The Blackfeet Brain Drain

STERLING HOLYWHITEMOUNTAIN

Some Native kids who leave to pursue education find themselves stuck between a longing to help their community and the lack of viable employment back home.

I grew up on the high-elevation plains of northwest Montana, on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, in a culture in which English did not become the dominant language until the middle part of the 20th century. Leaving to attend the University of Montana in the mid-1990s, after receiving a tuition waiver the summer following my senior year of high school, marked my first time living away from our reservation. My graduating class was one of the first in which many of us left to seek degrees, a development that mirrored a shift taking place nationwide; by 1996, 30 percent of Native American 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in college, up from about 16 percent in 1989.

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Some of us went to college to escape our treaty-established, semi-sovereign homeland and the social and political problems common in Indian country. Others left because there wasn’t anything else to do. Many of us, though, were driven by an idea about higher education that had recently begun to take hold on reservations—that the purpose of college was to prepare us to help our communities. Not until well into adulthood did I realize that this well-meaning notion reflected not only our communities’ need for help, but also their failure to understand that higher education, in the absence of structural change and economic opportunity on the reservation, was likelier to draw young people away from home than to help them make it better.

The relationship between education and economy is more complicated in Indian country than elsewhere in the United States. While access to higher education is a means to a better life as much for American Indians as for anyone else, connotations specific to reservation people exist that trouble the situation. Going to school means leaving a cultural context—which includes many relatives, sometimes too many—that doesn’t occur anywhere else in the country. Departing for college also means engaging with an educational system that does little to break the myth of how this country came to be, one that elides historical facts about broken treaties, Indian law, and Congress’s plenary power over tribal nations.

At the University of Montana, I found myself having to address American ignorance in an exhausting manner, explaining again and again that no, we do not go to school for free, and yes, we do pay taxes; that “blood quantum”—a measurement of a person’s “Indian blood” that determines membership for most tribes—is a colonial invention.

Prior to colonization—for millennia, in fact—the economy of the Blackfoot people revolved around the iinii, or buffalo, which provided not just food, but tepee covers, clothing, tools, and weapons. The animal’s sudden, severe decline in the mid-to-late 1800s, the result of slaughter on the part of Americans hunting for hides and so-called sport, caused enormous cultural chaos for all plains tribes. Within several years, many indigenous people in the vast region were without sustenance. In 1883, as many as 600 Blackfeet starved to death, an event that came to be known as the Starvation Winter. That time still hangs in the air, one of the few historical events discussed on my reservation.

While the recent return of the buffalo to the Blackfeet Reservation has resulted in positive PR, employment statistics in our homeland make clear that their reappearance is largely symbolic. In 2015, the poverty rate among Blackfeet was higher than 38 percent (compared with a national average of 13.5 percent), unemployment was at almost 19 percent (compared with 5.3 percent nationally), and labor-force participation was at 53 percent (compared with 62.7 percent nationally). Many reservations are in rural areas geographically isolated from stronger urban job markets. Although people sometimes perceive casinos as having brought riches to reservations, that’s true in very few cases. Meanwhile, outsiders who might consider investing on reservations have difficulty assessing the risks because tribes are separate sovereign entities, with distinct and unfamiliar laws and legal structures, so they often avoid investing altogether.

And, for various reasons, the kind of economic opportunities that might produce homegrown entrepreneurship are rare. For one thing, many reservation Indians live on land that is held in “trust” by the federal government and managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs—meaning individual tribal members don’t own the property on which they live. As a result, they lack the collateral needed to acquire business loans, a problem compounded by a lack of financial literacy endemic to Indian country.

What no one ever told me at college, I assume because it seemed self-evident to them, is that higher education is associated with a white-collar economy. When you come from a reservation, where any such economy is unlikely to exist, understanding what a degree is supposed to do is difficult. In my case, I happened upon Jack Kerouac’s work when I was 19, and became a writer. I dropped out of school, not sure how higher education related to writing fiction, unsure if I’d ever reenroll. Thus began a pattern—drop out, reenroll, drop out, reenroll.

Each move home brought an overwhelming sense of relief after the stultifying atmosphere of attending class with non-Indian students I found bafflingly humorless. (In even the darkest of times, Blackfoot prefer to laugh at life and one another.) But returning home also showed me what awaited if I stayed there: substitute-teaching gigs, working at the diner, or managing my family’s convenience store, where I often stood in the parking lot listening to the vast, predawn silence of the northern plains, drinking coffee and waiting for the first customer. Much later in life, I recognized these experiences as my first encounters with the economic hardship that dominates Indian country.

Though the general message for people like me is that the purpose of higher education is to return home to help our community, the reality is that the economy on most reservations cannot support the work that’s needed. The kinds of jobs most Americans might associate with a healthy, middle- or upper-middle-class economy—software development, sales, marketing—are nonexistent. Other occupations so common to healthy economies that we often take them for granted, such as counselorships, managerial positions, and careers with nonprofits and the state and federal government, are rare.

Perhaps it is telling that the most lucrative job available to me, during my stints back home, involved doing controversial work in the oil-and-gas industry, acquiring lease signatures from Blackfeet landowners who lived on our reservation and around the western United States. To outsiders, Indians participating in the extraction of resources from their land by American corporations uninterested in tribal nations’ well-being might appear contradictory. The reality is that, in our devastated economies, many people have little other choice.

None of these were jobs I wanted. I craved to be around writers, and the writers I knew were on campuses and in urban areas. I felt a need to be in a culture where the fine arts were appreciated, where that type of intellectual discussion was commonplace. Each time I left school, these things brought me back. After nine years, at my mom’s urging, I finally graduated. Much later, I learned my long undergrad arc, with its staccato enrollment, is common for a reservation Native.

I often ask myself what our reservation would look like if there had been a healthy economy and a more diverse culture to welcome those from my graduating class who received college degrees. The majority of my high-school classmates who left for school did not come back, opting for stable jobs elsewhere, perhaps returning to the reservation for Christmas or the summer powwow. As for me, I kept drifting. When I was 36, a new job opened up at Blackfeet Community College, one of the few white-collar positions available to someone like me on our reservation. I applied and got the job. Directing the writing center, I hoped, would give me what I needed most: a steady income, time to write, and the opportunity to give back to people in my community. I also intensified my relationship to Blackfoot-language work, helping to start a nonprofit dedicated to the revival of our mother tongue. I went to traditional ceremonies again. I ran into cousins during late-night visits to the convenience store. For the first time since high school, I became a full-time participant in contemporary Blackfeet culture.

At Blackfeet Community College, I found that many of our young people now assume they will go to college. This is the case on reservations across the country, whether that means attending one of the 38 tribal colleges and universities in the United States or another school. In an American sense, reservation people are becoming more educated. But I soon realized that college degrees haven’t translated to Indian graduates regularly securing white-collar jobs in their homelands; years after I graduated college, reservation economies still aren’t substantial enough to provide those careers. When asked what they wanted to do with their future associate’s degrees, my students responded largely with blank looks.

In my students, I saw my 18-year-old self. Many wanted to help our community, and I was at a loss to help them understand how that might happen in a place with such limited opportunities. I didn’t know how to tell them that their basic, human desire for stability and a decent income would contribute to a brain drain that has profoundly affected our economy and politics; that the purported objective of education—that we are to become educated so we can help our communities—is difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish. Without improved economies, higher education simply contributes further to reservation students’ confusion about where they belong in this world.

Though I was one of the few who found the kind of job an educated reservation Indian is supposed to find, I remained conflicted. Due to my professional duties, along with the stress that comes with teaching students from a community broken by colonial force, I found myself writing less. So I applied for a Stegner Fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University, and was accepted.

This fall, I left the reservation again, departing with some sense of failure—of not having done enough. The Stegner Fellowship will potentially provide opportunities unavailable to me otherwise: time to write and professional advancement. Pursuing those experiences, though, will necessitate being away from my reservation for most of the rest of my life. All too often, success for reservation Indians means leaving your heart in your homeland./Atlantic

Why Young Pakistanis Are Learning Chinese

Sabrina Toppa

By investing billions of dollars in Pakistan and dozens of other countries, China is gaining cultural cachet worldwide.

GILGIT, Pakistan—On a July morning, Saqlain Abbas, 26 years old, stood before rows of students, Mandarin textbook in hand, while a Pakistani soldier sat silently at the back of the classroom with a gun at his side. Hanging on the wall was a collection of idyllic Chinese landscapes—the reddish-orange mountains of Gansu, the placid waters of a lake in Xinjiang. Here, at Karakoram International University, in a remote, rugged terrain that is still contested territory between India and Pakistan, the Pakistani military has been sponsoring free Mandarin courses for indigent students.

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“Previously, students were more inclined toward English,” Muhammad Ilyas, the director for the university’s Institute of Professional Development, told me. Today, that’s changing, as young Pakistanis increasingly gravitate toward Mandarin in search of jobs and degrees. As part of an infrastructure development plan inked with Pakistan in 2013, China has pledged $60 billion to build what’s known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—a network of roads, pipelines, power plants, industrial parks, and a port along the Arabian sea. Intended to increase regional connectivity and trade between the two countries, CPEC is part of Beijing’s trillion-dollar Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). BRI aims to create land and maritime trade routes integrating 70-odd countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe, including politically turbulent states like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

In many ways, CPEC is a bellwether for this broader global initiative. Prior to Prime Minister Imran Khan’s trip to China this month, the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan, Yao Jing, boasted that the program had already generated 75,000 jobs for Pakistanis. The Karachi-based Applied Economics Research Center and Pakistan’s Planning Commission say that in the next 15 years, 700,000 to 800,000 jobs may be created under CPEC, largely in the infrastructure, energy, and transportation sectors. It’s a hope the country desperately needs to pan out: As many as 40 percent of youth are unemployed, and Khan’s trip to Beijing hinged on the hope that the Chinese might inject more cash into Pakistan’s battered economy. The South Asian country is currently seeking a bailout package from the International Monetary Fund, an organization which previously said it will review the extent of Pakistan’s debt to Beijing.

China is quietly reshaping the world

On the ground, young Pakistanis are already investing in the language skills to capitalize on future job opportunities with the Chinese. “Chinese has become as important as English to learn,” Sherullah Baig, a student in Gilgit, told me. The military provided him free accommodation and tuition to attend three levels of Mandarin classes. Almost everyone in his course joined because of CPEC; Baig’s classmates are a mix of engineers, teachers, retired army officials, and fresh college graduates.

In the past, English was the sole language of upward mobility in Pakistan, both a relic of British colonial rule and a means of accessing Western markets, educational institutions, and jobs. Now, Mandarin has become the “hot new trend,” said Abbas, the Mandarin instructor in Gilgit.

In many countries along the BRI, China’s rising economic influence has provided it with an opportunity to exercise soft power through the dissemination of Chinese language and culture. In Thailand, Mandarin language education has seeped into universities, vocational institutes, the Royal Palace Secretariat, and even the immigration bureau. In Pakistan, the growth in Mandarin-language learning has been fueled by direct funding from the Chinese and Pakistani governments, as well as a mushrooming cottage industry of private teachers and institutes claiming to provide “the Chinese edge.”

In Pakistan, CPEC has been built upon historically high levels of partnership between the two nations. Both Pakistani and Chinese officials have characterized Sino-Pakistan ties as an “all-weather friendship” that’s “higher than the Himalayas, deeper than the ocean, and sweeter than honey.” In 2014, a Pew Research Center survey found that nearly 80 percent of Pakistani respondents had a favorable view of China—the highest public opinion rating of China in the world. While cultural and linguistic exchange have not traditionally been a centerpiece of the relationship, many young Pakistanis are now increasingly looking toward China for education and employment, necessitating learning Mandarin.

In May, Pakistan hosted the first CPEC Chinese Job Fair on Punjab University’s sprawling campus in Lahore, the country’s second-largest city. More than 30 Chinese businesses interviewed students for jobs as interpreters, tax assistants, and more. “CPEC has created enormous jobs,” Aisha Noor, a 25-year-old engineer waiting in line to submit her resume to a construction company, told me. Noor had completed a free Mandarin course sponsored by the Punjab government, and in front of her several Pakistanis were being interviewed in the language. “I would give the job to the person who speaks my language,” she said, as we watched another Pakistani student introduce himself to the company in Mandarin.

Pakistanis have long been aware of the differential opportunities afforded to a person based on language. Under British rule, the colonial administration was heavily reliant on native manpower, and English-language missionary schools became surprisingly popular—although their administrators were disappointed by a general lack of Christian converts. Today, the country’s education system is splintered along two parallel language tracks, English and Urdu. The languages lead to vastly different economic opportunities, with many students in Urdu-speaking classrooms feeling they suffer disadvantages in the job market. Fearing what might happen if China dominates the global economy, many Pakistanis are embracing Mandarin to have a head start in the so-called “Chinese Century,” said Rana Ahmad, the host director of the Confucius Institute at Punjab University.

Nonetheless, Pakistan’s extravagant borrowing from China has drawn some concern. China’s economic promises to Pakistan have not always come to fruition. Between 2001 and 2014, China pledged $135 billion to Pakistan, only 4 percent of which materialized, according to Eric Warner, an adjunct policy researcher at the rand Corporation who has been tracking China’s foreign aid. Today China accounts for nearly half of Pakistan’s trade deficit, and Pakistan is among the countries most vulnerable to debt distress on China’s new Silk Road.

A lack of transparency regarding the terms of CPEC loans and investments still worries many Pakistanis, and some express skepticism about bullish job creation figures. “The jobs are an illusion,” Ahmad said. “People believe they can get a job, so maybe they should learn the Chinese language. And I always ask them, ‘If that’s so, why are there still unemployed Chinese? They have to first give jobs to themselves, and then they will give them to you.’”

Along the BRI, similar anxieties are playing out, with Malaysia recently pulling out of Chinese projects, citing fears that repaying the loans could plunge Malaysia into bankruptcy and leave it perilously indebted to the Chinese government. In Sri Lanka, a failure to pay Chinese loans spurred the Chinese government to seize Hambantota Port under a 99-year lease last year. In August, in its annual report to Congress, the U.S. Department of Defense warned that BRI might simply turn into a tool for advancing China’s own political or military agenda: “Countries participating in BRI could develop economic dependence on Chinese capital, which China could leverage to achieve its interests.”

Still, Ahmad is optimistic that China’s deals with Pakistan will receive more transparency and review under the tenure of Prime Minister Imran Khan, who previously called for placing CPEC’s financial details before parliament. His party’s election manifesto said it was imperative for domestic industries and laborers to benefit from CPEC as much as Chinese businesses, even saying that China should work toward knowledge transfer to allow Pakistani businesses to thrive on their own soil. “If the Chinese are thinking they can dictate anything to Pakistan with respect to CPEC, they are living in a fool’s paradise,” Ahmad told me.

Is China becoming the world’s most likeable superpower?

Today, over 30,000 Chinese work in Pakistan, and Chinese companies have had to contend with the cultural challenges of operating in a new milieu, including Pakistani requests for religious accommodation.

Some Pakistanis also question why the onus to learn a new language falls on them, rather than the Chinese. However, the Confucius Institute’s Ahmad understands why the Chinese are not rushing to learn local languages. “They don’t need us,” he said. “If you find anything in the market, it says ‘Made in China.’ That means our markets need Chinese goods, not that their markets need Pakistani goods.”

The exchange has not been entirely one-sided, however; China has also offered scholarships and other benefits to young Pakistanis. “Students are going where they can easily advance their education and seize economic opportunities,” Abbas said. While the U.S. and Europe may loom large as attractive destinations, obtaining visas is difficult even if one learns the language. China, on the other hand, is making itself open to young Pakistanis by offering scholarships and jobs.

In 2016, Abbas himself received a scholarship to spend two years at the Beijing Language and Culture University in China. On the streets of Beijing, he was struck by the city’s development and the diversity of the students, some of whom were also on scholarships. As his Mandarin improved, Abbas was excited to engage locals in conversation. However, when he told young Beijingers where he was from, he was taken aback by how little they knew about Pakistan. From their childhoods, Pakistanis are taught about their ironclad friendship with China, he told me. “The friendship is very strong.” On the other hand, he said, the youth in Beijing have a dim awareness of China’s role in Pakistan. “They don’t even know a country exists called Pakistan.”/atlantic