A bill introduced by an OU alumna allowing students to wear tribal regalia to graduation ceremonies unanimously passed the Oklahoma House Common Education Committee on Tuesday.
Senate Bill 429, which applies to students in high school and universities, was written in response to stories Oklahoma students shared of how they were unable to wear ceremonial clothing to their graduations without facing pushback by school administrations or fellow students.
Cindy Nguyen, the policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma, a nonprofit dedicated to defending and promoting individual rights secured by U.S. and Oklahoma constitutions, said the ACLU of Oklahoma helped write the bill alongside Sen. John Montgomery (R-Lawton) and Rep. Trey Caldwell (R-Lawton) in effort to provide this opportunity for students.
“We were hearing several stories of not only students being denied wearing the regalia, we've heard stories of people trying to pull the eagle feather from people's graduation caps,” Nguyen said. “We have heard stories of students and their grandparents having to fight the entire school board system for them to just wear tribal regalia, which hurts nobody.”
Kamryn Yanchick, an OU alumna and former intern at ACLU of Oklahoma who introduced the idea for the bill, said during her high school graduation, she was denied her request to bead her cap and adorn it with a feather.
“I never knew in that moment that I would have that opportunity to come back and channel that frustration and disappointment and make a bigger impact that goes beyond my school, beyond my school district and makes impacts across Oklahoma and across multiple other states,” Yanchick said.
Nguyen said in the past, there have been many ways Indigenous students were not able to express themselves and their history within institutions.
In 1996, three Muskogee High School students’ diplomas were placed on hold because they wore ethnic symbols during their graduation, according to The Oklahoman.
A federal investigation in May 2022 found that the Federal Indian boarding school policy targeted Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children to assimilate them into white culture through education.
Yanchick said wearing different items of cultural significance is a common practice among many Indigenous students that ultimately expresses their culture during an important ceremony.
Nguyen said by writing these types of bills and supporting Indigenous students, ACLU can help remind them it is okay to be themselves.
“(Thousands of) students could be impacted by SB 429 and the right to wear tribal regalia,” Nguyen said. “We really want to make sure that we put faces to those stories as well and that students are still facing denial. We want to make sure that they know that we're fighting for them and that they again have an entire community behind them.”
SB 429 will move to the House floor for a final vote before approval by Gov. Kevin Stitt.
This story was edited by Alexia Aston and Karoline Leonard. Ansley Chambers and Nikkie Aisha copy edited this story.
