Native Presence(s) in College Data: OMB Changes and Influences

• In Event: Division J Vice Presidential Session: Planning for 2030: Critical Tensions and Postsecondary Possibilities with OMB’s Racial/Ethnic Classification Revisions

Abstract

Native student enrollment in higher education has steadily decreased by 40% over the last fifteen years (National Center for Education Statistics, 2022). Several reasons for the decline may include the increased cost of college since the great recession (Tachine et al, 2021), lack of structural support on college environments (Begaye et al, 2023), and the ongoing ways that racism interplays on college campuses, to name a few. Another factor includes the varying ways that institutions of higher education count and report Native student enrollment (Lopez & Marley, 2018), indicating the undercounting of Natives (Burnette, 2021). The recent revisions adopted by OMB may have even further implications and potential for how Native students are counted in higher education.

Specifically, several of the revisions adopted by OMB have implications for the collection and presentation of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) student data in federal postsecondary data collections. Previously, AI/AN was defined as “A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America) and who maintains Tribal affiliation or community attachment.” The OMB revisions have now updated the AI/AN categorical definition to “Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of North, Central, and South America, including, for example, Navajo Nation, Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana, Native Village of Barrow Inupiat Traditional Government, Nome Eskimo Community, Aztec, and Maya.” The removal of the phrase “who maintains Tribal affiliation or community attachment” from the previous definition was supported by several key organizations including the National Congress of American Indians.

While these changes offer opportunity to disaggregate data by tribal affiliation which acknowledges tribal sovereignty and self-determination of Native Nations in the United States, tensions continue to exist in the ways state recognition tribes as well as non-recognized tribal members engage with these changes. Moreover, the aggregate “Two or More Races” category (now labeled “multiracial” under OMB’s revisions) and Indigenous students from Central and South America open possibilities of how Indigenous students are included in much broader forms and perspectives.

This session engages with Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCrit; Brayboy, 2005, 2021) to examine tensions with the OMB’s revised standards while contemplating what possibilities remain for using intentional implementation within postsecondary education to enhance Native presences on college campuses (Tachine, 2022).

Authors

• Amanda R. Tachine, University of Oregon

• Jameson David Lopez, University of Arizona