Native American students can wear feathers to Oklahoma graduation after rule reversed

An Oklahoma school district will no longer ban Native American students from wearing ceremonial eagle feathers with their caps and gowns at graduation.

Officials with Vian public schools in eastern Oklahoma told the Tulsa World they will abide by Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter’s recommendation this week and drop the ban.

The reversal is seen as a victory for Native American students like Natalie Briggs, a member of the Cherokee Nation who had pressed the school board to let her wear an eagle feather when she graduates next year, KJRH in Tulsa reported.

The district did not let her brother wear a feather when he graduated earlier this year, according to the Tulsa newspaper.

In a letter to the school board, Hunter wrote that wearing an eagle feather at graduation is protected under the Oklahoma Religious Freedom Act, KJRH reported.

“We are going to do what the attorney general tells us to do,” Vian superintendent Victor Salcedo told the Tulsa World “Students are what we’re all about here. We’re always willing to sit down with students and respect their opinions.”

The Cherokee Nation had intervened on Briggs’s behalf at a school board meeting earlier this month, the newspaper reported.

“This is not something people are wanting to do to cause trouble, or to just draw attention to themselves,” Chrissi Nimmo, the tribe’s assistant attorney general, told the school board at that meeting, according to the World.

This is an ongoing issue for Native American high school students across the country whose desire to wear ceremonial feathers on their big day often clash with school rules prohibiting add-ons to caps and gowns.

Eagle feathers are sacred in the Native American culture, typically presented by parents or other elders to tribe members to recognize major accomplishments and milestones, such as high school graduation.

Most public school districts allow Native American students to wear eagle feathers at graduation, according to the Native American Rights Fund and Tribal Education Departments National Assembly.

The National Congress of American Indians has urged all schools to “respect traditional tribal religious and spiritual beliefs by allowing Native students to wear an eagle feather at graduation.”

But in districts that don’t, students have taken their cause to the courts and the court of public opinion - social media - with mixed results.

In 2015, Native American students at high schools in Grand Forks, N.D. fought the district’s policy banning “personal additions” to graduation attire. They started a petition on Change.org. and started a Twitter campaign using the hashtag #LetTheFeathersFly.

After a meeting between Native American parents and school administrators - described as “very informative” by school officials - the ban was lifted.

In another case in Oklahoma, high schooler Hayden Griffith wanted to wear a feather given to her by a tribal elder when she graduated in Ramona in 2015.

The school district gave Griffith, a member of the Cherokee Nation and Delaware Tribe, other options for carrying the feather or wearing it in her hair, according to News 9 in Oklahoma City, but refused to let her attach it to her cap.

Griffith, who insisted the feather was not decoration, asked a federal court for an injunction but was denied. She graduated without the feather but put it on her mortarboard after the ceremony for picture-taking.

In his letter to the Vian school district, Hunter wrote that though the federal courts ruled in 2016 that “banning eagle feathers at a graduation ceremony did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom ... state law provides broader protection,” the World wrote.