Indian activist takes up Los Fresnos students’ cause

Rodney, Skyler Burns still suspended over long hair

By LAURA B. MARTINEZ

The Brownsville Herald

LOS FRESNOS, September 1, 2005 — The co-founder of the American Indian Movement met with Los Fresnos school district administrators Wednesday to discuss American Indian culture and the significance of growing hair long.

Dennis Banks, 75, an Ojibwa or Chippewa Indian, actor and co-founder of AIM, said he wanted to enlighten administrators on American Indian cultures, particularly the significance of hairstyle and length.

AIM was founded in 1968 with a goal to protect the traditional ways of Indian people. The national organization’s spokesman requested the meeting following the in-school suspension of Rodney and Skyler Burns, Resaca Middle School students whose long hair doesn’t meet the district’s dress code.

The Burns family says their shoulder-length braided hair is representative of their Chickasaw Indian heritage which also includes African American and Caucasian. The boys haven’t had a haircut in two years.

“Generally speaking, almost every native tribe has that same belief about cutting the hair. It’s considered a taboo,” said Banks of Minnesota, whose hair hung below his shoulders. Hair is only cut when a person is in mourning, he said.

Banks was in Brownsville vacationing when he read about the Burns brothers’ cause in The Brownsville Herald’s Wednesday edition.

Rodney, 14, and Skyler, 12, have been kept separate from classmates since Aug. 23 for failing to comply with the school’s dress code that dictates the hair of male middle school students must be above the collar.

Banks said that when he was a young boy, he was forced to cut his hair.

“They tried to ban me from speaking my own language. They tried to ban me from singing songs, attending ceremonies. For 11 years they did that,” he said.

He said other American Indians most likely would join in to assist Rodney and Skyler’s cause if they are not allowed into the classroom with their long hair.

“It’s certainly the Cherokee tribe that should be the one fighting … they are a pretty powerful tribe. I’m sure they would send a representative down here to appeal to the school board,” he said. “I’m sure that we will exhaust every remedy to have a cultural exception to the rule.”

The Chickasaw Nation Web site, chickasawnation-nsn.gov, indicates that the tribe’s men and boys traditionally wore their hair long.

The boy’s mother Deborah Burns filed a grievance against the school and asked that her sons be allowed to grow their hair long and style it short to meet the code.

Resaca Principal Stephen Rosales has not yet responded to her complaint. The two met on Friday to discuss the matter.

On Tuesday, Rosales said he hoped he would have a reply for Burns on Wednesday, but was still working on it Wednesday afternoon. He has until Sept. 12. “I don’t foresee myself going that long,” he said.

Reporters were not allowed to attend Wednesday’s meeting between Banks, Rosales and district administrators.

“They (AIM) had read the (news) paper and they were just expressing their viewpoints and their pleas for the boys,” Rosales said after the meeting.

Banks said the meeting went well and school officials seemed receptive but isn’t sure if an exception will be made for the “native students.”

“I don’t know how they will do that. I just hope that they will make a favorable recommendation,” he said.