Role of Tribal Colleges

For more than a century, the US government worked to “educate the Indian” and end poverty on reservations. As Deloria (1999) so precisely stated, “Educating the Indians to truth, be it religious, economic, or scientific, was regarded as the duty of the civilized man” (159). A few efforts were well intentioned, but many only exacerbated the effects of postcolonialism. From the mid-1800s to the late 1900s, American Indians remained among the poorest of the poor. Located in some of the most isolated corners of the country, reservations have often felt more like Third World nations.

Visible now through the legacy of failed federal policies such as boarding schools trying to instill a work ethic based on whiteness are many stories of the brutality of lost identity, lost language, and “lost generations” that resulted from “educating the Indian.” In hindsight, there were multiple reasons for governmental failure. For example, the belief that American Indian culture and tribal values needed to be assimilated into mainstream white American culture often resulted in the use of force. The government believed that elders and leaders should be treated like children until they were capable of functioning under societal norms based on white power and privilege.

Assimilation produced various forms of resistance, one of which grew into a powerful political movement during the 1960s. A new generation of tribal leaders coalesced around a policy of tribal “self-determination,” which gained support from President Lyndon Johnson in 1968. One of the most profound acts motivated by the notion of self-determination was the founding of tribally controlled colleges, chartered by tribes and governed by American Indians. Tribal colleges were the first institutions to fully integrate tribal culture and values into their mission statements and day-to-day work. In this new era, tribal colleges believe they must train leaders as well as workers, while providing opportunities for American Indian students to learn about their past, study their language, and practice their ceremonies with pride and a sense of purpose. Today, there are thirty-six tribal colleges, and they will continue to evolve as the self-determination movement matures.

Schooling Experiences

Reflecting on the broader context of social and political inequalities, Critical Race Theory can be used as a probe to understand the complexities of law, racial ideology, and political power contributing to the postcolonial effects of “educating the Indian” and how such effects are lived experiences at a tribal college for mixed-race students. The passing of the Indian Education Act in 1972 promised to provide adequate and appropriate educational services for American Indians.¹ The act represented a major initiative toward rectifying the cataclysmic effects of centuries of mistreatment and abuse. While Cliff View College is a product of this act, and thus of the larger notion of self-determination, a number of mixed-race students spoke about how their college experiences were not what they anticipated. In some instances, they felt the college painted an inaccurate picture of what to expect, such as the image of a learning environment where all American Indians regardless of their blood quantum or phenotypic features would feel safe from having to renegotiate their identity or justify their authenticity as a result of their particular form of race mixedness.

When participants were asked why they chose to attend a tribal college as a mixed-race person, some participants who brought up issues of their Indianness also expressed having a “need” to be around other American Indians. Students were asked about their learning experience and how they are viewed at Cliff View College as mixed-race students. Overall, there were varying responses based on their mixedness and their reaction to being raced.

Kathy and Tony are older students with earned degrees who have often been racially positioned as black based on their phenotypic features. Nonetheless, they had different reasons for attending a tribal college. Kathy explained,

Kathy’s statement of “I needed to just be around more Natives” shows her desire to become associated with an American Indian identity. Being mixed race with black and having childhood memories of her family not acknowledging their American Indian lineage, Kathy’s decision arose from a need to belong.

For Tony, family connections were influential in bringing him to Cliff View.

Although both Kathy’s and Tony’s reasons for attending Cliff View College were to learn more about their culture as well as others’, Kathy’s motive was based more on an effort to reclaim her authenticity through the study of cultural and traditional art forms. And since in most of both students’ mixed-race experiences, they have been racialized, alienated, and viewed as outsiders based on their phenotypic features, their coming to Cliff View can be seen as an attempt to re-create a group association, to become more American Indian. Even so, “being drawn” or “needing” to experience Nativeness only further subjected both Kathy and Tony to the racial power dynamics that construct a higher-status multiracial reality for some and a lower-status monoracial reality for those deemed black.

In view of the fact that stereotypes are often assigned and played out, tribal colleges are often pegged with the mission of teaching students how to be “Indian.” Jennifer’s reason for attending a tribal college was not to re-create, renegotiate, or assert her identity.

For students who are mixed race with black, their experiences continued to be racialized through notions of questioning their authenticity of Indianness. For example, Tony describes how he is disregarded in classroom discussions by faculty at Cliff View College: “Instructors on this campus . . . literally have discounted . . . my comments or feedback in classroom discussions that were open forum because I don’t appear to look Native or maybe I look African American or maybe a combination of neither. Based on their perspectives or . . . maybe they feel threatened . . . who knows.” When Tony is disregarded in classroom discussions, the meaning of race becomes both a collective action and a personal practice by the gatekeepers of the discussion. In this process, Tony’s blackness is shaped by racial meanings with specific rules that emerged as a product of white racism. More important, the gatekeepers of the dialogue are creating an oppressive learning environment based on students’ phenotypic features and singularly asserting that blackness is inferior, or at least seemingly forever an outsider to Nativeness.

Relating a comparable but different experience, Kathy frankly portrays her familiarity with exclusion as a nonenrolled tribal member on campus.

Another encounter Kathy had pertained to a course project. She was very direct in describing her frustration during and after the experience.

Although Kathy embraces both her American Indian and black identities, the lack of cultural sensitivity to the done to violence of descendants of slaves in a classroom assignment further portrays the boundaries of being mixed race with black versus white.

Troy shared a similar experience of discomfort regarding a conversation among students on campus. “Students were making comments about race and were not being sensitive about what was being said. Being in ear distance, they were making comments about certain mixed-race students as if they could not hear them . . . it was so ignorant. Does it really matter how a person looks on this campus? And I would reply that it does change your experience . . . it sure does.”

Other frustrations included the lowering of academic expectations. Kathy described her disappointment with the academic expectations at Cliff View College in comparison to nontribal colleges.

Jennifer’s view was similar.

The issue of having to prove your worth at Cliff View College continues to uphold how racial labels as are used as strategic essentialist tools. For example, Kathy’s schooling experience has taught her that

And through the use of strategic essentialist tools, faculty at Cliff View College are making a politically racialized choice on how they view color boundaries within already recognized raced groups.

In contrast to the black/American Indian mixed-race participants in this study, Samantha did not express the need to be around more American Indian people as a basis for her decision to attend a tribal college. For her, it mattered more that Cliff View was known for its art program.

It is interesting that race mattered so little for Samantha, a light-skinned mixed-race student. It was as if she did not even have to think about whether or not she would be accepted by faculty and students at whatever college she attended. This could be due to her relative privilege as a lighter-skinned person, not having to think as much as darker folks about where she goes and with whom she associates. Thus, her inattention to the power structures of race has the effect of reinforcing her status, in terms of whose narrative counts ontologically and epistemologically, relative to darker-skinned mixed-race students.

Although Logan did not know that Cliff View College existed until just prior to applying, he, like Samantha, did not choose Cliff View as a means to become more authentically American Indian.

Stacey had a comparable viewpoint of student expectations at Cliff View College: “Instructors just let some students slide by with whatever. I know several students that did that. It was like that in my geometry class. White teachers here act as if they . . . like they feel bad and they pass you along. It doesn’t help you do anything . . . it’s sad.”

A couple of the students in this category based their decision to attend Cliff View on a need to know more about American Indian culture, but they did not express their reason as a need to prove their Nativeness to “authentic” American Indians. For example, Anthony’s decision to attend a tribal college was based on his wanting to have more cultural and historical knowledge. He said, “I am an open-minded individual with a hunger to know more about my personal heritage as well as the heritage of others.” And Kim’s decision to attend a tribal college was formed out of a wish “just to be in college with other American Indian students.” However, her experience at Cliff View soured her experience. After a long hesitation, she stated: “Coming to this college was a big difference for me because people here . . . judge with their eyes and you know . . . they don’t actually want to come out and meet you and learn about or just . . . you know?” Kim was still unprepared for the reality of being raced as a mixed-race American Indian at a tribal college. In addition to her slow adjustment to college, “it’s just different . . . even if a full-blood Indian I’m talking to . . . it’s still different from where I come from. It doesn’t matter . . . even what color you are . . . it’s just weird. On campus . . . I get made fun of ’cause I’m from Alaska. I think that’s really shallow.”

Anthony was more direct in his comments about his campus experiences.

Anthony’s words bluntly illustrated what some of the students addressed in their conversations about their experiences on campus. At Cliff View, phenotype seems to play a larger role in claims to American Indian authenticity than traditional knowledge. While both are

important to this process, culture is more fluid in that it can be acquired through learning, whereas race, which has the rigid qualities of a caste system, cannot. Whereas lighter-skinned mixed-race students can achieve closer associations with Nativeness despite their whiteness by learning traditional ways, darker-skinned, especially phenotypically black, mixed-race students are kept socially distant regardless of how culturally traditional they become.

Logan commented about his perception of students’ experiences on campus identity politics.

Logan thus reiterates a common theme found in this research, namely, that although a tribal college campus such as Cliff View is intended to provide an academic “safe haven” for mixed-race American Indian students, many, especially darker-skinned ones, did not find this to be true. Although Cliff View places an emphasis on culture and tradition, it is still a structure defined by white power dynamics that supports a biological construct of race.

Region seems to also play a factor in the social demarcation of Nativeness. Logan describes how American Indians not from the Southwest were seen as less authentic.

Whether students experienced discomfort around, or judgment of, their mixedness, it became clear throughout the interviews and group sessions that their impression of campus life was instrumental in how they viewed the tribal college experience.

Not all of their experiences at Cliff View were negative. Anthony’s included “actively participating in Native culture, and it made me want to seek more information about my Native side of my family.” Having experienced the pressures of attending a reservation school engulfed in one particular tribal culture, Samantha thought her experience at Cliff View had a positive effect. “I changed my racial identity by feeling more of that race. Like in Window Rock, I felt white, but I would try to feel Native. But here on campus, school makes me feel proud to be Native and it makes me feel more ashamed of being white.” However, Samantha seems to contradict herself a bit when she says, “Well, at school since I’m mixed with white . . . and . . . like white is viewed as bad . . . it’s hard, so it’s kinda encouraged to just say you are Native.” This leaves one to wonder whether she truly feels more American Indian as a result of her experience at Cliff View or if she is simply trying to fit in and avoid conflict.

Logan was more overtly critical of Cliff View. He felt that the focus on authentic Nativeness was often overbearing and essentialist.

Logan also candidly states, “People do try to influence . . . my racial identity choice and those people are actually . . . the instructors and administrators here at school.”

Through practices that accept the mixedness only of specific groups, the racial and cultural organization of Cliff View College causes Indianness to be narrowly defined. Indianness then becomes based on the social and political environment in which it is being defined and how that particular environment would prefer Indianness to be viewed by others (i.e., not black). Further confounding the topic is that race politics has become institutionalized in higher education at Cliff View College. This institutionalization will redefine current constructs of race, racial identification, and racial classification. It was disheartening to students with black mixedness to see how Cliff View College influenced the role and the defining factors of Indianness. Students faced these situations with peers and faculty in classrooms and in their living environments, whether within their communities or on campus.

The views and situations described by participants indicate the presence of institutionalized racism. The argument put forward by Derrick Bell (1976, 1995) in “Serving Two Masters” is instructive and can be applied to the situation at Cliff View. Bell argued that black children would have been better off without the outcome of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. His view is based on the continued widening racial disparities of educational opportunities, with black children remaining disempowered and poor compared to whites. The “two masters” are the deep-seated racial policies of political institutions and the interests being served by a racialized social order. On one hand, tribal colleges began through a seemingly progressive movement of self-determination, but on the other hand they have limited promise because they are “serving two masters.” One way the institution, faculty, and certain students are performing such acts is by aligning themselves with race essentialist ideology. And when those who phenotypically fit the stereotype of being American Indian refuse to create an alignment with those who are alienated (phenotypically black or black mixedness), the idea of existing races as pure rather than a social construct for whites to maintain power and privilege is further reinforced.

A second way tribal colleges are “serving two masters” lies in the role these institutions play in competing for funds and resources based on white, oppressive federal and state regulations. For example, the requirements of federal grants do not meet the cultural or traditional missions of tribal colleges, yet predictably, tribal colleges must conform to such Westernized institutional values to access funds. Thus, their missions become governmentally determined instead of self-determined. So it is important to question how education has been used as an oppressive tool to navigate divisive strategies through race identity politics, as described on a more micro level in this study. One of the pressing ethical questions within tribal college learning environments is how to decolonize the Westernized thought process (educational practices, the value of blood quantum, etc.) to focus more on traditional tribal education. Yet, my argument is that even that question is too vague. The more profound question is how do tribal colleges discontinue essentialist practices as more and more tribal communities are becoming mixed race? How will they undo the racial status hierarchies that already structure, thoroughly, American Indian communities? Traditional knowledge alone cannot accomplish this task. For tribal colleges, locating education within the framework of self-determination is critical. However, as Deloria and Wildcat (2001) argue, self-determination is not a self-evident concept. “We must ask ourselves, where is the self-determination? What is it that we as selves and communities are determining? We will find that we are basically agreeing to model our lives, values, and experiences along non-Indian lines” (135). But, as this research has argued, who exactly is non–American Indian? How do these lines get drawn? And what effect does that have on ideas about American Indian community needs? Because tribal colleges need economic support from government agencies, they are not privy to decisions on how policy influences the racial boundaries of political institutions. In fact, as a result of need, most tribal college leaders detach themselves from these racialized boundaries as a means of economic survival, and with this detachment comes assimilation to whiteness. The reality is that as more and more tribal communities become mixed race with blackness, the operations of the culture of white power will continue to function as discriminators against the mixedness of blacks or those deemed blackened.

Mixed-race students’ communicated experiences indicate a need to address this population’s concern at Cliff View College. In fact, all students at Cliff View would benefit from a curriculum that addressed racial politics within American Indian communities as well as between American Indian and non–American Indian social groups. It is interesting to note that despite their struggles at Cliff View, most of the students did not see a need to change their degree programs nor did they indicate a need to transfer to a different tribal college.

How students’ race is asserted, assigned, and reassigned appears to be determined by whether they are mixed with black versus with white or nonblack. According to participants, this particular tribal college did not provide a supportive or welcoming environment. As a result, students were highly stratified based on experiences tied to their phenotype and racial mixture.

All students experienced some sort of adjustment to the racial culture of Cliff View College. In the classroom, there was often a divide between mixed-race students with black versus those with white, similar to the differences between monoracial white and black student experiences. As a result of dissimilar experiences based on mixedness, there was group association conflicts during their schooling experiences that included feeling victimized when their whiteness did not prevail as an asset or being alienated due to blackness. Overall, the schooling experiences of mixed race with black indicated situations of racial conflict.

Discussion sessions with the nine students in this study provided a distinctive portrait of the multiracial experience at Cliff View College. Apparent was a profound, clear distinction between the mixed-race black experiences and the mixed-race white experiences based on phenotypic features. The inability of Cliff View College as well as other tribal colleges to break the stigma of “serving two masters” was evident. Race essentialism and strictly defined government funding tightly control the actual project of “self-determination” in tribal colleges. How does this constitute real self-determination? And what does it mean to be “self-determined” if colorism and racial exclusion are the norm in institutions that are supposed to embody progress and empowerment? For Cliff View College, self-determination is structured within a context of social and political culture that is defined by whiteness, which means that “self-determination” is actually positioned to further uphold racial meanings within a racial order.