Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School marks class of 2026 graduation in Bena

Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School’s class of 2026 graduation in Bena was more than a ceremony. It marked another hard-earned step for a K-12 school serving about 139 students on the Leech Lake Reservation, where the district’s graduation rate stood at 50%, far below Minnesota’s 84% average.

For students in the Leech Lake area, that context mattered. The school sits near Bemidji in northern Minnesota and has spent years trying to give Native students a stable path to diplomas, college, trades and community leadership even as the campus itself has been under strain. The class of 2026 graduated in a district that has had to fight for basic conditions as much as for academic success.

That struggle has been visible for years. In 2016, the Bureau of Indian Education announced $11.9 million in funding to rebuild the campus. Two years later, the school dedicated a new 44,000-square-foot high school building after students had been taught in an aging pole-barn-style structure that was widely described as unsafe and nicknamed Killer Hall. The new building was a major victory, but it did not end the school’s broader infrastructure problems.

Those concerns reached beyond classrooms. A 2025 MPR News report said the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe had been supplying bottled water to Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig after unsafe PFAS levels were found in the school’s drinking water system in 2022. For families in Bena and across Beltrami County, that meant students were continuing to learn and graduate while their school community still dealt with a threat to something as basic as safe drinking water.

Against that backdrop, the class of 2026 carried unusual weight. Every graduate represented persistence in a district where many students have had to navigate unstable facilities, public health concerns and the pressures that come with being educated in a small rural tribal school. The ceremony in Bena underscored what Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig has long been trying to do for the Leech Lake community: keep students moving forward, even when the road has been uneven.