Michigan Charters Founding Story: Ojibwe Charter School

Throughout the decades and centuries, as Native Americans in Michigan have dealt with discrimination, oppression and brutality, they came to realize that a path out of the darkness was through education.

There are 12 federally recognized Indian tribes in Michigan, many of which are found in the Upper Peninsula. With their cultures and languages vanishing, tribal members recognized that by establishing their own high-quality schools – from K-12 through college – they would better be able to hold on to their traditions.

In 1981, Bay Mills Community College in Brimley, near Sault Ste. Marie, became the first accredited Tribal College on a reservation, serving the Ojibwe tribe. On the other side of the Upper Peninsula near Escanaba, the Hannahville Indian School had been founded in 1976, serving as a K-8 school for the Potawatomi tribe.

The drive to open more tribal schools in Michigan got a huge boost in 1994, when Michigan passed its first charter school law. That gave the tribal schools the option to operate as fully public charter schools, receiving per-pupil funding for their operations.

That paved the way for the Ojibwe Charter School to open in 2003 on the Bay Mills Indian Reservation in Brimley. By that time, Bay Mills Community College had won several lawsuits that reinforced its ability to serve as a charter school authorizer for schools.

It took grit and determination on the part of Bay Mills Community College to battle the various forces in state government that were determined to restrict the tribal college’s ability to open charter schools.

In a 2003 article from the Associated Press, MAPSA President Dan Quisenberry praised Bay Mills’ leadership and commitment to serving students and families. “It demonstrates that Bay Mills has the capacity to at least respond to some of the demand in Michigan,” he said.

So in the fall of 2003, Bay Mills authorizes nine new charter schools across the state, including the Ojibwe Charter School, which was located right on its reservation.

News reports at the time said that,

“Its founders wanted to offer an alternative to the nearby Brimley public school, where American Indian children had long felt less than welcome by other students. The hostile treatment there had driven large numbers of kids out of school.”

The Ojibwe Charter School’s mission was to combine traditional academics along with the teaching of the Ojibwe language, culture and traditions. The hope of school founders was to combat the tribal community’s sky-high dropout rate by giving the students a school they would look forward to attending every day.

The Ojibwe Charter School has grown to the point where it’s now a full K-12 charter school, educating 137 students across its 13 grades. The school continues to combine a rigorous academic curriculum with a variety of programs to teach and preserve the Ojibwe traditions.