training for the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. Billy won the 10,000-meter race and set a new Olympic record. He remains the only American to win gold in the 10,000-meter race.

“We have a 5-percent Native American population (in Lawrence),” Steve said. “That’s a lot compared to other communities. But I would say, beyond powwows and Indian taco stands, there’s not that much representation.”

There’s no local policy for renaming a school, Carole said. Much of the family’s process involved meeting with community leaders, community members and holding meaningful conversations.

Most of the pushback came from the fact that Billy is alive, she said. Naming a building after a living person is pretty rare, especially a living Native person. It took some convincing, but eventually the family succeeded in their goal by making those connections in the community and working with the school board.

“It was completely organic from me and my dad in his living room,” she said.

When Billy won the 10,000-meter race, Steve was there to witness it. Steve demanded to be let into the room with Billy after. He promised the Lakota Olympian he’d honor him one day to thank him for honoring the American people.

In 2018, Steve and his daughter Carole fulfilled that promise, naming the school for his lifelong friend.

“We consider each other brothers,” Steve said.

When Billy was attending Haskell, he’d regularly come to visit Steve and his family at their home on the Kickapoo reservation 60 miles northwest of Lawrence.

“I was very honored,” Billy said. “Steve Cadue lived up to his promise in a very special way.”

Now, advocates are preparing to bring two new propositions to the eastern Kansas community: a curriculum focused on Native education and registering the school with the National Registry of Historic Buildings.

“The challenge that we have is the Kansas Department of Education, the board of education, they have an American History requirement for graduation from high school but they have no authentic Native American curriculum,” Steve said. “But in Kansas State Law, school districts have the authority to approve curriculum. So it’s been some real detailed work.”

So Steve formed an Ad Hoc Indian Knowledge and Curriculum Committee which has been working to develop a curriculum in line with Billy’s legacy. The ad hoc committee is composed of Native and non-Native community members, he said.

“If a human being doesn’t know their history, regardless of race, you don’t know your own history,” Steve said. “Authentic Native curriculum is self esteem, it makes you have pride in who you are as a Native American.”

And in a school district with significantly low graduation rates among Native students, positive representation is needed, Carole said.

Carole serves on the Lawrence School Board, the only Native person currently on the board, so she said she isn’t directly involved with these new efforts. However, her campaign for the school board focused on barriers local Native students face in graduating.

“America needs to hear the voice of diversity,” Billy said. “They need to hear the voice of our young Native American students. We have to prepare our young students, not just to preserve the culture, the traditions, the spirituality, but we have to empower them with dreams. Dreams can make their community better.”

Steve said there’s no specific timeline for the curriculum development or when the group will bring it to the school board, it’s a very detailed process with set standards that the group will work to fulfill.

Finally, Steve is planning on submitting an application with the U.S. Department of the Interior for the Billy Mills Middle School to become a National Historic Landmark.

Steve said the local, state and nationwide Native community will be the group’s main support base for getting the site registered. The committee is planning to make presentations on the matter and file with the Department of the Interior within the next 30 days.

“We are excited about the challenge,” he said. “We’re going to do whatever it takes to get the Billy Mills Middle School designated as a National Historic Landmark.”

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