American Indian Access to Higher Education: Where Are All the NDNS?

• In Event: Examining Issues of Language, Culture, and Power Through Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
Native Americans are enrolling into college at lower rates than other ethnicities (Ross, Kena, Rathbun, KewalRamani, Zhang, Kristapovich & Manning, 2012). So how are k-12 schools helping prepare Native American students to enroll and graduate college? There is an effort to implement culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogies as means of promoting Native American culture and epistemologies (McCarty & Lee, 2014). However, Native Americans are still subjugated to traditional Westernized education such as standardized tests created by state and federal governments that limit culturally sustaining pedagogies by dictating curriculums without regard of culture (Paris, 2012) needed to improve academic performance. The purpose of the present discussion is to examine factors related to Native American higher education access.
Perspectives or theoretical framework
Tribal critical race theory (TribalCrit) emerged as a theory to allow Indigenous peoples to address the complicated relationship between Native Americans and the United States federal government through nine different tenants that guide the theory. I use the first tenant for this analysis; colonization as an endemic. Colonization refers to European American thought, knowledge, and power structures that dominate present-day society in the United States (Brayboy, 2006). By using the first tenant will illuminate why inequality exists in the accessibility of higher education between Native American and White students.
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
In this study I use personal narrative to describe factors influencing Native American access and persistence, followed by a discussion using further research evidence and the TribalCrit framework.
Data sources
Using narrative and literature analyzing access and persistence in higher education for Native Americans four over arching themes emerge in the successful enrollment and retention of Native Americans. The over-arching themes include; family support, institutional support, community support and academics (Brayboy et. al., 2012; Fox et. al., 2005; Shotton et. al., 2013). These are consequently the factors that make college more accessible as well, and the following uses these four factors as subheadings
Results
There is an explicit need to expand institutional policies that advocate for Indigenous teacher education programs to include Native American students into institutes of higher education that would otherwise not attend. The emphasis in what knowledge our Native American community values also needs to be adapted to obtain success in mainstream society. In the end, the inaccessibility of higher education will remain as long as the acceptance of colonialist ideals and denial of Native American cultural values and knowledge are excluded from the goals of k-12 education and colleges and universities.
Scholarly Significance
The loss of culture, traditions, and knowledge as a result of colonization is detrimental to the success of Native American in higher education. There have been suggestions in the literature that public colleges and universities need stronger family support, institutional support, community support, and academic support (Shotton et. al., 2013). This research illuminates those factors, while pushing the conversation further through analyzing these factors through a TribalCrit framework.

Author

• Jameson David Lopez, University of Arizona