By Louis Whitehead

Most graduate students earn master’s degrees by attending classes for two or three years and then writing a big research paper. Valerian Three Irons is not most graduate students. Oh, sure, he’s had to go to class, and he has to write a thesis. But his specially-designed degree program has also required that he spend time in the First World and the Third World, traveling to New York for meetings, London for classes and research and to the slums of Jamaica to fulfill the service requirement for his degree.

Three Irons, a service-learning associate for South Dakota State University’s Office for Diversity Enhancement, spent the fall of 2004 in Kingston, Jamaica, and the spring of 2005 in London while working toward a master’s degree in international service.

The International Partnership for Service-Learning (IPSL), headquartered in New York City, oversees the unique degree program, but London’s University of Roehampton is actually issuing his degree. His master’s program will be completed when he turns in his thesis this
spring.

While England and Jamaica are a long way from Brookings, South Dakota, those countries aren’t the most exotic locales Three Irons has visited. His job has also taken him to places such as Ecuador, the Czech Republic and Thailand for annual conferences.

A native of Mandaree, North Dakota, and an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara) of Fort Berthold, North Dakota, Three Irons explains that he decided to pursue a master’s degree so that more opportunities in higher education will be open to him. “It will add to my credentials and allow me to do more things. It will allow me to fully teach American Indian studies as well as other courses, and certain responsibilities require an advanced degree. And that’s not just at SDSU.”

Three Irons already holds an associate’s degree in marketing management from Fort Berthold Community College and a bachelor’s degree in vocational marketing education from the University of North Dakota. A busy schedule, he adds, was his main motivation for choosing such an unconventional path to his master’s degree. “Being involved with so many things here on campus, it would be difficult to do my (graduate degree) studies. I would have to put it on the back burner, because I have so many requests to speak and for those kinds of services around campus. And it would have taken a lot longer to do a regular master’s program. That was part of the appeal of this degree. I could wrap it up in one year, but that one year has been intense.”

Besides cramming at least two years’ worth of studies into one year, Three Irons says that he has faced other challenges as he’s worked through the program. “Part of preparing for the program was asking, ‘How am I going to pay for it?’ The IPSL gave me a small scholarship. I also got some assistance from my tribe back home in North Dakota. And there were also personal contributions to cover the remainder. The total cost has come up to around $40,000.”

“Another challenge was my family. With my wife at home, we were wondering how we were going to make our rent and our other obligations. It’s certainly different going as a married person with a family as opposed to as a single person without the same obligations.”

Classes that he attended overseas addressed subject areas such as research methods and skills and techniques needed to start and operate a nonprofit organization. Courses were held at the University of Technology-Jamaica in Kingston and the University of Roehampton in London.
The international service component of his program began when he left for Jamaica in August of 2004. Three Irons says he experienced culture shock when he arrived. “Landing at the airport, as well as traveling through Jamaica, was such a strong reminder that I was in a Third World country because of the poverty and conditions of homes, buildings, infrastructure, things like that. And of course, the language. Many people speak patois (a local mishmash of Creole, French and sometimes English). A lot of people speak English, but their English is somewhat challenging. You really have to listen to what they’re saying.”

“It was tough being a minority and having to learn some of the language, customs and foods. I think I was a real minority there, even more so than here.” He also noticed both similarities and differences between his childhood home on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and Jamaica. “When I go back to visit Mandaree, I feel that I am at home when I see the buttes on the skyline in western North Dakota. There certainly was and is poverty on the reservation, but it seemed to be a different poverty than what I experienced in Kingston. At home, we have the closeness of the community and we share what resources we have to help each other get by. Another resource that we have that the inner city poor do not is wide-open spaces and less crime and violence.”

While taking classes in Kingston, he lived with a host family and three other students. “Having a host family provides a richer cultural xperience because you live in the community, and you interact with people like neighbors. Our host mother was involved in community activities, and she would have different activities that we were invited to. So we would go there with her as someone who was part of the community rather than as an outsider who was staying in a separate hotel.”

He also volunteered with a street children’s center, where he served as a counselor. “I worked hand-in-hand with a residential counselor and led group sessions, as well as one-on-one counseling. We would talk to the kids about values, the importance of self-sufficiency, learning a trade and being a good citizen.”

He returned to South Dakota for about a month in December 2004, but then it was on to New York City to visit with corporations and non-profit organizations. His travels then took him to the United Kingdom. While there, Three Irons continued to take classes and began work with Survival International, an organization that advocates for Indigenous peoples around the world. “It was good for me to see that and be part of that, because I can directly relate to what other Indigenous peoples are going through because of our history here in dealing with the United States government–issues of imperialism, colonialism and the taking of land and resources. And for me, it was a look at those issues beyond our borders here.”

Three Irons returned to the United States in June, and is now working on this thesis, titled “We Come From Where?” His thesis research has involved studying the effects of being taught the Bering Strait Theory on the self-esteem of young Native Americans. His research subjects included roughly a dozen high school students at Flandreau Indian School, a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school in South Dakota with students from all over the country. “There’s so little information about Native Americans, and what information is there is usually false. I want to look at this issue and how it affects Native American youth.”

The Bering Strait Theory suggests that American Indians came to North and South America from Asia via a land bridge that once existed between Alaska and Russia 12,000-60,000 years ago. Three Irons says the theory, which is commonly taught in history classes, runs counter to American Indian origin stories. “Our stories and our histories are just as valid as anyone else’s, yet they’re referred to as myths and legends, not as history, and that has a negative effect on Native American students as far as self-esteem is concerned. The Bering Strait Theory is more of a political view than a scientific view. It’s a part of Western mentality and the Westward expansion in taking Indigenous resources. And a way to justify that is by saying, ‘If you’re not really from here, then you’re not entitled to (resources), either.”

In his view, the Bering Strait Theory also represents an attack on the cultural identity of Native American students. “With all the troubles and challenges that young Native Americans face today, like suicide, diabetes, alcoholism and so on, one thing that’s proven to be a positive force is cultural identity and the preservation of our ways. It instills pride in the students. But to go to school and have usually non-Indian teachers telling you that you’re not really from here only adds to the problem. Data gathered from interviews with the FIS students, he says, supports his hypothesis that the Bering Strait Theory is not endorsed by Native American youth. “From the interviews that I’ve done, the responses have ranged from eye-rolling to students raising strong opinions about how the theory is wrong.”

The idea for his thesis topic came to him while he was studying overseas in the fall of 2004. “When I was in Jamaica, I took a course at the University of Technology there about Jamaican culture. One of the first sentences in one of the first chapters of our textbook said that the original inhabitants of Jamaica were not from there. It said that they had come across the Bering Strait and made their way to Jamaica. And that kind of angered me. If this falsehood is being taught as fact, I wanted to see the effects of it. It’s not only misleading to the American people, but it does something to the self-esteem and cultural identity of Native American youth.”

His reading of the Jamaican history textbook conjured up a memory from his youth on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. “When I was a kid, I remember being at home and hearing our creation stories and being told how important it is for me to know where I come from because there are many people who don’t know where they come from. But then I went to school and was told that my peoples’ oral histories, traditions and creation stories were myths and legends. And this Bering Strait Theory was being taught as truth.” Native American traditional history, he explains, is passed down orally from generation to generation in many tribes. He feels that many Western historians discount Native American history because it wasn’t originally written down in books.

“We have an oral history going back thousands of years. And this is just as valid as the written word, documented history. We have the right to our origin stories, and no one has the right to speak for us and say where we come from. It’s the same way that we can’t pick out another country elsewhere in the world and say we are going to describe to the world who you are. We don’t have that right, and no one should have that right.”

Three Irons says he hopes that his research will be a first step in changing the way Native American history is taught in schools. “This study is not an end-all or solution to the issue; it’s just scratching the surface. Updating our social studies and history curriculum has to begin somewhere. And I hope that education will come to reflect historical truth more than it has, whether it’s talking about the Bering Strait Theory, Thanksgiving, Columbus or whatever.”

Louis Whitehead is a descendant of many nations, and works as a full-time reporter for the Brookings Register in Brookings, South Dakota. He has also been a freelance writer for nearly a decade. Whitehead holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from South Dakota State University.