Too many students may have self-identified as Native American, says our reader.Reader Indian Educator responds to Seattle School District Likely Owes $300,000 to the Feds After Submitting False Information.”I run a similar program using funds from the same source. The program guidelines are quite clear: A ‘qualified’ student is one who is enrolled in a state or federally recognized tribe or whose parent or grandparent is enrolled. I’d imagine that the ‘inflated’ number is a result of self-identified students who may or may not have American Indian ancestry and who have checked the American Indian box on school registration forms. Not all of these students though are ‘qualified’ – some might be First Nations from Canada, some might not have a history of tribal enrollment, some might be East Indian, who knows about the rest.””Important in this is to state that this program is not ‘race based.’ If it were then the ‘self identifiers’ would count. Instead, it’s politically based: A student must have a political relationship with a tribe that has a political relationship with the state or US government. The US Government, the funder of this program, owes nothing to those who haven’t maintained ties (unrecognized tribes, unenrolled students, etc.) or never had them to begin with (First Nations Canadians, indigenous South Americans, etc.).While I do not know if it is a Native person or nonNative person who runs this SSD program, if they don’t understand the intricacies of the program, they’re likely to make mistakes as has been shown.”