Graduation-Lakota Dress - SD student sues to wear Lakota dress at graduation

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) – An American Indian high school senior in Oelrichs is suing school board members for the right to wear traditional Lakota clothing at his upcoming graduation.

Aloysius Dreaming Bear, 19, seeks a permanent injunction and $1 in damages in a federal lawsuit filed Monday.

Dreaming Bear, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said in court documents that he wants to honor his culture and people and is bringing the case so he and other Lakota graduates have the opportunity to wear traditional clothing if they choose.

His attorney, Jim Leach, said dress is an important statement about one's self in Lakota culture.

“He wants to dress as befits him as a traditional Native person,” Leach said Tuesday. “And we say that under the First Amendment, he has the right to do so.”

The Oelrichs school board is requiring that students wear a cap and gown over any other clothing when they receive their diplomas at the May 22 graduation ceremony. The board is permitting students to remove their caps and gowns after receiving their diplomas and hang them on an on-stage rack to show their traditional clothing.

Oelrichs Superintendent Lawrence Jaske said he feels that compromise honors both the school's tradition and Native American culture.

“It's unique,” Jaske said Tuesday. “It's probably one of a very few schools that have gone this way.”

Jaske said the school has incorporated ways to honor Native American tradition on graduation day.

He said before commencement, the school is holding a feather and plume ceremony in the gym during which female tribal students receive an eagle plume and males students receive an eagle feather. Tribal students are allowed to wear the eagle feathers and plumes in their hair or caps.

The graduation ceremonies also will include a drummer and a Lakota prayer, Jaske said.

In an Apri1 12 letter to the school board, Dreaming Bear wrote that he is protecting his people and his culture's heritage, “because how can I be a honorable Lakota warrior by wearing a white man's gown, and not my tribe's regalia?”

The board has said the cap-and-gown requirement is in a handbook Dreaming Bear signed off on last August.

Leach countered that the student handbook doesn't say anything about what people are required to wear at graduation.

“Regardless, people can not be forced to give up their First Amendment rights in exchange for attending public school,” he said.

A May 13 court hearing has been set.