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…

When students from Haskell Indian Nations University set foot in Siberia, they anticipated a new experience. They did not expect something comfortably familiar. Haskell's Dan Wildcat (Euchee member of Creek Nation) explains it was "like being at home" when they first encountered the indigenous people in the Altai region of the former Soviet…

Tribal colleges and universities, in addition to providing our people with higher education, help to bridge the gap among cultures. The colleges sustain American Indian art forms through class and degree offerings that include traditional (shield making, drum making, arrow making, knapping, carving, masks, and pottery), contemporary (digital art,…

This article examines issues regarding the organizational identities of tribal colleges. It provides views that despite being modeled on conventional colleges and universities, tribal colleges need to become more uniquely Native American institutions. A suggestion is explored that tribal colleges offer more courses of study involving tribal…

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…

Focuses on the Sisseton Wahpeton Community College, a "tribal college" of the Dakota Indians in Sisseton, South Dakota. Comments from college president William Harjo LoneFight regarding the philosophy of the institution and its integration of the Dakota language and tribal cultural values. Looks at various programs and institutions that have been…

When the movement for "English Only" began some years ago, the author told participants at a bilingual education workshop that he was against it. He was rendered momentarily mute because he had thought that the English Only proponents could not curtail the freedom of expression guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The way he understood them, the…

Across Indian Country, people can hear voices speaking ancient words, in a Cochiti extended family in New Mexico, a Navajo community school on the Arizona desert, a Native Hawaiian kindergarten, a Salish/Kootenai summertime ceremony, on the North Dakota plains, and in a Blackfeet math classroom in Montana. Unlike other language instruction…

The first nationwide survey of "tribal college" faculty indicates that "tribal college" faculty tend to be more altruistic than their counterparts at mainstream universities and community colleges, that they are more content in their jobs despite lower salaries, and that they are much more likely to be working toward an advanced degree. The study…

Fort Belknap College has embarked on an ambitious project in Montana to pull the Gros Ventre and the Assiniboine languages back from the brink. On the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, where there are two principal tribes, only a handful of Gros Ventre, or White Clay, members are still fluent in the traditional tongue. The "tribal college" already…

The Internet keeps growing at lightning speed. Now, "tribal college" students have a tool to assist them in locating accurate information quickly: the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) Virtual Library. The AIHEC Virtual Library provides a focused entryway into the Internet research field. Librarians report that it supplements…

Eight years after Chief Sitting Bull, prophetic chief of the Great Sioux Nation, was assassinated in 1890, Guglielmo Marconi transmitted the first wireless telegraph signals across the Atlantic to England. Although these two events seem unrelated, the names of these two men of vision are linked together today by Marconi's wireless invention. Data,…

The article discusses the sovereignty of tribal communities in the U.S. Tribes are not simply ethnic neighborhoods but actual nations with a land base, a unique "government-to-government" relationship with the federal government, and a status. In the 1970s, the federal government gave tribal governments more responsibility to manage programs that…

The article focuses on the overall health of American Indians. Native people living on reservations and in urban areas face a broad array of health problems. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta is committed to improving the health of Native Americans. CDC is one of the agencies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human…

The article reports that a wayward research project shattered the trust last year between Arizona State University and a small American Indian tribe in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. This scandal exposed once again the need for tribal governments and Native American communities to get involved in regulating research on human subjects. In response…