Last year at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), President Robert Martin (Cherokee) led the faculty, staff, students, alumni, board members, and donors though a strategic planning process that resulted in a number of important new directions. Among these was a new mission statement to guide their work. Like most tribal educational…

From the very start each issue of the "Tribal College Journal" (TCJ) was (and remains) a result of weeks of planning, thinking up themes, brainstorming story ideas, and tracking the progress at the various tribal colleges, and then putting it all into a single quarterly issue. In the past 20 years there have been 80 issues dedicated to the Tribal…

From its inception in 1988, the "Tribal College Journal" (TCJ) has been a family affair. Paul Boyer, the buoyant founder of the TCJ who published, produced, and edited the magazine until 1995, says the magazine sprouted not from an idealistic plan but from a combination of his own youthful enthusiasm; the support and guidance of his late father,…

Years before she became editor for the "Tribal College Journal" (TCJ), Marjane Ambler had already demonstrated her dedication and generosity to the Tribal College Movement. Ambler arranged for some of the royalty payments from the sale of her first book, "Breaking the Iron Bonds: Indian Control of Energy Development" (University of Kansas, 1990)…

Far from the glitzy streets of New York or Los Angeles... where many of this nation's magazines are published... and on the edge of the famed Four Corners Region in the town of Mancos, Colorado ...is the home of the Tribal College Journal (TCJ). Tucked away in the Rocky Mountains, it's much like the tribal colleges it serves, far from big city…

Each semester, hundreds of children find themselves on the campus of a tribal college or university. While their parents are busy working toward that associate's or bachelor's degree, the children are getting their own dose of college life. From Ilisagvik College in Barrow, Alaska--the "northernmost accredited community college"--to Tohono O'odham…

For most of a full career in sociology and education, Aaron Tadgerson has dwelt on the relationship between communities and the school systems that purport to serve them. The special problems of Indian education derive from that relationship. Tadgerson serves as the recruiter, retention, and land grant development coordinator for Bay Mills…

Fort Belknap College President Carole Falcon-Chandler does not fluently speak the "A'ani" (White Clay) language, but her granddaughter does. The girl, one of the 12 students in the White Clay Language Immersion School located on the college campus in Harlem, Montana, is part of the next generation of fluent A'ani speakers. The language immersion…

This article describes the activities during the annual Summer Student Leadership Training held July 8-10, 2009, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The leadership training was attended by thirty-five students from 12 tribal colleges and universities. It was presented by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) Student Congress at the…

This article presents the author's profile. The author is an enrolled member of the Comanche Tribe and a descendant of the last leader of the Quahada Band. Currently, she attends Comanche Nation College in Lawton, Oklahoma, where she is a junior-level student majoring in both biology and chemistry with a minor in non-romance languages. From…

Sinte Gleska University students are all ages. The author's class has an even mix of genders, and there are also non-Indians with various experiences and backgrounds, but they have one thing in common. They are eking out a living in the second poorest county in the nation. The class discusses why NDNs or Natives write. In "Winged Words: American…

Colleges and universities across the nation offer scholarships to outstanding student athletes to entice them to attend their particular schools. That's not the case with tribal colleges and universities (TCUs). While they may be less expensive to attend, the tribal colleges usually don't have much of a budget for athletics. Still, student players…

While tribal college athletic programs were not designed to market the colleges, there is no denying they have generated positive attention and have perhaps even helped to highlight the colleges' purpose. Dine College and Navajo Technical College are among a handful of tribal colleges who have made athletic programs a priority. They have since…

Twenty-one teacher candidates and faculty from Turtle Mountain Community College (TMCC, Belcourt, North Dakota) and Cikana Cankdeska Community College (CCCC, Fort Totten, North Dakota) traveled by train from North Dakota to Minneapolis, Minnesota, for an immersion experience as part of their Human Relations and Multicultural Education. The group…

Names in Indian country are powerful. Some names are spoken aloud, others whispered. The name of the college drives the identity of the school and fuels the people's desire to preserve their unique tribal identities as opposed to just using, for example, Northern Montana. Of the 37 tribal colleges and universities in the American Indian Higher…