SAN FRANCISCO — When Cynthia Surrounded convened the workshop, she asked attendees to remove their shoes but remain seated. She didn’t offer a reason. The participants, most of whom didn’t know Surrounded or each other, appeared surprised but obliged anyway.
Surrounded asked a woman in the audience named Stacy to take the name “Bertha” for the duration of the hourlong session. She also asked a man named Ken to go by the name “Warren.”
Deep into the workshop, Surrounded explained that these tactics were similar to what she employs with her community college students in order to illustrate what students at the Indian boarding schools of the late 1800s and early 1900s had to endure because of the insistence among Whites to Anglicize them.
“Imagine if you were an indigenous child at that time,” Surrounded said. “Boarding schools required you to remove the clothes you were used to wearing. You had to cut your long hair, and you had to change your name.”
Her remarks came last week during the annual conference of the League for Innovation in the Community College. The League brings together educators and stakeholders of two-year institutions to share best practices, along with new and different ways to teach, stimulate learning and how to enhance the community college experience.
Surrounded spoke at a session titled, “Building Relationships with Indigenous Populations with a Service Learning Course.” She is an instructor in human services at Southeast Community College in Lincoln, Nebraska. She co-teaches a course with sociology instructor Bridget Christensen that aims to boost students’ awareness and understanding of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska while also assisting the tribe in its activities.
