TRAVERSE CITY — Tribal beadwork and regalia will be allowed at Traverse City Area Public Schools’ commencement ceremonies.
That’s a result of a new policy adopted unanimously by the district board of trustees at a special meeting Monday night. The move was received with applause and standing ovations from some attendees. Many of those who spoke at the meeting were tribal members or of Native heritage, who said the issue was a long-overdue matter of identity and cultural pride.
“These young ones — they did something great,” said Aaron Shivis, cultural department manager for Grand Traverse band of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians.
The colors and designs incorporated in tribal regalia, including beadwork that would be applied to the students’ caps and gowns, are often tied to the individuals’ “helper spirits,” he said.
“And I want to make sure that those … spiritual guides will be there to help them on their progress throughout their life,” he said.
Most of the board members said this month was the first time they’d been made aware of the issue. Amending the policy was an affirmation of the trustees’ commitment to “diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging,” said Trustee Josey Ballenger.
“To me, this is non-negotiable,” she said.
The board’s existing policy required students participating in graduation proceedings “to wear the cap and gown attire specified by the Board of Education during the entire commencement ceremony.”
The only exception granted was for students in active military service in a branch of the armed forces, who were allowed to wear their designated dress military uniforms. The new policy keeps that military exception, while also allowing students “to wear recognized items of cultural, religious or cultural significance in a dignified manner.” Beyond that, students will simply be expected to wear the “prescribed cap and gown” during the entire ceremony, and will be expected to abide by the appearance standards which already exist elsewhere in the board’s policies.
Those dress policies cover instances such as offensive messaging, promotion of drug usage or illegal activity, obscenities and vulgarities, or other choices which may cause a “disruption of the learning environment.”
The language in the prior commencement policy — “specified by the Board of Education” — is different from the boilerplate language many other districts have in their policies, said superintendent John VanWagoner.
And it’s been interpreted to mean students can’t decorate or adorn their graduation uniforms with any non-school sanctioned additions.
But Ballenger suggested that, as written, the policy was neither a prohibition nor an express authorization of tribal regalia.
Her original suggestion to the board was to leave the policy largely intact, while adding the reference to the district’s existing student appearance policies to outline, specifically, what was prohibited.
Alternatively, Trustee Beth Pack proposed a policy that included the direct “cultural or religious” protections.
That element was important to include, said Trustee Holly Bird.
Regardless of what might have been allowed under the prior policy, the matter was brought forward because the right to wear tribal regalia at graduation hadn’t been recognized. It was incumbent upon the board to take a clear position on those rights in the drafting of this new policy, Bird said.
“Like it or not, we’re part of a system that systematically, over hundreds of years, tried to take the culture out of our Native people — whether it was by cutting their hair, or not allowing them to speak their language, or forcing them to wear a boarding school uniform,” she said. “And these graduation caps are no different, right?
“The requirement that they only be allowed to wear one thing, and that is a rule that we didn’t create. We’ve never been able to express our culture in our graduation, until now.”