With 48 Native American students attending the University as of last fall, Native Americans make up less than one percent of the school's population. These numbers have prompted the administration to begin focusing efforts on promoting higher education among the Native American population. The seventh annual Virginia Indian Nations Summit on Higher Education (VINSHE) met last weekend at the University to discuss methods to encourage indigenous tribal members to seek opportunities in higher education. In addition, first-yearEngineering student Monty Johns has begun the process of establishing an American Indian Student Union at the University. As Virginia Tech and the College of William & Mary also make progress in offering more academic programs and resources for Native American students, the University has recently expanded its efforts to provide education to the Native American population.
Native Americans and higher education
Samuel Cook, an associate professor of interdisciplinary studies at Virginia Tech said Native American communities are "wary" of higher education opportunities in Virginia.
"It is seen as a tool for assimilating Indians into mainstream society at the expense of their own communities and cultures," Cook said.
According to Cook, however, Native Americans are starting to recognize higher education as a mechanism for success in the contemporary world.
"A lot of tribal communities see it as a means to an end by gaining the tools of the dominant culture in order to circumvent the dominant culture," he said, adding that they are "using it as a means to empower themselves and essentially to fight on equal grounds without being too complicated to deal with the larger world on equal ground."
Paula Sherman, an associate professor of indigenous studies at Trent University, said the critical aspect of promoting Native Americans in higher education is to maintain the central concept of a strong community that is seen in their culture.
"Generally, Native Americans create a sense of community, and through the programs and the services, this sense tends to develop between the faculty, the staff and the students," Sherman said.
In addition, Sherman said Native American students want to see their culture represented in higher education through the curriculum and teaching staff.
"They want to be mirrored in the curriculum," she said. "If there are instructors in that program that are indigenous peoples, it would be better [for indigenous students]...but students have been generally receptive to aboriginal professors."
Jay Phillips, director of finance and administration at the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, said the organization had been promoting more interest in higher education among Native Americans despite poor economic circumstances among tribal communities.
There "are very poor areas where the need for education would not otherwise have access to education at all," Phillips said. "It is the right of the Indians to determine their own future and the way in which students are taught."
Phillips said the consortium maintains 35 tribal colleges in the Western United States Organized on tribal land, these institutions aim to educate Native American students at a higher level while preserving a focus on their culture and heritage.
Examples of successful programs
Since fall 2000, Virginia Tech has offered a program in American Indian Studies to undergraduate and graduate students. Coordinated by Cook, the program combines traditional Native American history with contemporary practices to ensure that the program encompasses a wide variety of topics.
"We want students to come up with a practical understanding of the diversity and validity of American Indian cultures and the validity of the knowledge that comes from American Indian societies in the contemporary world," Cook said.
Cook said one reason for the implementation of the program was to being rectifying the "deficiency" in Native American higher education.
Native Americans "are the most underrepresented group in higher education in the state," he said. "They were kept out of Virginian public schools until the 1960s because they were not regarded as 'white' and they were not regarded as 'Indian' because of the eugenic policies mandated by the 1924 Racial Integrity Act that essentially stated there are no Indians in Virginia."
According to Amy Widner, public relations coordinator for undergraduate admissions at Virginia Tech, there are currently 70 Native American students enrolled for the 2006-2007 academic year.
In addition, Virginia Tech plans to add an online course on Native American history in 2008. Cook said he hopes the course will be offered at the University soon after.
Karenne Wood, a University doctoral candidate in anthropology and a member of Virginia's Monacan tribe, said she and other VINSHE members have worked with University Provost Gene Block for about four years to create programs that will bring Native American students to the University.
"It's really important to create a support system and a network for American Indian students," she said.
The lack of Native Americans in higher education was also brought to the attention of the University when the school invested in the University of Arizona's Large Binocular Telescope Observatory in 2004. Their involvement sparked protests from the Apache Native Americans because the telescope was constructed on 'sacred' ground. Since then, the University has tried to maintain good relations with all Native American tribes, Wood said.
To aid Native American students and encourage awareness, William & Mary developed the American Indian Resource Center in 1998. The center focuses on "partnership and outreach" with native individuals or tribes, said Buck Woodard, a graduate student at William & Mary.
"We do many different types of programs that are not necessarily edged in higher education initiatives, although we are interfaced with [William & Mary] department of education, student enrollment and minority services and different types of collaborative works," Woodard said.
University student responses
Since attending a University forum on racial stereotypes, Johns has begun working with the Student Activities Center to createan American Indian Student Union.
Johns said he wants to increase student awareness of Native American students at the University.
A member of the Cayuga tribe of Ohsweken, Ontario, Johns said the University previously had a Native American student group before it became inactive in 2003. Modeled after organizations at Harvard University, Brown University, Cornell University and Dartmouth College, the University's association would aim at providing a welcoming environment for current and prospective Native American students.
"I would like to create something of a pilot program for welcome visits when an American Indian high school student comes to visit [the University]," he said. "I want to have them personally welcomed because there are so many other universities that have these 'welcome' visits."
In addition, Johns hopes to foster University students' awareness of Native American culture by creating activities to include the entire student body.
"I would like to also hold an American Indian Awareness week to offer events based on the American Indians in North America," he said.
This is not the first Native American student organization at the University. Along with the group that became inactive in 2003, the Law School established a chapter of the Native American Law Students Association last fall, said Elisabeth Custalow, first-year law student and president of the group.
"Our mission is to provide opportunities related to native communities and Indian law," Custalow said. "We're trying to get some pro bono work started related to Indian law to give the students an opportunity to do some service."
Since the group is relatively new to the Law School, Custalow is unsure of the effect it will have on prospective law students in the coming year.
"I don't know how it will increase the enrollment of [Native American] students at the Law School, or how it will affect the University as a whole," she said. "I think it at least lets natives know that there are organizations at the University as a whole."
Native Americans at the University
The University will also begin to address concerns about educating Native Americans at the school and in the state as a whole.
The University will "host a summer symposium for Virginia school teachers that will be staffed by Virginia Indians as the faculty to make sure that Virginia schoolteachers are teaching correctly about American Indians, and not just cutting out cardboard feathers and headbands," Cook said.
According to Wood, VINSHE hopes to plan a pre-college program at the University for prospective Native American students. She said Virginia Tech currently offers a pre-college program for Native American students in middle school and high school.
"They go to the campus to look at it and see how interesting college can be," Wood said. "We usually take them to cool programs like a virtual reality lab that will engage kids."
Cook said if support from the University administration remains strong the school will be able to create a better environment for Native American students; however, he also said the transition would not be without difficult times, as he has experienced at Virginia Tech.
"From my experience in eight years at Tech, the awkward moments never cease and the only way they will diminish significantly is to have a more visible and larger American Indian population on campus," Cook said.
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