From left to right, William Mendoza, Roger Campbell and Dayna Brave Eagle.
KYLE, SOUTH DAKOTA ––President Barack Obama’s proclamation, “Standing with Indian country” was the focal point of a symposium held at Oglala Lakota College on Wednesday. In his proclamation President Obama outlined a 13-point plan that would give Indian families and communities the tool they would need to succeed in the educational endeavors. William Mendoza, acting director for the TCU Initiative, joined Roger Campbell, Indian Education Director for the South Dakota Department of Education, and several other area tribal education leaders to emphasize the main facets and goals of President Obama’s comprehensive 2020 College Completion strategy for increasing accessibility to college as well as bolstering college completion rates for Native American students through the allocation of U.S. Department of Education grant awards to the 36 federally recognized tribal colleges and universities across the nation. This visit was a precursor to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s trip to Rosebud and Mission last Friday. The White House TCU Initiative is a component of President Obama’s overall governmental fiduciary reform plan for fiscal year 2012, which was announced this past February. In addition to the nearly 53 million-dollar funding provision for tribal postsecondary institutions, Obama’s all-encompassing proposal incorporates specificities for increasing access to health care, combating crime, and protecting the environment, among other things. The overall outcome of the plan is to strengthen tribal nations through enhancement of self-determination. “The 2020 completion goal for expanding access to college [for Native Americans] and boosting Native American college completion rates is a priority of both the Department of Education and President Obama,” said Mendoza in his opening statement. “Tribal colleges and universities serve approximately 32,000 students across the nation, primarily in rural areas, and it is important to show our support for both the institutions and the students, especially in these isolated, rural areas,” he said. Mendoza himself is both Oglala and Sicangu and spent time living on both the Pine Ridge and the Rosebud Reservations during his youth. “Furthermore, over 90 percent of Native American students [across the nation] attend public schools,” Mendoza said. “This fact alone makes it necessary to form partnerships with key stakeholders within the state of South Dakota,” he said. These key stakeholders include the Board of Regents, the governing authority for the system of public higher education within the state, and, more specifically, the state legislature. The Board provides leadership and sets policies for the programs and services delivered through its six universities, exclusive of tribal colleges and universities. Such leadership and policies do affect the Indian students who attend the state’s universities, but there is a lack of meaningful and constructive dialogue between the Board of Regents and tribal postsecondary institutions within the state with regard to Indian students. Conversely, “an estimated 21 percent of students attending tribal colleges and universities across the nation are non-Native,” Mendoza said. And neither the state legislature nor the Board of Regents is amenable to providing funding for these non-Native students to the tribal colleges and university located within South Dakota’s borders. It is precisely this stance that has further hindered effective dialogue between and among the state legislature, the Board of Regents, and tribal colleges. “We currently have an open enrollment policy at Oglala Lakota College,” said OLC’s president, Thomas Shortbull. “We are open to everyone, Native and non-Native students alike, yet the state does not provide any funding to us for the non-Native students we enroll,” he said. The relationship between the state’s tribal colleges and the state itself is “almost adversarial,” according to Shortbull. In addition to standard tuition and attendance fees, the state invests tax monies on an annual basis in its six public universities based, in part, on enrollment figures. Such monies are allocated in the interest of student education, especially higher-number, in-state students, who are typically non-Native. Yet no monies are set aside for those non-Native in-state students who choose to attend tribal colleges. Roger Campbell, who was raised on the Rosebud Reservation and spent four years working on the Pine Ridge Reservation, spoke of his personal set of core values – the “Four ‘R’s – relationship, rigor, results, and relevancy” as they apply to furthering Indian education. “We, as Native Americans, are an underrepresented population,” he said. “President Obama’s Tribal Colleges and Universities Initiative is only the first step in successfully improving Indian education, especially in South Dakota. We have a long way to go.” When asked by one of the panelists about the Board of Regents’ apparent apathy towards the tribal colleges situated within the state, Campbell replied, “I cannot speak for the Board of Regents.” Though Obama has implemented the TCU Initiative and formally laid out his plan to “stand with Indian country,” he has yet to officially sign an executive order that would make the betterment of Indian education via tribal colleges and universities a true federal priority. When queried by some of the area tribal education leaders as to the President’s reasoning for not yet signing an official executive order, as he has done for historically black colleges and universities and Hispanic postsecondary institutions, Mendoza responded that “Obama wants to take a broader, all-encompassing approach to the issue of Indian education.” Such an approach is the President’s way of acknowledging and responding to the myriad of interconnected and complex issues that the indigenous peoples of this nation face on an everyday basis. “It is not an easy task,” Mendoza said. “But we are moving forward as quickly as we can.” (Contact Jesse Abernathy at staffwriter@nsweekly.com)
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