Wayne J. Stein

Indian tribes and European-style education in America have a long and interesting joint history beginning almost at the time the colonists landed. Early on the colonists wanted to tie the powerful Indian tribes to them through education and conversion to their various Christian beliefs. This effect took many forms, and one of the earliest was the colonists' stating in the charters of their earliest colleges (Harvard, William & Mary, and Dartmouth) their desire to educate the sons of the infidels (Haymond, 1982). Though these efforts did not flourish, others did later when the reservation period was initiated. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (B.I.A.) parceled out to the different denominations of the Christian churches various reservations in which to establish schools. Today there are remnants of this system on Indian reservations. The B.I.A. in the late 1800s set up a series of Indian secondary and post-secondary schools (Carlisle, Haskell, and in part, Hampton) in an effort to hurry the conversion of the Indian from a hunter and warrior to a farmer (Haymond, 1982). Though Haskell Junior College thrives today, the others were eventually phased out as Indian schools.

The elementary and secondary schools which exist today on Indian reservations are a variety of mission, B.I.A. and public schools. These schools have one common denominator: Indian students are still not doing as well as their non-Indian peers. This problem has many causes, from social to medical, but in the end it means Indian students don't do well in the present day higher education system (Szasz, 1974, p. 135).

Guy Gorman, Ned Hatathli, Allen Yazzie, Robert A. Roessel, Ruth Roessel, and other enlightened educators and B. I. A. officials had a belief that the tribal group and reservation boundaries provided the necessary structure needed to start a community college. They also believed that the community college designed and founded correctly would be a major part of the answer to breaking the destructive cycle of poverty which had grown up on the Navajo Reservation. They began by convincing the Navajo Tribal Chairman, Mr. Raymond Nakai, and the Navajo Tribal Council, that a college could work on the Navajo Reservation, especially if the Navajo culture was correctly understood and used as a foundation block within the philosophy and curriculum of the college. Once this group. committed themselves to the community college movement on Navajo, Roessel and friends took their dream to Washington, D.C., New York City, and other strongholds of power and money. They designed a package of funding which allowed the college to be founded and chartered by the Navajo Nation (Gorman interview, 1987).

Navajo Community College had the following resources when the doors were opened in 1968 (first class was January, 1969) in Many Farms, Arizona: $250,000 from the Navajo Tribal Council; $60,000 from the Donnor Foundation the first year and $100,000 the next year; $450,000 per year for three years from the Office of Economic Development; 2,000 acres of land from the Navajo Tribe for a campus, and 500 acres of agricultural land for agricultural education and development (Szasz, 1974, p. 177).

These modest resources were to grow over the next several years through the vigorous effort of Robert Roessel and Ned Hatathli who had been selected as first and second presidents of Navajo Community College. Three private foundations were to donate a total of $500,000, and the federal government, through the Federal Impact Aid Act, provided several millions of dollars for the development and building of Navajo Community College's campus at Tsaile, Arizona. The Navajo pursued the belief that education was a treaty right and a part of the federal trust relationship and used this belief to write and sponsor through their congressman P.L. 92-189, The Navajo Community College Act (Gorman interview, 1987). The act's passage laid the groundwork for much of what was to follow as other Indian tribes recognized this unique form of higher education as a part of the answer to the social ills which plagued their people.

Tribal colleges sprang up across the west in the early and mid-1970s as tribes founded and chartered them. These colleges used a number of creative methods in funding their efforts as did Standing Rock College, Fort Yates, North Dakota, a typical tribal college of this era. Standing Rock College was chartered by the Standing Rock Tribal Council in 1972 and was given office and classroom space in the local retirement home. The committee responsible for the college's development negotiated a consortium arrangement with Bismarck Junior College and applied for and secured Title III funds under the Higher Education Act of 1965. The $ 100,000 grant funded three start-up staff - a president, counselor, and business manager - making Standing Rock official in 1973 (Barden, 1984).

From 1971 to 1978, tribal colleges other than Navajo Community College had no stable source of income. The states in which the tribal colleges were located felt no financial obligation to them and thus gave no fiscal support towards their operations. Tribal colleges sought funding from all manner of sources, but the federal government always remained the principal resource. Standing Rock College, for example, used the following funding sources to drive and develop the college:

Tribal college presidents and AIHEC staff began immediately to address the difficult task of developing legislation which would accomplish the goal of providing base funding for the tribal colleges. They used the model developed by Navajo Community College and the legislation enacted by Congress the prior year. AIHEC's effort to secure enabling legislation took five years and much work. At last, P.L. 95-471, the Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act of 1978, was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter. The achievement of getting P.L. 95-471 enacted was recognized in Washington by many professional lobbyists, congressional staff, federal bureaucrats, and congressmen as one of the finest efforts in securing federal legislation during the 1970s.

From 1979 to 1983 P.L. 95-471, the Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act of 1978, was the major cornerstone in stabilizing the tribal colleges. Without it, several of the smaller tribal colleges could have failed, thus perpetuating the cycle of failure in Indian education on the reservations. In 1982 the tribal college presidents and AIHEC undertook a reauthorization drive to keep the act alive. The reauthorization was successfully shepherded through Congress over a long and hard year that was climaxed with a veto by President Reagan. His administration was the first to assert that education was not a trust responsibility of the federal government. Tribal colleges and AIHEC, with the support of their congressmen and other national groups such as the National Congress of American Indians, the National Indian Education Association, and the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges, mounted a second effort at reauthorization in 1983. This time, with careful wording and much political finesse, the bill was enacted and signed by President Reagan on December 10, 1983. Again, the act has proven to be the cornerstone of funding for the tribal colleges.

Although P. L. 95-471, now P. L. 98-192, is the base funding source for the tribal colleges today, tribal college administrators must still devote inordinate amounts of time and effort to securing the necessary funds to keep their colleges open.

The continued need for the tribal colleges to search for base funding can be traced to the executive branch of the federal government and its agencies. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (B.I.A.) has a history of opposing the tribal college movement which began in the mid-1970s and continued through the early 1980s. Although the B.I.A. no longer testifies before the U.S. Congress that there is no need for tribal colleges, it continues to oppose any requests by the tribal colleges for adequate funding of P.L. 98-192. Throughout the last decade, the B.I.A. has been supported in its opposition to the tribal colleges by other federal agencies such as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

This opposition has manifested itself in the B.I.A.'s continually requesting funding far below the level needed by the tribal colleges for endowment development, construction of new facilities and operating funds. The formula used to determine funding is a given amount of dollars per Indian Student Count (ISC). The ISC is based on the total number of credits generated by B.I.A. certified students divided by 12. Twelve credits represents one full-time Indian student. The total Indian credits generated divided by 12 equals the total ISC.

P.L. 98-192 has never been funded at its authorized levels, and the expansion of the tribal colleges from six institutions to 23 has compounded the problem. The student enrollment in tribal colleges has grown from 1,689 students in 1981 to over 4,000 students in 1989. While the student population has increased, so has the funding of P.L. 98-192, but at a rate so slow that the funding per Indian student, based on the Indian Student Count, has fallen from a high of $3,100 per ISC in 1980 to approximately $1,900 per ISC in 1989 (Carnegie report, 1989, p. 70).

The success of the tribal colleges and the annual shortfall in the level of funding authorized by Congress each year since 1978 dictate that the tribal colleges must continue to compete for other federal program funds, tribal grants, and private funding sources. One source of support, private foundations, has given funds at various times to individual colleges and to AIHEC for specific projects. This support has been especially helpful because it sustains those projects identified by the colleges as most important other than the basic operations of each college.

The Ford Foundation has funded AIHEC projects since the 1970s and continues to do so today. The Bush Foundation of St. Paul has funded tribal colleges in the Dakotas since the late 1970s and has recently undertaken a national tribal college staff and faculty development project for the accredited tribal colleges. With institutions such as the Ford and Bush Foundations giving on a regular basis, and the Donnor Foundation and U.S. West giving to specific projects, some of the burden of funding has been relieved at selected colleges. Most recently, the MacArthur Foundation has begun a grant program which will have a major impact on those tribal colleges which have gained full accreditation or are candidates for accreditation.

The tribally controlled community colleges will, in most instances, survive at current levels of funding; however, the long and devastating history which must be overcome on the Indian reservation calls for more than mere survivallevel performance on the part of tribal colleges. To date, a major phenomenon in higher education is quietly sweeping across Indian country.

In retrospect, the Carnegie Foundation recommendations are an echo of recommendations which tribal college presidents have stated repeatedly over the past two decades. Each recommendation is founded in a solid base of past experience of needs, long-range planning by the tribal colleges, and basic common sense as applied to higher education needs for American Indians. Recommendations one (adequate federal funding at authorized levels), two (adequate funds for facility improvement), and ten (endowment funds from the federal government) go to the heart of the problems facing tribal colleges. By truly recognizing and meeting the fiscal needs of tribal colleges, the federal government will, in part, meet its moral obligation and trust responsibility to Indian people.

If the American people and the federal government will recognize the significance of these colleges springing up from some of America's most depressed communities and give them reasonable and consistent support, the tribally controlled colleges and the communities they serve will see a better day.