Honoring tradition while preparing students for tomorrow
By Stephen Giegerich
Tyson Oreiro has a very clear vision of the future and the path he'll take to get there. Step one: Earn a bachelor's degree from Northwest Indian College (NWIC) on the Lummi Indian Reservation near Bellingham, Wash. That's a goal Oreiro abandoned 10 years ago, when he left the Pacific Northwest for a casino job in Palm Springs, Calif. Step two: Leave the reservation again, but this time to attend medical school. Step three: After med school, train in cancer research, specializing in childhood oncology. Oreiro's plan has one more specific step: Use his skills to help Native American children suffering from cancer.
Supremely confident, 27-year-old Oreiro outlines the coming years with the certainty of a pilot plotting the coordinates of a flight plan. And he's equally resolute about his requirements for the postgraduate institutions that will help him along the way. A sound academic record is just the half of it.
"I expect (the school) to honor us, somehow and in some way," Oreiro says. In many ways, Oreiro echoes the voice of every Native American knocking on the college door, and postsecondary institutions hoping to serve this special population would do well to listen.
Honor the Native identity with heritage, spirit and family, the voices say, and you'll be able to build a foundation for student success. "The avenues of academic success travel through the culture and the support systems," says Cindy Dodd, dean of student life at NWIC.
Justin Guillory, dean of the college's Extended Campus and a doctoral candidate at Washington State University, says colleges and universities can demonstrate their commitment to Native American students in the admissions phase, particularly during the initial campus visit.
Like most Native people, the Lummi adhere to the principle that wisdom trickles down from tribal elders. The belief is so entrenched in the culture that the philosophy is set forth in the NWIC course catalog: "Our strength comes from old people," it reads. "From them we receive our teachings and knowledge and the advice we need in our daily lives."
It makes sense, then, that Native Americans visiting a college campus will seek a depth of education that transcends the classroom. Whether the elder is a gray-haired member of the faculty, a wise member of the school administration or even an upperclassman isn't the point. What does matter is the presence of elders who have already trod the unfamiliar path to higher education and are capable of showing newcomers the way.
"It's one thing if an institution says it is diverse or that it honors our traditions," says Guillory, a descendant of Idaho's Nez Perce tribe who is also part AfricanAmerican and Hispanic. "But, quite frankly, I trust my own. I want to have a conversation with someone who can help me answer the question: 'This is where I'm from; now how can I connect the academics to my culture?' "
'Far, far away'
That's not what Oreiro encountered during his initial experience with postsecondary education. Never mind that the school he attended, Western Washington University, is barely nine miles from the 12,500-acre Lummi reservation.
"Even though it was close to home, it still felt far, far away," Oreiro recalls. He saw few faces on campus that looked like his, and, though 'most students were welcoming, few seemed able to appreciate or even understand the connection to ancestry, earth, sky and the other influences that had so profoundly shaped Oreiro's life.
Without elders to provide wisdom and guidance, Oreiro, admits, he "crashed and burned," partying his way out of Western Washington before the end of his sophomore year.
"I can't explain the pull of our culture and the need of Native Americans to attach themselves to it," says the normally articulate Oreiro. "It defies explanation."
NWIC President Cheryl Crazy Bull speaks up to fill the gap. "It's ancestral memory," she says. "It's an embedded experience."
A member of the Lakota tribe, Crazy Bull moved west from North Dakota nearly six years ago to lead the school. She has seen NWIC through an unprecedented period of academic, spiritual and physical growth, overseeing work on the Lummi campus as well as six satellite sites — four along Coast Salish (the Native name for the Lummi's ancestral home), one in Eastern Washington, and one in Idaho. The combined enrollment on NWIC's seven campuses is 1,200.
NWIC is a Tribal College, one of 35 postsecondary institutions within the borders of the United States that are owned and operated by various tribal nations. Generally situated on reservation lands, these institutions fill a critical need. According to the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (the professional association encompassing these schools): "Tribal Colleges are unique institutions that combine personal attention with cultural relevance in such a way as to encourage American Indians, especially those living on reservations, to overcome the barriers they face to higher education."
Those barriers are formidable, and they usually occur in combination — with geographical isolation, low income and poor academic preparation among the most common. Because of these barriers, success rates for students at these institutions are often low. For example, in 2006, NWIC's main campus had a graduation rate of 19 percent, and the graduation rate on the outlying campuses was 9 percent. The term-to-term retention rate during the 2006-2007 academic year was just above 60 percent for students in NWIC's degree and certificate programs. In Fall 2007, however, the fall-to-fall retention rate among these students was just 30 percent.
These figures, particularly graduation rates, can be a bit misleading because they tend to measure success with a yardstick that often doesn't apply to NWIC students, many of whom have no intention of earning a degree. Crazy Bull points out that many NWIC students take courses solely for job enhancement, adding: "I think that's something policymakers don't often understand." Still, she and other NWIC officials acknowledge there's room for improvement in student success, and they're working to close that gap. Across all of NWIC's campuses, students are starting to see the benefits of a college-wide emphasis on data-driven learning. At the same time, early-intervention programs are beginning to offer help in everything from financial aid to academic tutoring.
Officials are especially enthusiastic about a "family education model" that NWIC has adapted from a tribal college in Montana. Using this approach, the college encourages a student's spouse, children and siblings to be part of their loved one's education by joining field trips and participating in family-oriented, on-campus social activities.
Crazy Bull calls course-completion rates the jumping off point for improving student success. (In 2006, those rates ranged from 50 percent to 75 percent in class categories ranging from degree programs to distance learning.) To help keep students engaged and on track, NWIC has instituted an early-warning system that alerts faculty members when a student misses too many classes. The college is also encouraging faculty members to visit students in their homes.
"If you put in the work with students, they'll know," says Crazy Bull. "And if they know, it makes their educational experience more meaningful."
A daughter's dilemma
Crazy Bull's professional perspective is shaped by her tenure in K-12 and postsecondary education and by her position as president of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC). But she also has a personal perspective, one shaped by her own experiences as a Native student and, more recently, as the parent of such a student.
It's been some years now since her daughter, then a freshman at the University of Wyoming, called in tears to relate a story that Crazy Bull says resonates to this day. In a first-year writing course, her daughter was asked to compose a story inspired by the mental image of a woman standing beneath a tree. Drawing on her background, the girl wrote about "vision quest," a Native rite of quietly withdrawing in spirit and prayer to seek introspection, guidance and understanding.
When the essay was shared, classmates and instructors alike were confounded by the subject, its inspiration and its meaning.
"They accepted it, but they didn't understand it," recalls Crazy Bull. An already-homesick student, separated from her traditions and suddenly feeling more alone than ever, reached out to her mother. Crazy Bull knew which buttons to push. Next morning, she was back on the phone to Wyoming, asking the university's multi-cultural center to intercede.
"It's an experience lots of our children have when they go somewhere," says Crazy Bull.
The NWIC president is a realist. She knows it is human nature for people of all colors and heritages to seek out worlds beyond their own. Crazy Bull also recognizes that some educational paths, such as the one Tyson Oreiro has plotted, must extend beyond the reservation borders.
But at the risk of sounding like a "separatist," Crazy Bull wonders aloud why Native Americans who have a symbiotic connection to the culture nonetheless choose academic environments that are indifferent to Native customs. It's counterintuitive, she suggests, when a person yoked to Native rituals and traditions enrolls in a non-tribal institution. "Tribal people don't want to mainstream," says Crazy Bull. "I think it's tied to our tribal ancestry, our tribal blood."
NWIC freshman Patrisha Lane can't remember a time when she wasn't drawn to her heritage. An Army brat, Lane says she attended no fewer than 10 public schools around the country between kindergarten and high school graduation. In a nomadic life that took her family from town to town, sometimes as often as twice a year, there was one constant.
"It didn't matter how far we had to go, my mom always found a way to find a tribe, even if it was two or three hours away, to meet people, to make contact, to keep the connection to our traditions," says Lane. Now 21, Lane herself feels the same pull.
When it came time to act on a longtime ambition of attending college, Lane enrolled this January at NWIC, a school that fits squarely in the "comfort zone" of a young woman who, unlike many NWIC students, has experienced the world beyond Bellingham.
"We re-create the family experience for our students," Crazy Bull explains. "We recognize that our students have prior knowledge and a different view of the world. We see the world differently."
The reluctance of Lummis to abandon the culture is driving a long-range expansion at the main NWIC campus in Bellingham and its satellites. It also helped nudge the school toward its recent decision to offer a four-year degree. Oreiro, the son of an NWIC administrator, earned a two-year degree here in 2007 and is now one of 12 students in NWIC's new baccalaureate program. One of the things he likes about the program — and something he would like traditional colleges and universities to emulate as they reach out to Native American students — is that NWIC integrates tribal traditions into the social fabric of the campus, and even into the academic curriculum.
Culture in the classroom
With the guidance of the school's cultural and heritage arm, the Coast Salish Institute, those tribal traditions abound at NWIC. Along with the course selections found at mainstream universities, the NWIC catalog includes courses such as Bone Game Drum and Song, Native languages and Introduction to Indian Canoe Racing. Next year, students will be able to enroll in clam digging, one small part of the Lummis' heritage of aquaculture — a heritage that formed the basis for the college's first field of study in 1974.
The clam-digging course "will let students know what is known to us as tribal people," but it won't stop there, explains William Jones Jr., a college recruiter, retention specialist and the son of the school's founder. "It will also show them the science. Then all they have to do is carry it over to other science classes like biology."
Everywhere on the Lummi campus, one sees the link between past, present and future. It's what led four-year student Lora Boome to the traditional plants that form the basis for her "Herbal First Aid Kit" (contents include yarrow powder to staunch bleeding, a "trauma balm" comprising arnica, St. John's wort and cayenne for aches and pains, and "Smooth Move" capsules for constipation). Boome now sells the kit to raise funds to combat diabetes in Native communities. Upon graduation, she plans to use her herbalist skills to create and market natural remedies. Likewise, it was NWIC's emphasis on tribal culture that inspired second-year student Talia London to combine the Native storytelling tradition with 21st century technology through videography, digital recording and podcasting.
In many ways, says William Jones Jr., modern tribal higher education has stepped into the breach to rescue Native culture. These institutions preserve and promote tribal traditions that have been decimated by the displacement of Native nations and by the dilution of tribal life through government-sanctioned programs that once dispatched young people to Western-style "boarding schools."
The modern tribal college "engages kids who normally wouldn't come to college," says Jones. "Many of these traditions used to be taught by grandparents and parents.
This replaces what was taken away from us."
At 53, Nancy Dutton may no longer qualify as one of the "kids" Jones refers to. Still, she is emblematic of the NWIC student who is hooked on learning because of a course honoring her culture. Dutton's initial foray into higher ed began and just as quickly ended following her graduation from high school in 1975. Her major was nursing, the institution a community college.
"There weren't enough Natives," she says. "I just didn't feel like I was in the right place."
The years grew into decades. Dutton, a member of the Swinomish tribe who lives in LaConner, about a half hour south of Bellingham, gravitated into the field of accounting, working as a clerk. Then came the workrelated accident that, in effect, ended her career. "A filing cabinet fell on me," Dutton says with a rueful smile.
In 2002, she returned to school at the NWIC satellite campus in LaConner, where she enrolled in a beading class. Now located in two rooms at the Swinomish tribal center, the LaConner campus is scheduled to move this summer into a three-classroom facility modeled after a traditional Native long house.
Her education delayed again so she could care for her aging parents, Dutton returned in 2004 to pick up classes in history, math, science and other disciplines. It was the beading class, though, that transformed Nancy Dutton's life. She is now on track to receive an associate's degree in science in 2009.
"I made it this far, now I need to finish it out," she says.
Dutton's success also affirms an important component of tribal education. Though Native people recognize the value of postsecondary learning, there is reticence to move outside the comfort zone offered on the reservation. The only way to provide access, tribal colleges have found, is to quite literally bring education to Native people. Without the NWIC campus serving the Swinomish in LaConner, it's safe to say that Nancy Dutton would not be a college student. "I would be scared to go outside," she acknowledges — a perspective that President Crazy Bull describes as "a common theme, a common experience," particularly among older Native students. As it happens, Dutton has no plans to continue her education beyond two years. Should she change her mind, though, NWIC is working diligently to facilitate what Cindy Dodd, dean of student life, describes as the "gentle handoff of transfer students."
Smoother transitions
For its part, Western Washington University also has been working hard to improve that handoff — the type of exchange that clearly wasn't as gentle as it needed to be in Tyson Oreiro's case back in the late 1990s. Since the early 2000s, Western Washington has offered a special orientation program for students transferring from NWIC. Emphasizing the university's connection to the Lummi culture, the program links the transfer students to other Native Americans on campus — in particular, to faculty, staff and fellow students who live on the Lummi reservation. "Sometimes it just takes someone to answer a question," says Joan Ullin, an academic support coordinator with Western Washington's Student Outreach Services.
Once they begin classes, NWIC transfer students who are struggling are directed to a course designed to help at-risk students navigate the academic and financial road ahead. Called Education 108, this course helps these students "get a sense that they are not alone and allows them to meet people, in a positive setting, who are challenged in similar ways," says Ullin. Upon completion of the course, she adds, Education 108 students are monitored by people in her department who are ready to intercede with one-on-one academic and financial counseling, if necessary.
Justin Guillory believes Western Washington's newfound success with Native students can be pegged to the two words that materialize in nearly every conversation about Native Americans and mainstream education: honor and culture.
"For many years, higher education saw Native culture as a barrier," he says. "But the research is now showing that, far from being a barrier, being connected to the culture is a persistence factor."
Guillory should know. The title of his dissertation is "Native American Student Success and the Concept of Giving Back."
Perhaps, a few years from now, Guillory will include an addendum on Tyson Oreiro and his efforts on behalf of Native American children stricken with cancer.
For now, Guillory and others at Northwest Indian College are keeping a close eye on Oreiro and the 11 others on track to be the first to receive a four-year NWIC degree.
As he ponders the step on his academic path, Oreiro is leaning toward the University of Washington's School of Medicine in Seattle. But he's open to other possibilities.
One thing is certain. Whether he's checking out UW or another institution, step one will be to seek out the elders. And, with typical assuredness, Oreiro says that the elders' guidance won't benefit him alone. He will pass along their wisdom, for that is the tradition.
"My grandparents told me a long time ago that we are literally a path," Oreiro says. "We make it easier for those who come up behind us."
Stephen Giegerich, a staff writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and a former education writer for the Associated Press, is a frequent contributor to "Lumina Foundation Focus" magazine.
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