November 2023 - Johnson Scholarship Foundation

Invisible No More: Reflections During Native American Heritage Month

November 16, 2023/in News, Sherry Salway Black

This article was written by Sherry Salway Black (Oglala Lakota), Board Vice Chair at Johnson Scholarship Foundation.

It’s that time of year again when we celebrate Native American Heritage Month. Officially designated in 1990 by President H.W. Bush, the acknowledgments and activities today have expanded beyond the grade school stereotype that “Indians and Pilgrims celebrate Thanksgiving.”

Much has changed over the 40+ years I’ve worked for and with Native people, communities and organizations. Now stories about Native Americans, I’m happy to say, are told all year long and mostly by Native people themselves—which has not always been the case. This November, the stories are more numerous, mainstream and educational than simply the “First Thanksgiving.”

Native people have made inroads into areas where we have not been historically. This includes the three branches of the federal government—legislative, executive and judicial. There are five members of the House of Representatives who are Native. There had been six, but Deb Haaland, formerly a representative from New Mexico, was appointed Secretary of the Interior in 2020. She is one of 52 Native people appointed by the Biden Administration in top leadership positions at various departments, boards, commissions, and in the White House. There are now five sitting federal judges who are Native, two of whom were more recently appointed by President Biden. And on November 15, 2023 the Senate confirmed a Native person to be a U.S. ambassador.

Native people now have more of a presence in pop culture and entertainment. There are popular television series such as “Reservation Dogs,” “Dark Winds” and “Rutherford Falls”—to name a few—that have Native actors, directors and producers. While not told from the Native perspective, the recently released Scorsese-directed movie, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” showcases an unknown part of the history of the Osage people, featuring powerful Native actors. Season 2 of the four-part PBS series, “Native America,” premiered in October. It is directed and produced by Native people with active input from the community and “reveals the beauty and power of today’s Indigenous world.”

There are amazing award-winning authors such as Pulitzer Prize winner, Louise Erdrich, or author Robin Wall Kimmerer, whose book “Braiding Sweetgrass” recently spent two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller list. I don’t want to go down this road too far, as I’ll never be able to note the countless Native people who are leading in new areas and benefitting their communities with positive stories—and role models.

We should also acknowledge the great strides that many tribal governments have made over the past few decades, building their economies, preserving their cultures and creating a better quality of life for their citizens. They are doing this by exercising their sovereignty in small and large ways. Tribal enterprises and Native-owned businesses have grown dramatically over the past decade providing employment, income and the opportunity to build wealth. The number of Native-led nonprofit organizations is growing, meeting needs and making inroads in development finance, arts and culture, philanthropy, activism, health delivery and education, to name a few.

Native people have taken on the challenge of changing the narrative about their people, breaking down the stereotypes. We are not a remnant of the past, but very much alive and thriving today. Out this month is a book to share our stories. “Invisible No More: Voices from Native America” is a joint venture between First Nations Development Institute and Nonprofit Quarterly. I’m honored to be one of more than two dozen Native nonprofit leaders who contributed to this multi-year effort to elevate our stories and our voices.

“Invisible No More” includes lessons for philanthropy about the importance of including, engaging and supporting Indigenous peoples’ efforts. The Johnson Scholarship Foundation has been a leader in supporting education for Indigenous people for over 30 years, providing more than $30 million in scholarships and other grants to institutions across the United States and Canada. JSF chair and former CEO, Malcolm Macleod, recently released a new book, “The Practice of Philanthropy: A Guide for Foundation Boards and Staff,” which also shares lessons learned and strategies from his more than 30 years in philanthropy.

I wish every month of the year celebrated the Indigenous people of this land. The books, movies and Native people represented in more areas and actions, such as land acknowledgments, raise awareness that we are still here—not a historical artifact.

This important work continues.

For more information about the Johnson Scholarship Foundation’s work in funding programs for Indigenous Peoples, click here.

Toronto Metropolitan University Recognizes Orange Shirt Day 2023

November 13, 2023/in News, Toronto Metropolitan University

Community members at Toronto Metropolitan University wear orange shirts and walk on a brick sidewalk. One of them is carrying a blue flag with bear paws. Another wears a shirt that says "every child matters".

Photo courtesy of Nadya Kwandibens

Every year on September 30, Canada recognizes residential school victims and survivors on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also called Orange Shirt Day.

The day of remembrance acknowledges when children were taken from their homes and forced to live in boarding schools across Canada. There, they were prohibited from speaking their languages and often abused. These horrific events occurred from 1883 until 1996, when the last of the residential schools closed their doors.

To commemorate Orange Shirt Day 2023, Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), a grantee partner of the Foundation, held several events for community members and Indigenous peoples to reflect.

The university raised the survivors’ flag on campus to honor all survivors, families and communities impacted by Canada’s residential school system. Participants also embarked on a silent walk while wearing orange shirts. Additionally, TMU acknowledged the stark difference between the “educational” institutions and experiences for non-Indigenous and Indigenous students.

Saije Catcheway, a Johnson Scholar and third-year TMU student pursuing business management and law, recently reflected on Orange Shirt Day during an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

“I see Indigenous people as huge healers,” said Catcheway, who is also on TMU’s varsity women’s hockey team. “I think that our new generation is big for healing—and not just shining a light on the negative [parts] of our history but shining a light on how [our culture] can actually be used as a strength.”

Two community members at Toronto Metropolitan University wear orange shirts and stand outside. One of them is playing a blue hand drum and singing.

Photo courtesy of Nadya Kwandibens

As part of the university’s commitment to systemic changes that support Indigenous community members, TMU is implementing an Indigenous Wellbeing and Cultural Practice Leave, where Indigenous staff from Canada can take up to five personal days to support healing and wellbeing, including cultivating cultural interests and practices however they choose.

Indigenous students at TMU can also access culturally supportive programs and services on campus, including peer support groups and Indigenous traditional counseling through Gdoo-maawnjidimi Mompii Indigenous Student Services (GMISS).

“Reaching out to Indigenous youth and people and just asking [for] their experiences… It’s an easy step to make a huge impact in reconciliation,” Catcheway reflected.

The Johnson Scholarship Foundation funds a matching grant for TMU for program support and scholarship assistance for Indigenous students.

One Man, One Little School, One Big Dream

November 8, 2023/in News, Providence St. Mel School

This article was originally published on Sept. 15, 2023 by John W. Fountain, Providence St. Mel School class of 1978 alum, as a birthday tribute to the school’s founder, Paul J. Adams III. It is shared here with permission.

A photo of the Providence St. Mel School gym, which has the words "We Believe" painted on the brick.

Two words emblazoned across the wall of the gym at Providence St. Mel embody the school’s spirit, “We Believe.” Photo by John Fountain.

Grass, emerald-green, lush and alive. Proud blades that point toward the sky. Perfectly manicured, this grass glistens beneath the sun. That was nearly 45 years ago.

And yet, for as far as I could see the other morning, standing outside the yellowish-brick castle in the 100 block of South Central Park Avenue on Chicago’s West Side, the grass still shimmers in the wind and golden sunlight—a simple symbol of promise, pride and hope, more than four decades since I first laid my eyes on it.

I don’t recall exactly the first time I saw the lawn outside Providence St. Mel, or Paul J. Adams, III—the man responsible. It must have been sometime in 1974—back when Afros and bell-bottom pants were signs of the times and the struggle to lay hold on the American dream still seemed ever elusive for Blacks in America, and we were singing James Brown’s “Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud.” What I do recall clearly is the notion that grass wouldn’t—couldn’t—grow on the West Side: too poor, too ghetto, too far from the fertile soil from which sprouts the stuff of American dreams.

Back then, in neighborhoods like Chicago’s impoverished K-Town, where I grew up and had been dubbed by the Chicago Tribune as part of America’s permanent underclass, the “American Millstone,” there was plenty of evidence to suggest that might be the case: broken glass, bald lawns and vacant lots, blight, poverty and despair that flowed like a river of hopelessness.

Back then, I remember the sprinklers outside Providence, the crystal spray that doused Mr. Adams’ lawn endlessly. How, as a high school freshman, I quickly learned one of his most important rules: Don’t step on the grass, or else pay a fine.

To some, it might have seemed ridiculous or severe to impose a penalty for something so infinitesimal. It might also have seemed difficult to fathom how something as simple as grass might be proof enough that some things others deem impossible—with a little planting, watering and vision—might indeed become possible.

Paul J. Adams III at JSF’s Chicago reception for grantee partners in September 2023.

As a poor kid whose father had deserted me by the time I was 4, I was the kind who, like many children from similar backgrounds today, was written off by researchers, given my demographics of having been born Black and poor, and raised in the urban ghetto—hopelessly predestined to an unalterable mortal existence, never to rise. Without my mother’s decision and sacrifice in 1974 to send me to Providence St. Mel, which set me on a different path than so many of my childhood friends, I might have succumbed to the death of dreams that eventually entombs those dreams too long deferred. Maybe not.

This much is not debatable: That for more than four decades, Paul Adams and Providence St. Mel has helped lead poor Chicago children to the Promised Land of educational success and that since 1978 every one of the school’s graduates has been admitted to a college or university.

This much is also clear these days:

That for at least the last 45 years, the Chicago Public School system has largely wandered in the wilderness of “miseducation” and still has yet to fully cross the sea of red-tape bureaucracy occupied by a union that often seems more concerned for teachers than students, and by bureaucrats who, by their failure to fix the system after all this time, leave me wondering whether they ever really want to.

At 13, I saw Paul Adams as a lion of a man, his proud woolen Afro as his mane, and every square inch of Providence, including every blade of grass, as his domain. More importantly, I found inside the school’s walls a safe-haven from the perilous streets of my neighborhood. I found educational opportunity and the expectation of success. I found through one man’s vision sufficiency to dream. In Adams, I saw a Black man filled to the brim with integrity, character and commitment. An unyielding Black man who was not only willing to stand for the education and future of Black children, but also willing to fight, even to give his life for our good.

He turns 83 today.