The earliest known image of Dartmouth College was created by Josiah Dunham, a graduate who was a teacher at the Moor’s Indian Charity School. Image from Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College
André Cramblit, a member of the Karuk Tribe, didn't experience the greatest four years at Dartmouth College, an Ivy League institution whose charter promises to educate the "Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land." But he's grown to feel more connected with the Dartmouth community and attended his first reunion recently:
Landing in middle of the luxurious Ivy League was an eye opener coming from my modest upbringing. My roommate was the son of a president of a prestigious East Coast University. He was paying his own way through college with the dividends on stocks and bonds his grandparents bought him when he was born. Needless to say that this was quite different than the massive financial aid package I received from the college, $150 saved from my summer job and the handful of food stamps my mom thrust in my hands before I got on the bus. In my dorm’s freshman orientation group I found out I was sitting next to the Crown Prince of Ethiopia (who’s uncle was Haile Selassie, the Rastafarian deity), a guy who’s 80 year old father was the financial advisor to the Board of Directors of Merrill Lynch and who would routinely deposit a couple of thousand dollars of monthly spending money into his son’s checking account, and a girl who’s father bought her a professional soccer team for her 18th birthday. Also among my classmates were Michael and Nelson Rockefeller Jr. Turns out I was now living firmly ensconced in the 1%. Most of my four years of college was spent living at odds with the political ideals and financial lavishness of these new found “chums.” Among them I would find those siblings in NAD and the Co-Ed fraternity that I became a member of, a few who would become my lifelong family and friends. By going to this reunion I was putting myself back in that cauldron that tempered the person who I would become. Turns out having all grown older both my classmates and myself have also grown a bit wiser, more open-minded and accepting of one another. I felt honored to be asked to be part of the memorial for our classmates who had passed on. It was a moving and poignant ceremony and perhaps was the reason I was supposed to be at the reunion. I shared part of my Native Karuk culture with Dartmouth in singing at the event and was amazed at the impact it had. I had several people come up to me to express their appreciation for my role in the memorial. I spoke to more classmates during the weekend, because of my participation, than I talked with during my four turbulent years in Hanover. I came away with a better feeling about the institution through the grace of my classmates that have through the years, opened up emotionally and softened their spires that I felt as an undergraduate. Despite the discontinuity of realities between the majority of my classmates and myself that exists even today, regardless of the angst and anguish of issues such as Dartmouth’s Indian mascot that typified my undergraduate years and notwithstanding the financial chasm that separates most Native Alums and our schoolmates perhaps there is a bit of Dartmouth green in my blood after all.Get the Story:
André Cramblit: Reunions: Growing Up, Growing Wiser (Indian Country Today 7/26)
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