Three years ago, Representative Shawn Bordeaux (D-26A/Mission) won passage of legislation to protect Lakota students’ right to wear Native regalia at school ceremonies. This year Representative Bordeaux seeks similar protections for Lakota honor songs that often provoke white school boards’ opposition.
House Bill 1108 would prohibit schools from prohibiting “the playing of an honor song or Lakota Flag Song at a graduation ceremony if requested by a graduating student.” HB 1108 applies to institutions governed by the Board of Regents, technical colleges, and high schools, so sorry, eighth-graders: your middle school graduation may still be mostly white.
The bill includes no definition of “honor song” or “flag song.” We shouldn’t need one; we generally know an Indigenous honor song when we hear one. But I can imagine some deflated white privilegists trying to rally from their decline by sending their kids to school boards to demand the playing of “YMCA” or “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” at commencement. And even the most enlightened white communities in our fair state sometimes have trouble understanding the clear intent of law meant to protect Native culture. Defining or listing honor songs may be cumbersome, but Representative Bordeaux may want to try pre-empting white-privilegist sabotage with some clarifying language.
HB 1108 awaits the attention of House State Affairs, on which sit all wasicu, includes Representative Bordeaux’s District 26 counterpart, well-known Lakota honor song opponent Representative Rebecca Reimer.
Seems discriminatory to limit this to a particular people’s heritage. What about folks of Sioux heritage who aren’t Lakota? Should amend it to read that they can’t prohibit any graduating student from selecting a song of sincere importance to the student. Hopefully all the students don’t pick different songs, though! Graduation ceremonies are already too long and hard to stay awake through. Imagine if there was another hour or two of song requests…
well…we Anglo Saxons have an honor song played at nearly every graduation in the state ,Pomp and Circumstance, also known as “Land of Hope and Glory” or Military March Number 1 in D written by Edward Elger in 1901 to celebrate the victory of the British over their freedom seeking Boer (read Dutch) colonists in South Africa. Everyone can hum it. The words are replete with violence and homage to the blood thirsty expansion of the British Empire, but they never sing the words. If we told the school board that they could no longer play Pomp and Circumstance at high school graduation, a fit would be had throughout our borders. But the song is not only inappropriate for any kind of American festivities, it pays homage to “THE WRONG COUNTRY. However, if anyone, legislator or governor were to ask that this peon to Victorian White Privilege be banished from high school graduation the response from school boards across the state would be, “Shut Up!! We’ve always done it this way.”