Each day when the sun rises at tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) professors reach back to the traditional teachings of their elders to prepare lessons for the students of today. It is the connection to Native cultures, attitudes, and philosophy that is what sets TCUs apart from mainstream colleges and universities. For most, teaching…

The College of Menominee Nation (CMN) in Keshena, Wisconsin, is an intersection of educational services and community programs. CMN offers avenues for community members to connect in different ways. The campus can be a place of transition: a point of departure and a point of return. High school students and young adults can begin their education…

Susan Finkel-Hoffman, Ed.D. is the interim director of outreach for the Department of Special and Early Childhood Education at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and a coordinator for the Northern Arapaho Teacher Education Program. In this memior Finkel-Hoffman, recalls the journey of a group of teacher education students which began almost 10…

The Obama administration is committed to the needs of Indian Country and to the education of Native American youth. U.S. Department of Education (ED) Secretary Arne Duncan has made it a priority to strengthen opportunities and outcomes for all students, including Native American students. As a result of the secretary's commitment to Native youth…

The concept of a community college implies some connection to the community beyond mere setting. A tribal community college suggests even more--a college which maintains its roots in traditional Native culture and serves the tribal community in a unique way. Located in northwest Wisconsin within the traditional homelands of the Ojibwe people, the…

Culture plays a large but often unnoticeable role in what we teach and how we teach children. We are a country of immense diversity, but in classrooms the dominant European-American culture has become the language of learning.

The college classroom at a tribal college offers a dynamic perspective on the discussion of traditional ecological knowledge. It provides a unique view because it is one of the very few settings in higher education where the majority of students in the class are American Indian. It is here where traditional ecological knowledge should become…

In the wild river region of northeastern Wisconsin, the Menominee people conserved a portion of their ancient homelands now known as the Menominee Indian Reservation. The Menominee are nationally known for their majestic forests. The Wolf River flows southward for more than 200 miles from its headwaters in Pine Lake to Lake Poygan near the city of…

Focusing on student proficiency in reading and math from 2003-04 to 2006-07, this report compares gaps in performance on state achievement tests between grade 8 American Indian and Alaska Native students and all other grade 8 students in 26 states serving large populations of American Indian and Alaska Native students. In response to a request by…

For decades, the Montana Constitution has made preservation of American Indian culture an explicit educational goal. Educators did little about it until 2004, when the state supreme court ruled that Montana had ignored its responsibility to teach about the state's seven tribes. That ruling jump-started an effort that has yielded curriculum…

This study, which was conducted during the summer of 2005, employed in-depth interviews using open-ended questions to develop an understanding of the history, purposes, and roles, curricula and programs, successes and challenges, and futures of the two Wisconsin tribal colleges: the College of Menominee Nation (CMN) in Keshena and the Lac Courte…

A powerful tool for creating culture while, at the same time, a cognitively rigorous exercise, Indigenous-language immersion could be a key for producing both language fluency and academic success in culture-based schools. Drawing on seven years of critical ethnographic research at Ojibwe schools in Minnesota and Wisconsin, this researcher…

Three years ago, while researching archival photographs and records for a documentary on American Indian war veterans, Dr. Patty Loew stumbled upon a long forgotten film about her Ojibwe grandfather's World War I unit buried in the basement stacks of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Though it was a remarkable find, the truth is, for Loew, it was…

In order to acquaint Indian and non-Indian educators, legislators, and other concerned individuals with the status of Indian education in all 50 states, data has been gathered regarding policy statements that are under consideration or have already been implemented by state boards of education and state legislation, appropriations, and resolutions…

Staff and graduate students from the University of Wisconsin (UW) conducted a 2-week workshop in environmental studies for adolescent Native American students and a concurrent teacher's education program entitled "Wetland Perspectives: Ways of Looking at the Landscape." 1996 is the fifth year for the PreCollege program and the second…