Native Education

CASS LAKE, Minn. – Starting this fall and thanks to a $100,000 Walmart Minority Student Success Award, Leech Lake Tribal College will add a powerful tool for helping students complete their degrees.

The new Miikinaa (The Path) mentoring program will focus this year on 15 to 20 students who are the first in their families to attend post-secondary education. These “first-generation” students often find education beyond high school more of a challenge than those following in the footsteps of earlier relatives who attended colleges or universities. According to a story in a March 2010 edition of USA Today, more than one-quarter of first-generation, low-income students leave college after their first year and nearly 90 percent never complete a degree.

FORT YATES, N.D. – After living off the reservation for 60 years, Hazel Red Bird, 84, returned to reservation life in Eagle Butte, S.D., located on the Cheyenne River Reservation.

PRESCOTT, Ariz. – If you want to fish from the richest waters, you need to pay your respects to snakes that live there. The deergrass, redbud, and other plants which are used to create traditional baskets won’t grow if the land isn’t renewed by fire.

TUCSON, Ariz. – From June 20 – 25, 16 Native American high school juniors and seniors participated in the Native American Science and Engineering Program at the University of Arizona. In conjunction with learning pertinent college preparation information, students were engaged in STEM focused activities which include science, technology, engineering, and math.

GERMANTOWN, Md. – Hughes Network Systems, LLC, the global leader in broadband satellite networks and services, recently announced the installation of a satellite uplink enabling distance learning at the Havasupai Elementary School, located in the heart of the Grand Canyon. This installation is the 150th site installed under the National Indian Programs Training Center’s Enhanced Learning and Knowledge Network, delivering distance learning to schools, federal agencies, and juvenile detention centers located in remote areas of Indian country.

PHOENIX – For the past 14 years, the University of Arizona has sent a select group of first year medical students, up to 25, to remote areas across the state to participate in the Rural Health Professions Program.

Two of these aspiring physicians were called on to serve the Navajo and Hopi reservations.

FORT YATES, N.D. – With the Lakota/Dakota spiritual season in full swing, including annual Sundance ceremonies and summer Pow-Wows, Sitting Bull College student Audra Stonefish, 28, continues her research into the growing and harvesting patterns of turnips.

The turnip research is one of several projects being directed by Dr. Jeremy Guinn, director of the Research Experience for Undergraduates program at Sitting Bull College.

TERRACE, British Columbia – A totem pole designed and carved by instructors and graduates of the Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art was unveiled July 4 in Chengdu, China in a ceremony presided over by a Canadian delegation that included Her Excellency the Right Honourable Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean and Grand Chief Edward John of the First Nations Summit.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – The San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission Indians announced a commitment of $2.5 million to a program of career technical instruction offered by the Riverside County Office of Education for students of Sherman Indian High School.

Forty-eight American Indian youths from reservations in Nebraska and South Dakota, as well as Omaha, participated in the Science Education Partnership Award camp hosted by the University of Nebraska Medical Center June 6 – 9.

The camp is part of a $1.3 million grant principal investigator Maurice Godfrey, Ph.D., associate professor of pediatrics for UNMC and the Munroe-Meyer Institute received in 2006 from the National Center for Research Resources a division of the National Institutes of Health.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – The National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, Inc., has produced many success stories as a national leader in educational support for underrepresented minority students in engineering. One such story is that of NACME Scholar Monica Yellowhair, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Arizona. Yellowhair wants to use her degree to research the causes and prevention of cancers among the Navajo people that were allegedly caused by depleted uranium on and around the reservation.