We’re Still Here: Culture, Community, and College at the Heart of Native Resilience

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Guest Opinion. We know the news media and now, social media influencers, don’t intentionally give positive free “advertising,” and it is often very hard to have positive outcomes from remarkably ignorant and dangerous comments. But this week tribal colleges and universities and Native students received a bit of free advertising after a Fox News commentator made a genocidal remark on her social media account (in response to a college professor’s presentation about Native sovereignty) that “we didn’t kill enough Indians.” That remark unwittingly underscored the importance of tribal colleges and universities.

Make no mistake. The post is both hate speech and a thinly veiled threat, and the comment has no place in public discourse. The individual who made the comment is known for the hatred she regularly spews, but that isn’t the point I wish to make here.

Instead, I wish to explain how comments like these demonstrate the importance of tribal colleges and universities.

Imagine if your children heard comments like this in the classroom, in the media, or in their communities. Imagine if your children were discouraged from pursuing a higher education, were bullied, or were told they shouldn’t even be alive. Someone made a comment like this about a Native college professor who has, despite the odds facing Native people, entered college, persisted, graduated, and is now teaching Native students and others about our histories, our cultures, and our legal rights as Indigenous people—all subjects that were denied to our people for generations.

That’s right. Our children and grandchildren are learning in tribal college classrooms about their legal rights as citizens of sovereign nations. They are learning about our ties to our land. They are learning about the trust and treaty rights inherent in these legal agreements with the U.S. federal government to provide our people with education, health care, housing, the right to practice our spiritual and traditional practices, along with the right to our land itself.

Native students and graduates are revitalizing our languages, our communal values, and our science that helped us, for centuries, be proud stewards of the land and its inhabitants—all its inhabitants.

Native students, like any student, have the right to learn about their proud backgrounds. Our children are the descendants of people who know how to survive. They have the right to celebrate their cultures and histories without mockery, bullying, or threats to their existence.

We know weakness and fear hide beneath such hateful words. We’ve been here before.

After generations of Native students endured abuse in boarding schools, tribal nations revolutionized education for their people by creating tribal colleges and universities. These remarkable institutions are the perfect places for Native students to study. Chartered by their tribes while serving entire rural communities in the spirit of kinship, tribal colleges build strong community members and even stronger communities, teaching their students that every one of us, and each and every one of our gifts, is needed to build a stronger community and nation. And they do this while providing all students with an affordable, relevant higher education steeped in Native traditions and cultures.

Tribal colleges and universities are not just educating individuals. They are building strong communities where all our children in rural communities can be seen, heard, and respected for their contributions.

Many elected officials and pundits advocate cutting funding for these remarkable institutions the Carnegie Foundation called “underfunded miracles,” as they are making significant, even unprecedented, contributions to their communities, regions, and states.

But these people don’t understand what they are up against: generations of resilient people from resilient nations. We’ve seen and heard far worse. Such ugliness and short-sightedness are not a surprise to us.

What might be a surprise to them, however, is the number of decent people who share our communities’ values, rooted in the belief that education is the answer—not just to our communities’ issues and to making our children’s dreams reality—but also to the challenge of creating a stronger, more beautiful nation where all of our children can bloom.

Whether Native or non-Native, students who study ranchland management at a tribal college in the Great Plains, the arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts, nursing in rural Montana where health care worker shortages are threatening the longevity of its citizens, these students and others who become electricians, social workers, and entrepreneurs are the key to our communities’ prosperity.

Tribal colleges and universities, our students, and graduates are working to develop stronger, more vibrant communities nationwide. There is nothing to fear about that, no matter what the pundits and fearmongers might say.

We thank you for joining us and honoring us with your support as we speak the truth about our Native histories and identities as we work to fulfill our commitment to create stronger Native communities and a stronger nation for a better America—where we can all thrive as committed and respectful neighbors.

Please continue to follow this blog, where we will be sharing our vision for how we can make that happen together, ensuring the tribal colleges continue their remarkable work serving their communities, and that we ensure every Native student who wants an education has the resources to do so.

Cheryl Crazy Bull, Wacinyanpi Win (They Depend on Her), the President and CEO of the American Indian College Fund, is a citizen of the Sicangu Lakota Nation. She has been in her position with the American Indian College Fund since 2012. 

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