Cultural Tie Gets in the Way Of Graduation

Md. Boy Wearing Bolo Is Denied a Diploma

By Ann E. MarimowWashington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 10, 2005; Page B01

Thomas Benya wore a braided bolo tie under his purple graduation gown this week as a subtle tribute to his Native American heritage.

Administrators at his Charles County school decided the string tie was too skinny. They denied him his diploma, at least temporarily, as punishment.

Thomas Benya says the bolo tie he wore to graduation for Charles County's McDonough High School reflects his heritage. (By Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)  

 

The bolo, common in contemporary American Indian culture, is not considered a tie by his public school in Pomfret. If Benya wants the diploma, he will have to schedule a conference with the administrators.

What his parents say they want is an apology from Maurice J. McDonough High School for embarrassing their son and failing to respect the Cherokee background of his father's ancestors.

"The schools in Charles County are asking him to ignore his heritage," Marsha Benya said as she turned to face her 17-year-old son. "I want you to be proud of it."

"I am proud of it," he said, sitting in her real estate office in Waldorf, where he plans to work this summer before enrolling at the College of Southern Maryland.

The high school is sticking to its policy. The dress code is mandatory for seniors who choose to participate in the graduation ceremony. And Benya was told during a dress rehearsal Tuesday that his black bolo with a silver and onyx clasp the size of a silver dollar was "not acceptable."

"We have many students with many different cultural heritages, and there are many times to display that," said school district spokeswoman Katie O'Malley-Simpson.

"But graduation is a time when we have a formal, uniform celebration. If kids are going to participate, they need to respect the rules."

Controversies over student attire at graduation are perennial, and school districts try to avoid confusion by sending letters to parents and seniors months in advance. In Prince George's County, for example, graduating seniors are told "they are not to wear any kind of additional accents," said schools spokesman John White.

"We set the standard to make sure all our ceremonies are formal and respectful," he said.

In March, Benya's high school sent a letter to parents and seniors explaining that "adherence to the dress code is mandatory," with the word mandatory in bold and underlined. For girls: white dresses or skirts with white blouses. For boys: dark dress pants with white dress shirts and ties.

That left Benya's classmates free to wear bright orange, red and striped ties under their gowns at the ceremony Wednesday at the Show Place Arena in Upper Marlboro. One senior girl wore a headscarf and long pants for religious reasons.

"The First Amendment protects religion, and we do everything possible to honor that," O'Malley-Simpson said. "There is nothing that requires us to follow everyone's different cultures."

   

 

The courts have ruled that students have limited rights to express themselves at school as long as their behavior is not disruptive. A 1969 Supreme Court case, Tinker v. Des Moines, sided with students who wanted to wear black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War.

David Rocah, a staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, said there are limits to those rights. Carrying political placards or wearing a clown suit to graduation would presumably be disruptive. The question, he said, is whether a bolo tie under a gown is disruptive.

"There's nothing wrong with wanting graduation to be a formal occasion," he said, "but the idea that everyone should look the same -- they're not all the same."

Rocah called the school's interpretation a "narrow and cramped view of personal autonomy."

Benya grew up hearing stories about his paternal grandmother's father and grandfather, who lived in dismal conditions on a Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma. He attends powwows and has worn an heirloom turquoise and silver bracelet for as long as he can remember.

He favors black clothes and prefers working backstage with lights and sound to performing in plays. He said he wasn't looking to cause a scene.

"It's my way of relating back to my past and showing who I am," he said.

Jauquin

My grandmother was a wise woman. She never said very much. I remember her presense most of all. That and the fact that at eighty years of age she had almost no gray in her hair, she had the most beautiful reddish brown "tan" of anyone I had ever seen, and the most beautiful cheekbones.

 

My mothers people were all German and Scotch-Irish so I was pale, fair, and redhaired. I never tanned. I burnt. or...I cooked bright red looking like a lobster. Thank heaven's as I have aged my hair darkened and now at almost 50 I have very little gray in my dark hair, but I still can't dare venture into the sun.

 

My grandmother cooked for everyone everyday as if she were having a feast. She had given birth to nine children that I am aware of, two which passed before they were a year old. I asked her about them, the dead ones I called them, just one time being curious.

 

She just said "They could not stay dear. They just could not stay."

 

Later my aunts and uncles would tell me the children died "probably of pneumonia and back then, no one really knew much to do with sick babies."

 

So my grandmother cooked for grandpa and six children and worked cropping tobacco or picking cotton before and after meals in the fields with grandpa. They were what you'd call share croppers now. They never had indoor plumbing until the last few years of their lives when all the grown kids "insisted" and built one onto the back porch.

 

Grandma saw no need for one, but I was scared of the hogs and the outhouse was in the pen beyond the fence and not far from the chicken coup. I was always in sheer terror the hogs would eat me, or the chickens attack and peck me to death.

 

And if that didn't happen I was terrified I would fall into that huge black hole in the outhouse or the snkaes I was sure were down there would get me. I was ready for the indoor "john."

With share cropping grandpa would have the house free to live in and would till the land and harvest whatever, he and all the young un's that were old enough to toddle and do anything. Wash day for all of us was this huge wash tub stuck out in the back yard and once I was old enough to be shy, I dreaded anyone that might drive by on the dirt road out front and "see" me.

 

Grandma would fix the meals and then not until after everyone ate would she quietly eata little, and that mostly as she cleaned the kitchen and put the bisquits in the pantry covered for later.

 

She named my daddy Jauquin. It is not spelled the way the Juaquin Valley was and I often wondered if it was just because she couldn't spell but when I asked her about the name she gently set me straight.

 

My grandmother told me that she had named him that because it meant "one who walks upright, bold like a bear". Now I have no way of knowing if grandmother was right. I cannot find the word spelled that way to look it up and she is long gone, as are both my parents and all of my family now.

 

I have often wondered what was in that name and what clan she would have been. Her maiden name was "White". I imagine that was rather common for the white man to just rename the Natives with whatever "christian" name they saw fit.

 

I look at my grandmother's pictures from time to time. There are only a small handful. She hated camera's for some reason and for that same unknown reason I don't like them either.

 

"There is something about them I don't care for." That's what she would say if I pestered her for an answer. That was the way it was with grandma, she never talked a lot unless you stayed on her heels.

 

I don't think I ever heard her raise her voice, but there were a thousand words in some of her looks. I think the day that I remember most is when mom and I rode up to the house to tell her my father, her son,  had died.

 

She took one look at mom and I and this sound came from deep within her soul and heart like nothing that I had ever heard. My dad was her firstborn. I don't remember her weeping, I just remember that sound that came from somewhere beyond words and beyond human sound. I didn't understand then like I do now what it is like to see your child die.

 

She was never the same after that and my uncle found her in bed one morning, way past when she would have been up doing things around the house. She had gone to sleep, and I guess she "just couldn't stay here anymore."

 

I miss her. I miss all the things that I never asked her. I miss all the things she never got to teach me and I never got to learn. I even miss her silence, because it was filled with her presense.

 

 

All the colors of Native America are not just red and white

African-Native Americans : We are still here : A Photo Exhibit : Exhibit Page

Jamie Sams

 

Jamie Sams is a Native American shaman of Cherokee and Seneca decent, who explains that medicine has to do with anything that makes us feel whole. Indians view medicine as a person’s gifts, including their inner strengths, talents, and abilities. "When we look at the idea of medicine," Sams says, "we have to embrace the total person: the body, the heart, the mind, and the spirit. When any of these part are out of balance, then there is a need for healing."

The processes used in healing depend on the type of illness. First a person must be diagnosed to see whether their sickness is physical, spiritual, emotional, or mental. Then it is treated accordingly. When the body is sick, herbs, flowers, and other plant matter can be used to promote recovery. Mechanical help is also used, such as setting bones when broken. Spiritual illnesses are handled by medicine people who may work with a person’s dreams, or with what they experience on other dimensions that need to be healed. Some tribes also take into account the influence of past lives. Emotional healing for family upsets, a broken heart, or other problems, and psychological healing for mental illnesses are handled differently still. "Sometimes we need to heal our impatience," Sams says. "And sometimes we need to heal our frustrations. Many times we need to heal the internal criticism that our brain is constantly carrying on, which makes us feel less than. But always, we need to take a look at that which does not work in our lives, and makes our behavior out of balance towards ourselves and others." Here, Sams explains important principles of healing for specific circumstances:

Native American Healing