Tribal Colleges Research Articles

Perceived descriptive norms for alcohol use among tribal college students: Relation to self-reported alcohol use, consequences, and risk for alcohol use disorder

This research addressed gaps in the literature by testing relationships between perceived descriptive alcohol use norms and individual’s own alcohol use and consequences among tribal college and university (TCU) students. Survey data were collected from 3239 tribal college students in 22 TCUs across the United States in 2015 and 2016, of whom 3174 provided usable data on the variables of interest for the current manuscript. Results indicated students misperceived the descriptive norms for alcohol use at their TCU, on average estimating students at their college drank more frequently, more per occasion, and more total drinks per week relative to the observed averages on these outcomes. Participants’ own drinking was significantly related to their perceived norms, with higher perceived norms related to more drinking. In addition, higher perceived norms were associated with greater alcohol-related negative consequences and lower likelihood of being a non-drinker. These findings extend research with students at majority-serving colleges and universities, indicating normative misperceptions exist and have similar relationships to alcohol use and consequences among TCU students nationwide. These findings support adaptation of normative feedback interventions for use with TCU students to emphasize healthy alcohol norms and correct misperceptions that support the stereotype that all students drink to excess.

Public health and health professional education at a tribal college: a collaborative immersion program in rural North Dakota.

Native Americans have some of the worst health outcomes of any minority group in the USA, and are severely under-represented in the health professional workforce. From 2009 to 2015, partners from a tribal college in rural North Dakota and academic institutions in New York collaborated to create a program wherein non-Native health professionals traveled to the reservation to teach a summer course to Native students. This study assessed the impact of the program on both the Native students who took the course and the non-Native health professionals who taught the course. Focus groups composed of former students in the program were held in Spirit Lake, North Dakota. Non-Native student teachers were surveyed using an online survey tool. Focus group data were analyzed using grounded theory methodology. Survey data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Fifteen former students participated in the focus groups. Participants stated that their experiences in the course increased interest in health professions and knowledge of public health issues. Participants also described barriers to entering health professionals for Native students and the benefits of close interaction with non-Native individuals. Eighty-six percent (24/28) of former course teachers responded to the survey. Survey respondents stated their experiences in North Dakota increased their understanding of underserved populations and their interest in working in rural areas. This study assessed the successes and limitations of a collaborative, interprofessional immersion program in rural North Dakota. Similar programs may increase the number of Native Americans in health professions and increase non-Native health professional interest in and engagement with rural communities.

Drawing Inspiration From American Indian Student Success Frameworks: The Role of Family

AbstractThis chapter provides background on Tribal Colleges and Universities, an exploration of three frameworks that capture the important role of “family” in the success of American Indian students, and recommendations for helping institutions think differently about their structures and processes.

The Influence of Tribal Colleges and Universities on Native American Student Persistence

AbstractThis chapter explains how and why Tribal College and University (TCU) enrollment positively influences Native American student persistence in mainstream four‐year institutions. It also explores existing partnerships between TCUs and mainstream four‐year institutions that could help to improve the transfer process, and overall, Native American student persistence. The ways in which academic and student affairs can partner creatively are emphasized throughout.

Mihumisang: Formosan Tribal Voices

Abstract As Formosan National Parks research fellow with the Bunun tribe, whose homeland is Yushan National Park and well beyond its borders, I witnessed and published the desecration of a Bunun cemetery by Taiwanese developers in the Bunun hot springs village of Tungpu. As Yushan Tribal College professor, I asked my students to consult their elders. These are their stories.

Survey Development: Community Involvement in the Design and Implementation Process.

Documenting Tribal health priorities is needed to inform research agendas, policy efforts, advocacy, and funding. However, published literature rarely documents the methods used to develop surveys in Indigenous communities. This methods paper includes two objectives: (1) increase knowledge and understanding about the importance of community involvement in public health activities; and (2) provide an example of how the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council Epidemiology Center (RMTEC) worked with one Tribal community to develop a health priorities survey. This paper describes how the RMTEC worked with a Tribal community and Tribal College students to develop, pilot, and revise a health priorities survey. Recommendations focus on the need for more culturally-responsive survey methods, the importance of building Tribal capacity for health research, and the value of piloting surveys in communities prior to implementation.

Indigenous internationalization: Indigenous worldviews, higher education, and Tribal Colleges and Universities

This article examines the role of Indigenous knowledges in higher education through an exploration of internationalization at U.S. Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs). We affirm that examining internationalization efforts with historically marginalized and underserved populations provides an opportunity for interrogating inequitable power dynamics in knowledge construction, production, and transference vis-à-vis education and within a Western hegemonic model of modernity. Our discussion is anchored in decoloniality and Indigenous sustainable self-determination, which highlight educational initiatives that bolster Indigenous identities while addressing social, political, and environmental complications created by coloniality. Drawing from a five-year mixed-methods case study with TCUs, we offer Indigenous perspectives on place-based higher educational initiatives in relation to local and global concerns, specifically human and ecological sustainability. We propose a critical lens in Indigenous internationalization wherein Indigenous worldviews are vital responses to dominant notions of internationalization and historical limitations of education for Indigenous peoples.

A Pathway for Native American Students to Access a Mainstream University for Social Work Education

ABSTRACTNative American students, faculty members, and administrators of a tribal college were interviewed by two investigators from a mainstream midwestern university in this qualitative study. The study examines the participants’ perspectives on continuing their education and identifying a pathway for Native American students who received their associate degrees in addiction studies or human services from the tribal college to complete their social work education at a mainstream university. Three themes emerged from the data supporting the formation of a combined cohort of Native American and non–Native American students working together as a pathway for Native Americans to attend a mainstream university for a degree in social work education.

Structure and Characteristics for Successful Outcomes: A Review of Community College Internships Programs

ABSTRACT Community and tribal colleges emphasize students’ needs as well as local job contexts. The dynamic and emerging job market present a challenge to education and preparation of traditional degree-seeking students as education rarely keep steps with skills required by employers. Internships, or work-based learning, are a way to facilitate the transition from classroom learning to practical application and skill development. Internship experiences have the potential to impact student understanding and application, a skilled workforce, and academic content. A well-designed internship program considers the interplay of structural and internship characteristics as well as internship outcomes inclusive of student outcomes, internship site outcomes, and college outcomes. This literature review aims to 1) identify the extent to which community and tribal colleges employ key internship characteristics and assess internship outcomes, 2) explore the unique characteristics and structure of community and tribal college’s internships, and 3) understand internship outcomes important to community and tribal colleges. Results of the literature review revealed little agreement about which student and other internship outcomes are most important. Additionally, there was little deliberate disclosure of internship program structure which resulted in a lack of discussion as to the integration of internship characteristics and structure of internship program on outcomes. Furthermore, limited information was provided on essential elements of internship programs that contribute to sustainability. The results of this review support the need for in-depth assessment of internship programs for the development of a best practice’s framework for community and tribal colleges.

Emerging Strategies for Indigenizing Science at Tribal Colleges

Over the past two decades, new ways to teach science have emerged at tribal colleges and universities (TCUs). These ideas build on the two missions of TCUs, which are to preserve the history, language, and culture and to increase economic development. The foundational idea for these new approaches harkens to the calls for Ethnoscience in the 1990s, which argued for the importance of connecting science to the tribal worldview. Our survey of TCU science instructors and federally funded science projects indicates that the chemistry course at Turtle Mountain Community College was among the earliest science courses to use Ethnoscience principles. Their major product was a lab manual that made connections through the use of materials with a tribal connection. Since then, TCU science faculty at a number of other institutions have been making tribal connections in and out of the classroom, relating to microbiology, climate change, chemistry, and medicinal plants. These projects show the myriad ways to connect science to tribal community topics.

Public health education in a tribal college setting: description of a BSc programme at Navajo Nation Tribal College, New Mexico, USA

Abstract Background Models of academic public and global health programmes that are culturally situated and that provide training to meet the needs of communities affected by health disparities can provide inspiration for the development of such programmes throughout the world. In the USA, for example, more American Indian health professionals and researchers are needed to develop culturally relevant health education. Native Nations should exercise their sovereignty by designing programmes and passing policy to achieve health equity while recognising the role that culture plays in our understanding of health. Here, we describe a programme at Dine College (Navajo Nation Tribal College) that aims to build and institutionalise the social and institutional infrastructure needed to enhance the Navajo Nation's professional public health capacity by training Navajo students, practitioners, and researchers. Methods Public health faculty at Dine College have developed a BSc degree that meets the specific health needs of the Navajo Nation. The programme is grounded in the Dine educational philosophy, Są'ah Naaghai Bik'eh Hozhoo (SNBH). SNBH provides a philosophy for healthy living through balance with the universe and protection from life's deficiencies. SNBH is composed of four equal and interdependent components: thinking, planning, living, and assurance. In addition, the BSc in Public Health programme is guided by core competencies that reflect both Western public health practice and traditional Dine ideas about health, healing, and the research process. Through a culturally-informed curriculum, this programme aims to produce Dine scholars who are uniquely qualified to conduct health research and to practise public health in their communities. Findings We evaluated the project through tracking student enrolment, completed courses, and student experiences; we also documented factors associated with academic success and application of learned skill sets. Students report that the indigenous focus of the programme reinforces their commitment to a career in health or public health service and research. The new BSc in Public Health programme had 60 enrolled majors in 2018. Students have completed up to 100 credit hours of coursework, and a student advisory committee has reported self-confidence in their progress towards public health competencies. Interpretation Academic programmes that use a culturally-situated curriculum to successfully target aspiring global health practitioners from rural communities with health disparities can serve as models to increase the diversity of global health researchers and the global health workforce. Funding Navajo NARCH Partnership National Institutes' of Health National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIH-NIGMS), S06GM123550. Dine College Title III Funding.

Cangleska Wakan: The ecology of the sacred circle and the role of tribal colleges and universities

Indigenous education and philosophy are rooted in the concept of relationality – the relatedness of all things – within the framework of place-based experiences and knowledge. This article focuses on tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) in the United States – in particular, on their dedication to land use and preservation, sustainability and tribal ecological knowledge within their missions of cultural preservation, academic and career development, and community engagement. TCUs are post-secondary institutions chartered by their respective tribal governments to serve as the higher education institutions of the Tribe. In the TCU environment, tribal identities emerge from an understanding of how all things are related. Evidence includes creation stories, tribal languages and place-based knowledge. The circular relationship among place, engagement and identity is often manifested in how land and its resources are preserved, managed and expanded through education, outreach and research. In 1994, the Equity in Educational Land-Grant Status Act was passed, granting TCUs endowments for facilities and institutional capacity building in place of land. This article explores the time periods of 1968–1993 and 1994 to today in the context of the development of TCUs, first as place-based institutions preserving tribal identity and later as land-grant institutions preserving tribal environmental and ecological knowledge and resources. The authors provide a number of examples which demonstrate that TCUs exercise the inherent sovereignty of Tribes to provide quality education to their people by incorporating their language and Indigenous knowledge and values.

Reclaiming Indigenous Research in Higher Education ed. by Robin Starr Minthorn and Heather J. Shotton

Reviewed by: Reclaiming Indigenous Research in Higher Education ed. by Robin Starr Minthorn and Heather J. Shotton Sharon Stein Robin Starr Minthorn and Heather J. Shotton (Editors). Reclaiming Indigenous Research in Higher Education. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. 228 pp. Paperback: $34.95. ISBN 9780813588698 In their introduction to the edited volume, Reclaiming Indigenous Research in Higher Education, editors Robin Starr Zape-tah-hol-ah Minthorn (Kiowa/Apache/Umatilla/Nez Perce/Assiniboine) and Heather J. Shotton (Wichita/Kiowa/Cheyenne)1 frame their text as an effort to "reclaim our space in academia, to reclaim Indigenous research in higher education" (p. 2). In doing so, they intend to both hold up and extend existing Indigenous scholarship in the field. The book makes it clear that there is no singular approach to Indigenous research, and beyond speaking from their positions as members of diverse Indigenous nations, the contributors tackle multiple issues, employ distinct methods/methodologies, and emphasize different opportunities, offerings, and challenges of Indigenous research in and on higher education. Apart from simply providing a space to bring together the work of several Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native higher education scholars, the book emphasizes the importance of relationality in Indigenous knowledge production. Rather than merely stating this as an orienting value, throughout the text the authors demonstrate the centrality of their relationships and responsibilities to each other, their research participants, their ancestors, and future generations. They also give thanks to the Indigenous education scholars who came before them, including Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy (Lumbee), who offers a foreword to the book. The editors frame three common threads that run throughout the text: Indigenous voice and identity in research; Native higher education students making their own pathways to success; and Indigenizing spaces in higher education. In this review, I emphasize two different but related recurrent themes: tradition and innovation; and responsibility and relationship. I conclude by considering how non-Indigenous readers like myself might honor the work of the book's editors and contributors by reflexively examining our own roles and responsibilities in relation to the necessary, difficult, and unsettling work of decolonizing higher education research. Tradition and Innovation According to an unnamed contributor, "the process of reclaiming Indigenous research in higher education [is] what emerges when higher education meets grandma" (as cited by Shotton Minthorn, p. 208). Indeed, the wisdom of grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers, mothers-in-law, mentors, and other-than-human-kin are all cited as influences on the authors' work. Shotton and Minthorn also assert, "As we work to reclaim our spaces in higher education research through Indigenous Methodologies, we cannot be afraid to take our work in new directions" (p. 208). This means honoring ancestral knowledges while reframing them for the present; and taking from mainstream or "whitestream" (Grande, 2004) methodologies and theories what is useful, and leaving what is not. Rather than a commitment to any particular methodology or theory, this work is oriented by the imperative to serve one's kin and communities. Theresa Jean Stewart (San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians, Gabrieliño/Tongva) describes producing quantitative research in a way that "coincided [End Page E-9] with [her] worldview as a Native woman" (p. 89). Stewart both employs and problematizes the uses of whitestream datasets for studying leadership development among American Indian and Alaska Native students. David Sanders (Ogala Sioux Tribe) and Matthew Van Alstine Makomenaw (Grand Traverse Bay Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians) also take up quantitative methods to address the success and pathways of students who start at Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) and transfer to four-year schools. They emphasize the difficulty of gathering accurate data about Indigenous students from whitestream data sources, owing to the fact that this data often relies on self-reported identification of Indigeneity. The authors acknowledge that "Indian identification is a very important, contested, political ground" (p. 121), but nonetheless argue for the importance of verifying enrollment in, or other proof of descendance from, a state or federally recognized tribe in order to produce more relevant research. Meanwhile, Amanda R. Tachine (Navajo) uses the metaphor of a Navajo story rug to describe her research and writing process. She also...

Prevalence and indication of caesarean section in a tribal medical college of south India

Prevalence and indication of caesarean section in a tribal medical college of south India

Four More Indigenous Projects for the Native American Humanities

Four More Indigenous Projects for the Native American Humanities Matthew Herman (bio) As someone who studies and teaches the Native American humanities from within a Native American studies department, I often think about the productive possibilities that might emerge for the Native American humanities from a sustained, direct engagement with Indigenous research (IR) and Indigenous research methodologies (IRMs).1 In my own scholarship and teaching, one of the most useful tools is Linda Tuhiwai Smith's short essay "Twenty-Five Indigenous Projects," from the ground-breaking IR text Decolonizing Methodologies (1999). Whenever I can, I recommend the essay to other teachers and assign it to my students because Smith's Indigenous projects are so readily applicable as analytical frameworks for producing decolonizing readings of texts. As Smith presents them, the twenty-five Indigenous projects are descriptions of actually existing research programs or action-based community projects that perform decolonization by supporting Indigenous knowledges, values, and interests and by utilizing Indigenous collaboration or control in knowledge production, application, and distribution. All twenty-five projects have short, self-defining titles—"claiming," "celebrating survival," "reframing"—that evoke the decolonizing actions they describe and perform. While Smith acknowledges that Indigenous projects can describe work being done "at the level of ideas," most of the projects deal with legal issues or concern problems that call for solutions from the behavioral, health, or social sciences—not the humanities. Even so, the decolonizing processes the projects activate are not exclusive to any particular problem or need or to any particular academic discipline or theory. Claiming, for example, can be about asserting "rights and [End Page 31] dues" in tribunals and courts of law, as Smith says, but it can also be about asserting voice and agency, epistemological privilege and visual sovereignty, and historiographical authority and representational control. Claiming takes place in legal briefs, in other words, but also in lyric poetry, graphic novels, and Indigenous documentary film. Think, for example, of all that Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin claims in her classic film, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance—land, history, voice, Kanien'kéhaka political rights and autonomy, moral authority, and the documentary form itself—and how such claims not only broaden but also strengthen the film's overall decolonizing impact. There is no limit, then, to where, when, and how claiming can be asserted for decolonizing purposes, and this interdisciplinary flexibility "at the level of ideas" holds true for all of Smith's Indigenous projects. This year, 2019, marks the twentieth anniversary of Decolonizing Methodologies. I first read it in the summer of 2000 as a tribal college liberal arts instructor, and as a non-Native scholar teaching in a tribal community, I found Smith's thoughts on positionality, ethics, and protocol helpful for imagining better ways to do my work and to help my students do theirs. Over the years, however, it has been the book's twenty-five Indigenous projects that have made the most enduring contribution to my scholarship and teaching. These projects gave specific names to actually existing decolonizing methods and procedures that made me aware of decolonization as an expansive, open-ended, performative process most usefully understood as a collection of practices ("Indigenous projects," after all) rather than a single one. I became more aware of what decolonization actually looked like in action through the concrete examples of the projects themselves, but I also became more aware of what was possible—that other decolonizing projects were present yet incompletely formed and that new or refurbished forms were always in the process of becoming. Overall, Decolonizing Methodologies made me a more attentive reader for decolonization in all its forms, it provided a critical vocabulary for identifying the forms decolonization takes, and it instilled in me a critical consciousness keyed to the nuances of Native textual survivance. Decolonization in action is neither simple to perform nor easy to discern, but Smith's Indigenous projects, when used as conceptual frameworks to identify decolonizing processes in texts, provide specificity and precision that make such processes intelligible and enable a competence for understanding how such processes work and to what ends. [End Page 32] As a gesture of gratitude, appreciation, and respect for twenty years of...

From Collective Consent to Consultation Platform: An Experience of Indigenous Research Ethics in Makota’ay

In 2015, six organisations, including the Makota’ay Community Development Association, Hualien Tribal College (HTC), and the project team of Dynamics of Eastern Taiwan in the New Century at National Dong Hwa University (NDHU) co-signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at Makota’ay, a Pangcah2 tribal community on the east coast of Taiwan. The MoU establishes a community-focused interactive paradigm that aims towards collaboration in the promotion of indigenous education. By agreeing upon the MoU, the parties become partners in research. This moved research away from conventional paradigm where Indigenous peoples are subjects, and put Makota’ay’s input and aspirations towards constructing local knowledge at the centre of the multilateral relationship. One of the purposes of the MoU is to enact Article 21 of The Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, which mandates that research involving indigenous peoples should obtain the consent of the individual, and collective consent of the indigenous community.

From Scratch: Tribal Colleges as Acts of Revolution & the Establishment of Pawnee Nation College as an Act of Community Empowerment

From Scratch: Tribal Colleges as Acts of Revolution & the Establishment of Pawnee Nation College as an Act of Community Empowerment

Developing an Indigenous Mentoring Program for faculty mentoring American Indian and Alaska Native graduate students in STEM: a qualitative study

ABSTRACTIn order to increase graduation rates of American Indian and Alaska Native doctoral candidates in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields, a culturally attuned mentorship program needs to be developed. In our study, we used a conversational method of Indigenous research that privileges relationships and lived experiences to inform such a program. Data was collected in semi-structured interviews using a conversational guide and initial themes were deliberated and refined into a coding framework that was subsequently applied to the data. The themes that emerged from the research included relationality, cultural humility, Indigenous worldviews, suggestions for activities, and resources/support. These themes established the framework for an Indigenous mentoring program (IMP) for faculty mentors of American Indian/Alaska Native graduate students in STEM at four, 4-year institutions and a tribal college.

Quilting a journey: decolonizing instructional design

In many Indigenous communities, the star quilt is a symbol of honor given as a gift to recognize something about which the community is proud. The star quilt was used as a metaphor in this study to critically examine the practices of an instructional designer working in a tribal college context to identify culturally relevant instructional design practices. Instructional design is the systematic process of planning and developing learning environments, such as courses, curricula, or educational software. The researcher utilized an Indigenous approach to autoethnography as methodology to establish the community as the norm by which to critique the practices of the instructional designer—the researcher herself. The study findings culminated in the Star Quilt Framework for Culturally Competent Instructional Design, a relational person model for practice that incorporates the role of the instructional designer as an actor in the design process.

Assessing Tribal College Priorities for Enhancing Climate Adaptation on Reservation Lands

AbstractOn reservation lands, tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) are key to preparing indigenous communities to adapt to the effects of a changing climate. The original mission of TCUs, to improve access to higher education and to sustain the cultural heritage of indigenous people, facilitates close ties between TCU faculty and staff and the indigenous communities they serve. Since 1994, the land‐grant status of TCUs allows access to limited federal funds in support of research, education, and outreach to improve food security, natural resource management, and rural quality of life, while expanding public access to higher education to underserved populations in remote rural areas. This study was designed to assess the priorities for enhancing climate adaptation on reservation lands. It summarizes the results of an assessment implemented at the 2016 Annual First Americans Land‐Grant Consortium Conference. Study participants included faculty, administrators, outreach educators, support staff, and students representing 25 of the 37 TCUs in the United States. Results from this national assessment suggest that in order for TCUs to effectively meet the climate adaptation needs of indigenous communities, additional fiscal and human resource investments are necessary. Specifically, this includes fiscal support to enhance climate science teaching, research, and professional development programs. Additional goals include creating or expanding food‐sovereignty programs, increasing community outreach education, investigating climate change impacts on water resource quality, access, and related ecological services, and exploring renewable and alternative energy opportunities.