Volume 15 Number 2
January 1976

"We were talking about problems we had in going to school, and we thought in terms of scholarship services and tribal backing. The primary need is an increase in information about occupations students can pursue. The tribe hasn’t allowed the relocation programs or the work experience programs to provide students with information about various occupations.

"College authorities often come to the schools, acquaint the student with the programs that are available under the work experience program, and they encourage the student to participate.

"In developing and encouraging students to go to college, there is some effort and very little career information. Indian students enter having little idea what they are going to major in and what fields are available. This puts them at a disadvantage. When most white children enter college, they are acquainted with different career opportunities. On most reservations you don’t have the variance of occupations a white community has. Many Indians are majoring in education and business, but very few Indians are participating in other fields due to the lack of encouragement and planning on the part of the tribal government.

"Tribes must realize the need for economic development on the reservation, the need to understand how the Bureau functions, how the BIA affects us, and the need to understand how basic government functions. The policies of the tribe directly affect Indian students, and if the tribe does not encourage economic opportunity, the students have no choice but to leave the reservation for better job opportunities."

The tribes don’t realize that we need money to get into college for housing, bills, fees and tuition. I was supposed to get a grant from my tribe and it didn’t come in until a month and a half later, so I had a delinquent account with the housing department."

"In a work experience program, students are given encouragement and are provided transportation and counselors. This isn’t done for scholarship students. The work experience program provides, on occasion, hotel rooms that are convenient to the school. An understanding is established with the landlord. Indian college students don’t have this prior understanding; the landlord may be quite prejudiced against Indians, and the student could be evicted before the semester is over. A lot of students don’t understand contracts.

"It is very unfortunate that the tribe does not verse students on how to rent an apartment. There are many problems involved in moving from a rural area to an urban area. Bus routes are never explained. As a result, students are forced to live in Tempe where rents are much higher than in Phoenix. The problems that scholarship committees are prone to listen to are those that are associated with such problems as drinking. They should examine other problems that Indian students have."

"I have a problem concerning the BIA and the BEOG. I don’t think you should have to give all the information that they want on the grant application form. I believe the BIA likes to look at your grades and your needs. The grants are enough, but it barely gets you by the school year. There is a lot of injustice going on concerning tribal grants. The tribe that I’m from looks at your financial background and considers your needs. This past semester I was rejected for a scholarship. I couldn’t understand it, because the semester before I was granted a scholarship which wasn’t much, but I used it wisely. I think many revisions are needed in the BIA scholarship requirements."

"I think Indian students are accomplishing quite a bit in their programs. In addition to going to school, there are many activities and demands that are made upon them [which aren’t demanded of] white children. Indian students have more at stake than themselves. Unlike most Anglo students, Indian students know that their whole family will be affected by their success or failure. This extra burden creates extra stress problems.

"Indian students also have to serve as promoters for their tribes within the university community. Indian students meet students in their classes who ask questions about their reservation that they have never thought about. Students on Indian reservations should be taught facts about their reservation. I feel this is very important."

"Sometimes you wonder if the people in the BIA are people. The fact that the people who should be listening to us are not here is another indication of how the tribe feels about us. We feel that we are not getting much support from these people who should show some feelings for us."

"I’m a veteran and going to school under the GI bill, and it is rough when you only get a certain amount a month. I get $366 a month which is a drop in the bucket to some people. You barely get by; but somehow you get by. I think the tribe should allot some financial aid to former GI’s who want to go to school."

"The primary problem on the reservation is that leaders are afraid to make certain decisions and be responsible for X number of dollars going somewhere. Indian students have to be orientated to white man’s time and to know where their advisors are."

"Many Indian students are raised in a boarding school environment where they aren’t allowed to experience the outside world; it is a paternalistic protection. White students learn in public school that you have to socialize with the teacher; it helps your grade. This is something that Indians are not aware of when they go to college.

"Indian students are more visible; if they miss class everybody knows it. It is something that the Indian student has to deal with; you are going to have to over prove yourself, you need to be in class all the time, and you need to do better than the white kids because you’re Indian and more noticeable. It is a problem learning to socialize in a white world. Students in fraternities and sororities have papers and tests collected for them from different classes. Some Indian office within a university should be encouraged to do this, because most Indian students aren’t going to join a fraternity or sorority.

"When I was in high school I was in a project called Upward Bound which was a college-orientated program. It gave me help. This year is the last fiscal year for the program. It was started in 1967. I came to ASU during the summer of my sophomore year in high school. They gave me a tuition waiver and some college credit hours. It makes me feel bad that the program is going down because of the cutbacks from the President."

"I talked to some of the housing agencies in Phoenix, and they mentioned that Indians are eligible within the city area for federal housing grants and aids. It might be a very fruitful effort if the various tribes cooperate with the federal government in establishing an Indian housing complex to rent to Indian students. Then Indian students would have a good place to rent from with reasonable rates."

"One of our primary concerns in our office is academic achievement, and we are involved in a comprehensive study why this achievement is sometimes very difficult to obtain. One of the reasons is financial aid. I have done several workshops on financial aid on the reservations, and I tell the parents and the education committee, ‘Don’t put the value of your house down because you cannot sell that house; it is not an asset because the land is on a trusteeship of the federal government.’ The tribes are supposed to have expertise to give them advice. The BIA does not give the correct information to tribal leaders. Last year we lost 1,167 Indian students who were deprived of the opportunity to go to college; vocational schools or community colleges because the tribes didn’t understand the new process, which is a locked system.

"The tribe puts their programatic priorities into their tribal operations. The Gila River Reservation put education in a very low priority, yet they put industrial development and vocational and manpower training in high priority, without realizing that education plays a very strong role in those developments. The Navajo tribe rated education as fifth priority; they put public school education 14th with 67% of the Navajo children on the Navajo Reservation going to public schools. Now every public school up there is in a deficit over $1 million because of the system and formulization of public school education.

"The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee had to make a vote yesterday of 5-to-4 to prevent the redistricting and reappropriation bill so these public school districts could have some equalization in funding. This new system prevented 487 Indian students the opportunity to apply themselves in health-related areas. The BIA lost $18 million last year; Indian health service lost $27 million last year in higher education programming funds. We have lawyers who ‘rip us off’ for their own benefit and who don’t inform tribes of these legislative footnotes.

"ONB froze supplemental grants of $18 million for higher education last year because Congress was too lazy to clarify the difference between entitlement and supplement. Our Indian organizations sat there and let it happen. When we find out as Indian people that there is no such word as entitlement, then maybe we’ll start wheeling and dealing to maintain our goals of self-determination. We have been told that we are entitled. If we are entitled, why do we have to go to the Congress of the United States every year and ask for this appropriation? Entitlement says we have it coming; and if we have entitlement, why isn’t it coming?

"The BIA at this school has cut our contract; yet we have 320 Indian students that we try to address their needs to. We are looking frantically for means to maintain this office. I think we have done something for these students. We have proven that we are an advocate for them.

"Our students are poorly advised because the professors’ academic counseling is about fifth priority on their personal list. We need to address ourselves as counselors to the BIA and say we are achieving. Last year the GPA for our undergraduate Indian students in this university was 2.28. This is about .28 more than the national norm for Indian students in the United States. The national norm for Indian students to graduate from a four-year institution is 5.7 years; we are doing it here in four years, six months.

"Our students are zeroing in on majors that will be beneficial to them and their tribes. If the BIA was sensitive to Indian education and higher education experiences, they would fund Indian support services and let us achieve something.

"Let us work in a community relationship with Indian communities by sharing what our students are doing and by including these students in their planning systems so they can be beneficial to their plans and goals. Let us help develop work experience programs so Indian students can go to tribal areas and put to good use what they have learned in the academic area. Let us go back into the high schools and let our college students work with high school seniors by telling them what they need to prepare for and be aware of in college. A peer group relationship of respect exists between the college and high school students.

"Our students are free to come in and see Ms. Garcia; if she is busy they can make an appointment for a time that is convenient to them because we work for them. These are the concerns that I have."