Native Education

Arizona State University ranked fourth place in the nation among universities awarding Native students bachelor degrees during the 2007-08 academic year, according to a report from the National Center for Education Statistics, released in March.

The all-Native American Choctaw Central High School solar car team won the Hunt-Winston School Solar Car Challenge this year, has been invited to the Solar Car World Challenge in Australia next year, probably ranks among the top 10 secondary school and collegiate solar car teams in the country, and is eager to share their knowledge and experience with other schools.

Eleven drummers beat furiously on a large drum as they chanted a song of welcome. Elegantly carved eagles, orcas (killer whales), frogs and bears looked down from eight posts around the edge of the large room. An overflow crowd filled the ceremonial hall of the First Peoples House, a stunning new building that establishes a powerful aboriginal presence in the heart of the University of Victoria campus in British Columbia.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) – The popular Berenstain Bears cartoon characters will soon be helping bring the Lakota language to life in homes across the region.

MARTY, S.D. (AP) – The students and staff at the Marty Indian School received an extra week of summer vacation this year, but they would gladly have given up the reason in order to start classes on time.

SAN ILDEFONSO PUEBLO, N.M. (AP) – Not more than a dozen miles from a high-profile lab so cutting edge that PhDs come and go like New York taxi drivers, the soil is worked hard by hand just like it was worked more than 400 years ago.

Angelique EagleWoman said it best: “It’s just an amazing year!” The awards, honors and kudos she has received have been many and notable – and that’s the way it should be for this remarkable young woman.

IGNACIO, Colo. – Mountain aspens will begin to turn their customary autumn gold and soon will be covered with the silver of new snow. School is starting in this southwestern Colorado area.

FORT YATES, N.D. (AP) – A local college is moving over to a brand new campus this year – one that cost $23 million and more than tripled its square footage.

The identity of the college might surprise people, because Koreen Ressler, vice president for academics at Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, said that she sometimes comes upon Bismarck residents who don’t know the college even exists.

HAIDA GWAII, British Columbia – Field studies have wrapped up for another year and assignment due dates are pending for another successful Haida Gwaii Field School offering from Northwest Community College.

HONOLULU – Quinn Carroll, a business administration major from a small village in Alaska is heading back to Hawaii to continue his education. Quinn spent the 2009 and 2010 school year working on his degree and working part time at the nonprofit Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement.

EAGLE BUTTE, S.D. – American Indian students could achieve more academically if their crumbling schools are fixed, more money is provided for teachers and supplies and tribes gain more control of what happens in classrooms, tribal officials said Aug. 6 at a congressional hearing.

CORONA, N.M. – New Mexico State University will soon break ground on a facility in Corona that, when completed, will provide a richer learning environment for students through distance education, field trips and support for graduate research projects.

FORT YATES, N.D. – As many tribal communities look at new methods to revitalize their traditional language, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe sponsored its 4th Annual Lakota Language Summer Institute June 7 – 25, with close to 60 participants in attendance from across the Great Plains region.

As the last requirement of my Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education and final year of my college career at Indiana University approached, I felt the tingling of my deep-seeded wanderlust and craving of fresh challenges. I needed something new that would push me toward professional and personal growth that student teaching in Indiana perhaps could not satisfy.

INDIAN TOWNSHIP, Maine – Wayne Newell, a Passamaquoddy educator, will make a repeat performance as a member of the National Advisory Council on Indian Education.

ELMHURST, Ill. – The White House announced June 28 President Barack Obama’s intent to appoint Elmhurst College President Alan Ray to the National Advisory Council on Indian Education.

POST FALLS, Idaho – Bree Blackhorse just graduated from Seattle Pacific University with a degree in political science and a 3.2 GPA. The remarkable thing is that she did it in just three years while working full-time and traveling around the country with her parents going to powwows and art events. Seattle University School of Law was impressed and gave her its Native Scholar Award for 2010. It’s a $120,000 scholarship which will pay her way through three years of law school.

DULUTH, Minn. – Life is something of a dance for families on the mythical Mozhay Point Indian Reservation in Minnesota, created in Linda LeGarde Grover’s short-story collection, “The Dance Boots.”

Two steps forward, two back, a turn here or there and the tales weave rhythmically back and forth between the reservation, nearby cities and boarding schools, between eras from the turn of the 20th century into the 21st and between families, lovers and friends.

COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho – American Indian students at North Idaho College have done something no other group has ever done at the school. They have established a scholarship program to help fund a college education for future students and they continue to add to that fund.