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Little Big Horn High School
5900 N Glenwood Ave, Chicago, IL 60660

Little Big Horn High School and preschool program was founded in 1971 to support Native students in ways Chicago Public Schools (CPS) could not. The school was also established within the context of national attention on the state as a result of the reports Equality of Educational Opportunity in 1966 and Indian Education: A National Tragedy - A National Challenge in 1969.

Non-Native leadership within CPS led by the general superintendent of schools James R. Redmond sought the Native community's guidance in developing programing for Native students. Education and cultural programing had long been a priority for Native organizations who believed that collaborating with CPS was the best path forward. Leadership within the Chicago Native American community who supported the development of a program that would become Little Big Horn included the program director at the American Indian Center (AIC) William Whitehead (Oceti Sakowin), Lucille St. Germaine (Ojibwe) Robert Dumont Jr. (Assiniboine), as wells as members of both AIC and the Native American Committee (NAC).

After meetings between the AIC, NAC, and CPS, officials from the organizations drafted a proposal and received funding through an over $200,000 grant in 1971. Little Big Horn began classes in September of that year alongside a preschool program to provide daycare for children too young to attend school.

Little Big Horn was also unique for having primarily Native staff that included both Germaine, Dumont, Kathy Diekmann (Assiniboine), Jon Fastwolf (Oceti Sakowin-Oneida), Lulu Frazelle (Choctaw), George Longfish (Haudenosaunee), Elmora McClure (Ojibwe), Donnis Mitchell (Meskwaki), and Jackie Two Crow (Mandan). The curriculum prioritized an emphasis on the diversity of Native cultures and a more wholistic account of history. Students were encouraged to learn not just about the intertribal community of Chicago, but also more about their own tribal nations.

In the first year the school was housed within the AIC at its location in Uptown, but it moved to what had been Robert Morris Elementary School on West Barry Avenue due to the need for space and divisions within AIC. Financial difficulties faced by CPS in the 1979-1980 school year and pressure to desegregate Chicago schools led to significant cuts in the school's budget. While the school had previously been able to hire at least five teachers and enrolled seventy to one hundred students every year, the 1981-1982 school year only allowed one teacher to be hired full-time and led to the school's evolution into a support program within Senn High School. This continued until the program shut down in the late eighties.

In its founding, Little Big Horn High School joined other schools founded by Native American communities and tribal nations to serve the specific needs of children in those communities. It was the result of multiple Native organizations and non-Natives within CPS pursuing every path possible to ensure the success of Native students.

Sources:

Coffey, Daniel J. " A Final Report of the 1979-1980 Independent Evaluation of the Chicago Indian Education Program: Little Big Horn and O-Wai-Ya-Wa School." June 30, 1980. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED211615#:~:text=This%20final%20report%20examines%20an%20independent%20evaluation%20study%20of%20the
Dold, R. Bruce. "City Indians Making Gains: Little-Known Community Still Striving for Dignity." Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Illinois. November 18, 1983. p. 1, 12
LaGrand, John B. Indian Metropolis: Native Americans in Chicago, 1945-75. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. p.
Laukaitis, John. *Community Self-Determination: American Indian Education in Chicago, 1952-2006. * Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015. p. 71
"Little Big Horn High School Honors 1st Three Graduates." Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Illinois. June 4, 1972 p. 20.
"School in Chicago Caters to Indians." The New York Times. New York City, New York. June 16, 1976.
"Schools at Pease With Indians." Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Illinois. August 4, 1985.

Related Lists

Uptown

After its incorporation into the city of Chicago in the 1880s Uptown worked to compete with downtown, leading to the construction of well-known landmarks such as the Uptown Theatre, the Aragon Ballroom, and the Green Mill Lounge. The Great Depression led to a once thriving area with luxury housing to be broken down into smaller apartments that could be cheaply rented. This was the Uptown that White Appalachians, African Americans, and Native Americans encountered when federal policies or economic necessity drove them to migrate to the neighborhood from across the country from the 1950’s through the 1970’s. Native people that moved to Chicago were motivated by economic necessity or pushed by federal policies created by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) seeking to assimilate them into American society. These policies included the voluntary relocation program (1952-1972) followed by the relocation Act of 1956, other job placement programs, and decades of other assimilation policies. Chicago was chosen by the BIA as one of five original relocation sites for relocation due to the high volume of factory work and other jobs, along with it being an urban setting that was seen as being in opposition to Native reservations. But Chicago had already been chosen by Native people. It had been a site of Native villages prior to the establishment of the city, and those who remained in spite of removals or moved to the city did not always see it as being in opposition to their home communities. This Chicago Native community that existed prior to relocation founded the Indian Council Fire, the American Indian Club, and worked with other groups to create the foundations of the institutions that would follow. This Native community was scattered throughout the city, not concentrated in one neighborhood. In its first nine years the voluntary relocation program relocated almost 5,000 Native peoples to Chicago. The need for housing for the mass number of people, and the low paying jobs many were forced to take meant that many were forced into cheap housing around the city, with Uptown becoming the neighborhood with the largest population of Natives. Native people also came together to support one another when the BIA failed to provide the housing, jobs, and support that it had promised. In opposition to the efforts to assimilate Native people, relocation resulted in the creation of a new, intertribal community in which people supported one another through mutual aid. Sources:  Ann Durkin Keating, ed. Chicago’s Neighborhoods and Suburbs: A Historical Guide. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008: 286).  James B. LaGrand. Indian Metropolis: Native Americans in Chicago, 1945-75. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002).  John J. Laukaitis. Community Self-Determination: American Indian Education in Chicago, 1952-1996. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015).  Douglas K. Miller. Indians on the Move: Native American Mobility and Urbanization in the Twentieth Century. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019).  Chicago American Indian Oral History Project Records - Native Voices in the City manuscript, Newberry Library.
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