American Indian Students Research Articles

Higher Education for California Native Nation Building: A Retrospective on College Experience and Completion

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the symbiotic relationship between Native nation-building and higher education in California (CA)—an understudied topic in Indian education. The aim was two-fold: 1) understand how, and whether, educational achievement and nation-building are tied together, and 2) extend current literature on in-college experience by elevating the perspectives of CA Indian students. Working with a select sample of CA Indians (n = 5), all who graduated from the same public university in the state and are actively involved in their tribes, this exploratory retrospective study examined aspects of college student experience, motivations to complete, and the role of tribal communities in graduation. Participants reflect on the relevancy of education, feeling (under)valued on campus, classroom invalidation and hostility, campus involvement, giving back, and the role of their tribes in pursuing and completing college. These findings extend current research on American Indian college students, while concurrently centering the voices of and building on existing scholarship to include CA Indian college graduates.

Violent Victimization and Violence Perpetration Among American Indian Adolescents.

In the current study, we propose an integrative approach, which will incorporate elements from the social learning and self-control theories of delinquency and crime to examine violence in an understudied, marginalized, and often discriminated subpopulation group-American Indian youth. The analysis is based on survey data collected between 2009 and 2013 from a sample of American Indian adolescents (N = 3,380) enrolled in 27 school districts located in five regions of the United States (Northern Plains, Southwest, Upper Great Lakes, Southeast/Texas, and the Northeast). The main objective of the analysis is to identify the factors more likely to predict violent offending among American Indian adolescents, a vulnerable group that has an elevated risk of violent victimization. Results of the Tobit regression analysis indicate that in both gender groups a low level of self-control, association with delinquent friends, poor school performance, and underage alcohol consumption significantly predict violence perpetration. Nonetheless, experience with direct violent victimization has the largest effect on male and female adolescents' violent behavior. Although living with both biological parents and childhood exposure to domestic violence do not influence significantly the adolescents' aggressive behavior, parental monitoring does have a significant violence-deterrent effect in both gender groups. Findings suggest that more opportunities should be created for indigenous communities to control their education systems and ensure American Indian students achieve academic success, which is one of the violence protective factors identified in this study. Moreover, measures meant to prevent youth violence in American Indian communities should also focus on parents/caregivers who, directly and indirectly, have the capacity to reduce the adolescents' risk of becoming victims and/or perpetrators of violence.

University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Concept Maps as Assessments of Expertise: Understanding of the Complexity and Interrelationships of Concepts in Science

Concept maps were created as one of six measures to identify exceptionally talented students during the Cultivating Diverse Talent in STEM (CDTIS) project, with the goal of identifying and nurturing talents in students from groups traditionally underrepresented in special programs. New methods were compared with conventional methods to select students for an internship in the laboratories of scientists. In this article, we describe development, field testing, and implementation of the concept map assessments in life and physical science. Assessments were field tested in partner schools with high percentages of American Indian (97% to 100%) and Hispanic (83%) low-income students. Students were selected by considering their performance on all six assessments and were placed in internships along with students selected using conventional methods. Concept maps were successful: (a) students from partner schools demonstrated high levels of domain-relevant skills; (b) scores approximated a normal distribution; (c) scores of students from culturally diverse, low-income groups were very similar to the scores of students selected using conventional methods even though many of conventionally identified students had high grade point averages and came from schools in high-income areas with many educational opportunities. Students completed original research and presented posters to the university community and their local communities. Concept maps can be used alone or in combination with other assessments; their use needs to be studied with larger groups of students and in other contexts.

Culturally Responsive Assessment of Physical Science Skills and Abilities: Development, Field Testing, Implementation, and Results

During the Cultivating Diverse Talent in STEM (CDTIS) Project, a team of scientists, teachers, and a researcher developed a performance-based assessment of high school students’ creative problem-solving skills and ability to apply physical science principles in practical ways. It was one of six measures to identify exceptionally talented students. Students identified using conventional methods (M1), with an average grade point average (GPA) of 3.93, had an average rating of 2.95 on a 5-point scale on the mechanical–technical assessment. The M2 students, who were from schools with high percentages of Hispanic, American Indian, and low socioeconomic status (SES) students, had an average GPA of 3.07 and an average rating of 3.27, demonstrating that this assessment can be an important way to change the cultural and economic balance of students identified as exceptionally talented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Other researchers are encouraged to examine the validity of the mechanical–technical assessment to identify exceptionally talented students in different groups.

“Lives, Breathes, and Thrives”: Can American Indian Students With Disabilities Access Tribal College Websites?

On January 18, 2018, the United States Congress re-amended Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in an effort to increase the accessibility of government websites for people with disabilities. Since the Section 508 amendment, no research has explored the web accessibility of tribal college websites to learn whether American Indian students with disabilities face an amplified level of discrimination on the basis of ability. Analyzing all 34 federally recognized tribal college websites, this study suggests no tribal college websites were entirely accessible for people with disabilities, as all 34 websites did not meet the Level AA threshold of compliance per ADA. Data reveal the average tribal college website included over 1,500 violations of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 standards at the Level A and AA threshold. Implications for research, practice, and the inclusion of American Indian students with disabilities are addressed.

Hidden Strengths of American Indian and Alaska Native Students in Mathematics as Measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress

This mixed-methods study used released data from the 2005 to 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress to identify strengths in mathematics of American Indian and Alaska Native students in Grades 4 and 8. The conceptual framework of the study was rooted in an asset-based approach and principles of Indigenous research methodologies. Fourteen released questions were found for which American Indian and Alaska Native students had a higher percentage correct than their non-Native peers. Quantitative results yielded strengths in questions in the content areas of measurement, geometry, and number properties and operations. Qualitative item analysis uncovered specific themes present in these successful questions. The commentary-based discussion provided interpretation and implications on teaching, learning, and research.

Lessons Learned from Designing Curriculum and Fostering University-Community Collaborations to Implement a Lay Patient Advocate Training in Tribal Communities

Health literacy is critical to enable individuals the capacity to obtain, process, and understand information to make informed health decisions, advocate for themselves and family members, and to activate collaboration in sharing responsibility for health decisions and perform self-management behaviors to help improve their quality of life. This is a particular challenge in disadvantaged groups such as the American Indian (AI) population. The purpose of this Community Based Participatory Research study was to foster university-community collaborations to develop a health literacy/self-advocacy training curriculum for laypersons in AI communities and deliver the training curriculum via classroom integration in community adult education programs. The target population for this program was adult learners in AI tribal communities across South Dakota. A committee consisting of representatives from the community and health science content experts from the university developed a four-module curriculum. The curriculum was modified following feedback from the local adult educators who, following training, then implemented the curriculum into their programs. Results suggest our heuristic health education approach to promote positive health behaviors among the AI population may be viable. By utilizing adult education specialists to deliver the curriculum to adults with educational barriers, we combined the content expertise of university health science professionals with the specialized expertise of community-based adult educators to provide the education to AI students in a familiar environment.

Substance Use and Interpersonal Violence: Exploring Potential Threats to Underrepresented Minority Students’ Academic Success

Background College dropout has been described as an epidemic, with underrepresented minority (URM) students having the highest dropout rates at colleges and universities. This study examines interpersonal violence and substance use as potential threats to the academic success of URM students. Methods This study is a secondary data analysis of the National College Health Assessment. Results Significant decreases for grade point average (GPA) in African American students were associated with physical violence and marijuana use. For Hispanic/Latinx students, physical violence, marijuana use, and methamphetamine use were significantly associated with decreases in GPA. American Indian, Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian students’ decreases in GPA were significantly associated with marijuana use. Conclusions Results of the study indicated that substance use and interpersonal violence are associated with decreases in GPA for various groups of URM. These findings are disconcerting and relay the importance for colleges and universities to undertake strategies to increase the retention of URM students.

“Do You Live in a Teepee? Do You Have Running Water?” The Harrowing Experiences of American Indians in North Carolina’s Urban K-12 Schools

American governmental policy toward Native American people and nations has long taken an exterminatory approach. The relocation era sought to remove American Indian people from reservations and tribal communities into cities to assimilate them into dominant society. The cities were marketed as beacons of economic and academic opportunity, but their realities bore different fruit including unemployment, poor living conditions, and segregated and low-performing schools. Though schools are often depicted as mechanisms of social and economic mobility, for Native children, the continued extermination of their histories, languages, cultures continue to be obstacles to their success. These obstacles are particularly harmful for Natives living in urban areas away from their tribal communities. This study of nine American Indian people from various tribes in North Carolina gathers their stories of trauma and triumph as they navigated urban public K-12 schools. Several themes emerged including the racism endured in school, lack of American Indian representation in curriculum, teachers, and peers, being tokenized as the only American Indian student, and stories of resistance and resilience despite anti-Indian circumstances.

Culturally Responsive Assessments of Mathematical Skills and Abilities: Development, Field Testing, and Implementation

A persistent problem in education is underrepresentation of certain cultural and linguistic groups such as American Indian, African American, and Hispanic, in special programs for exceptionally talented students, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). An assessment with demonstrated reliability and validity as an instrument to identify exceptionally talented students was included with new instruments created in the X project. A continuum of problems, including closed, semi-open, and open-ended, was an important component of the assessment, enabling the assessment of creativity as well as understanding of mathematics concepts. The math assessment was field tested in five high schools in high poverty areas that also had high percentages of American Indian or Hispanic students. It was implemented as part of a battery of instruments to identify students to participate in a special internship program. The test–retest reliability and construct, concurrent, and predictive validity need to be investigated in future studies.

American Indian College Student Mentoring: A Study to Measure Changes in Self-Efficacy

The underrepresentation of American Indian (AI) students pursuing higher education opportunities continues to persist. This study sought to measure the perceived changes in participants’ self-efficacy and confidence in navigating the college environment as a result of their participation in a mentoring program and addressed the research question “How does mentoring contribute to changes in tribal college students reported self-efficacy?” Nineteen participants who had participated in a semester-long mentoring program were given a retrospective pre- then post-program survey to measure changes in participants’ perceived confidence in navigational and informational skills related to college success. Participants reported a significantly higher level of awareness in the post-program survey than they did in the pre-program survey across all of the mentoring program goals with the exception of one goal. In addition, there were no reported differences in AI and non-AI participants’ and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)/non-STEM responses on the five scaled variables for the mentoring survey. Providing support early on in a student’s educational career allows for the establishment of student connections with peers, support personnel, and resources that they can turn to for help in academics or setting goals. Additionally, early support provides encouragement and a sense of belief in themselves, which is critical to student success.

Health mindsets as a predictor of physical activity and body mass index in American Indian college students.

American Indians are at increased risk for cardiovascular disease in adulthood, and levels of physical activity and body mass index associate with cardiovascular disease risk. Recent research indicates that one's mindset may play a role in determining health behaviors and outcomes. In a sample of 105 American Indian college students, greater growth health mindset associated with lower body mass index. Bootstrapping analyses revealed a significant indirect effect of health mindset on body mass index through levels of physical activity. These findings suggest that interventions aiming to promote growth health mindsets may be successful in reducing risk for cardiovascular disease in American Indian college students.

Training American Indian and Alaska Native Social Workers for Indian Country

ABSTRACTThis study reviews student's perspectives of an American Indian and Alaska Native Indian Studies center in a Master of Social Work degree (MSW) program from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. The article describes the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies many contributions over the years and how it continues to grow in innovative ways. This article begins by considering the social, economic, and historical circumstances that make Native-focused training in social work critical to the future of Indian Country. The article then discusses the founding of the center, the curriculum, program offerings and the effectiveness of the center's services. Additionally, results of the evidence indicates that financial assistance and support programs are strong factors in recruitment, student motivation to pursue a degree, and persistence to completion of a Master of Social Work credential. Lastly, the paper offers recommendations for recruiting, retaining and graduating American Indian and Alaska Native graduate students.

Neoliberal Pedagogies and Indian American Youth: Constructing Academic Identities in Central Texas

Centering the voices of Indian American high school students, this investigation utilizes postcolonial theory, Orientalism and cultural identity in diaspora to engage the ways five Indian American students form academic identities. Participants formed academic identities in relation to neoliberal pedagogic contexts and interactions with curricula and educators, demonstrating the fluid, antagonistic, and culturally related nature of their academic identities mired in mimicry, mockery and ambivalence. Participants’ insights highlight the negotiations of prescribed ways of knowing/being particular to their high school space, and their own agentic decisions within these dynamics construction notions of self-efficacy related to hard work and resiliency in the contemporary neoliberal moment.

Commentary on the Recruitment and Retention of American Indian and Alaska Native Students in California Postsecondary Education Institutions

In this commentary, we engage and summarize existing practices for recruiting and retaining American Indian and Alaska Native students in postsecondary institutions in California. This commentary is the output of a two-day symposium, “Lighting a Path Forward: UC Land Grants, Public Memory, and Tovaangar,” held at the University of California, Los Angeles in October of 2019. The symposium brought together campus and community leaders from across California to discuss the past, present and future of American Indian and Alaska Native student and community concerns, and provide intervening policy and practice recommendations. Participants included both American Indian and Alaska Native and non-Native individuals with a wealth of professional experience and employment in American Indian and Alaska Native education, from the California Community College, California State University and University of California systems. We jointly created a table of critical interventions in education, the justification for this, and potential strategies for implementation. Here, we summarize the discussion of participants from the American Indian and Alaska Native student retention and recruitment workshop to document recommends interventions for campus practitioners and leaders to serve as a guiding document for system and campus advocacy.

“Lives, Breathes, and Thrives”: Can American Indian Students With Disabilities Access Tribal College Websites?

“Lives, Breathes, and Thrives”: Can American Indian Students With Disabilities Access Tribal College Websites?

Access to Higher Education in New Mexico: Racial, Ethnic and Geographic Disparities

This chapter, written for a collected volume on Race in Rural America, assesses the intersections of race and ethnicity with rurality in relation to higher education access and attainment in the State of New Mexico. New Mexico is one of the nation’s most rural states and is home to a distinct population in terms of race and ethnicity: the greatest percentage Latinx/Hispanic population—right at half and growing fast—and the third smallest population of non-Hispanic whites among all states. Further, more than a tenth of New Mexicans identify as American Indian, the second greatest percentage among the states. The fifth most sparsely populated state in the nation, New Mexico struggles chronically with a lagging economy, high poverty and child poverty rates, and low educational attainment. Against that demographic and economic backdrop, the analysis in this chapter reveals disappointing educational attainment among Hispanic and American Indian students as measured against these groups’ proportion of the state’s broader population, but particularly in relation to New Mexico’s college-aged population. In other words, young Hispanics’ status as a majority does not appear to be a protective factor—or at least not a sufficiently protective one—when it comes to higher educational attainment. American Indian students struggle to an even greater degree, falling far behind both their non-Hispanic white and Hispanic counterparts. While rural residents’ education level consistently falls behind that of metropolitan residents, it is impossible to determine the extent to which this is due to a rural brain drain—the phenomenon of young people raised in rural areas who migrate to urban areas to obtain their college degrees and then stay, often because of better economic opportunities. Indeed, the data suggest bleak higher education outcomes for all low-income and rural residents, regardless of race or ethnicity. We attribute this in part to inadequate state funding of public higher education and to a mismatch between how that funding is currently spent, e.g., four-year institutions, merit-based student aid, and how it could be better spent to promote access and attainment for the most vulnerable students. We close the chapter with recommendations for policy makers seeking to achieve equity in education and thus also foster a brighter economic future for the entire state. We emphasize the need for the collection of more nuanced data so that the State of New Mexico can better understand trends and shift resources in ways that will make education access more equitable across race, ethnicity and geography.

Examining Cultural Identification and Alcohol Use Among American Indian and Caucasian College Students.

Previous research consistently concludes American Indians (AI) demonstrate higher levels of alcohol use than Caucasians (CA); however, recent research suggests AIs may be drinking at similar or lower rates than CAs. Little research has examined cultural identification as a contributing factor to alcohol use. This study sought to examine cultural identification and its relationship to alcohol use between AI and CA college students. Participants consisted of 56 AI and 87 CA college students who selfreported on past 6-month alcohol consumption and how they culturally identified per the Orthogonal Theory of Biculturalism. CAs reported a significantly higher average daily alcohol consumption than AIs who identified as Marginal, Traditional, and Assimilated. This research represents a compelling anecdotal and empirical socio-cultural paradigm shift from the "AIs drink more" mindset among college students. Further, understanding the relationship between cultural identification and alcohol use enhances assessment, diagnostic, and intervention efforts for both AIs and CAs.

Hidden Strengths of American Indian and Alaska Native Students in Mathematics as Measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress

Hidden Strengths of American Indian and Alaska Native Students in Mathematics as Measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress