On Second Saturday, April 12, retired Great Falls School District Superintendent Dr Cheryl Crawley, will present Language, Education, and Inequality in Montana History: From Crow Agency to Great Falls. Cheryl will share memorable events and photos from her experience (45 years ago) as the bilingual education director for the Hardin, Ft Smith, and Crow Agency school district. 

In 1968, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Bilingual Education Act into law, nearly all Crow Indian children were coming to school speaking only their native language. 

In 1978, Cheryl was hired to lead the program at Crow Agency by Hardin Superintendent Dr Willard Anderson, who had formerly been principal of Paris Gibson Junior High School in Great Falls. The objective was to retool delivery of education to support both languages at school. 

Despite her background working in Europe and Southeast Asia and her training in linguistic anthropology, Cheryl found herself at the heart of an unanticipated political, economic, and religious drama that she writes about in her book, Native American Bilingual Education: An Ethnography of Powerful Forces.