AIDS affects thousands of American Indians and Alaska Natives: They have the third highest rate of AIDS diagnosis in the United States, despite having the smallest population. To tackle this problem, the federal agency has provided capacity-building grants to seven tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) for an innovative, peer-to-peer initiative.…

When a dozen education leaders met in Alberta, Canada, in August 2002, they felt the familiar thrill of history being made. They had come to form a worldwide organization for indigenous higher education, and their excitement sustained them for 12-hour days etching the road map for a new organization. Despite differences in language, ethnicity,…

Thirty-seven years ago, the Navajo people in Arizona created the first tribally-controlled college in the world. This birth fired the imagination of educators and community activists across the United States, who soon began creating their own colleges in the Northern Plains, Midwest, Northwest, and, most recently, in Oklahoma and the East. It is…

Reports on the creation of a public health degree at Dine College in Shiprock, New Mexico, the first degree of its kind at a "tribal college". Review of the work of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and the Centers for Disease Control, who developed the degree with the goal of increasing the number of American Indians in health…