Center for Education Policy Research

The article explores the experiences of 13 undergraduate American Indian college students who served as mentors through a service-learning course while attending a 4-year, predominantly White institution (PWI). This chapter elucidates how serving as a mentor allowed participants to draw on three culturally relevant persistence factors in higher education: relationship, community, and power. Previous research demonstrates that service learning actively involves college students and encourages them to build a connection and a sense of commitment to the community (Lee & Espino, 2011; Rhoads, 1998). Through a Tribal Critical Race Theory lens, the purpose and function of service learning is deconstructed and redefined to fit the needs of North American Indigenous college students. This article reveals that Indigenous undergraduate students tapped into their own supply of Indigenous knowledge in relating their mentoring experience to building meaningful relationships, to being a positive influence in tribal communities, and to recognizing that service is a cyclical power that positively impacts their collective role in society. The article details how relationship, community, and power from Indigenous perspectives are sources of persistence for American Indian students and how social justice-based, service-learning courses provide safe spaces for students to realize their Indigenous knowledge while attending PWIs.
Keywords: American Indian college student; service learning; Indigenous knowledge

Powerful norms tend to define the purpose and function of higher education as a means for individual students to improve individual social mobility and to attain occupational status, and oftentimes, we assume this to be the primary intent of any college student (Baum, Ma, & Payea, 2013; Day & Newberger, 2002). For the purpose of this study, the normative framing of college as primarily an individual benefit is scrutinized to understand how this norm engages American Indian students in the college-going process. Indigenous scholars argue that infusing the concept of Native Nation Building into our understandings of higher education challenges such mainstream cultural norms and fills a space between the individual and mainstream society (Brayboy, Fann, Castagno, and Solyom, 2012).
This qualitative study proposes the Individual-Independent/Political-Collective Paradox Model to understand how American Indian students navigate and make-meaning of collective values and the role of student tribal status on the college-going process. Through the voices of thirty-seven American Indian college students, the findings demonstrate the critical thinking and navigation of varying realities that American Indian students face when entering higher education institution. I present the three main findings of this study. The first finding presents how the participant’s college-going process is not linear in both pathways and meaning making. Through a college-going typology, students reveal how the college-going phases have cyclical aspects, where each phase is built upon each other and influence subsequent meaning- and decision-making. The second finding demonstrates how the college-choice process is instrumental in understanding how students frame the purpose of higher education through collective values that are intricately related to students’ reference of tribal enrollment. The third finding shows how collective values and tribal enrollment help inform the meaning of financial aid for students. These meanings reveal that tribal aid is not only relevant to providing access during the college exploration and choice phases, but the aid reinforces students’ purpose of higher education and future goals, which both are primarily collective in nature.

American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) undergraduates are a diverse group in many ways, including the number of tribes they
represent over 565 federally recognized tribes across 35 states. Data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey (NPSAS:12) help us understand degree aspirations and enrollment and financial aid trends that get lost in generalizations of the understudied AI/AN population that represents almost one percent of the national college student body.

In addition to gaining independence and economic stability, Native American students attend college with hopes of becoming a direct contributor to their own sovereign tribal nations (Brayboy, et al., 2012). Through an Indigenous paradoxical approach, this research problematizes and offers alternative approaches to understanding college-pathways for Native students.

I share this to reciprocate the knowledge given by many...
Yes, this is a work in progress.
Yes, there are some significant contributions missing. I can only accomplish so much in 10 weeks.
Yes, I will never be an expert but my ancestors' knowledge runs through my blood.

The invisibility of Native American perspectives—those of Native students, researchers and their communities—continues to plague higher education, despite numerous calls for action from educational advocates across the country. A recent report from ACE, Pulling Back the Curtain: Enrollment and Outcomes at Minority Serving Institutions, confirms the challenges that other scholars have encountered in trying to be inclusive of Native perspectives: namely, a lack of data on Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) and the students they serve.

As a K'awaika (Laguna Pueblo) and Diné (Navajo) female, I use the method of storytelling to articulate and analyze three experiences that dissect the doctoral process. The doctoral process is a colonial project that forces research norms that are often antithetical to Indigenous ways of knowing (Smith, 2013). Throughout the colonial doctoral process, I unknowingly conformed to the norms of research to complete the Ph.D. degree and I found myself reifying the constructs when reflecting upon my doctoral process. Four years later, I employ concepts of Indigenous resilience, reciprocity, and relationships to develop my interpretation of what it means to unapologetically Indigenous in the academy. By using self-reflexivity, I make meaning of key doctoral moments to present the cyclical and interconnected nature of the doctoral process. The implications of this chapter point to the importance of “Indigenous” self-reflexivity to develop an unapologetically Indigenous scholar way.

As a K’awaika & Diné, I revisit my writings to answer a life-informing question, as opposed to just a research question, of how relationships inform and disrupt my meaning-making of being unapologetically Indigenous in the academy. To answer this question, I offer a series of personal stories and relatives to reconnect to what it means to navigate the doctoral process. Through relationality as a methodology, I connect two sets of stories to disrupt the linear and forward-moving underpinnings of the doctoral process. I connect stories to highlight three dimensions, i.e., authenticity, vulnerability, and intentionality, to develop what it means to be unapologetically Indigenous in the academy.

As a K’awaika & Diné, I revisit my writings to answer a life-informing question, as opposed to just a research question, of how relationships inform and disrupt my meaning-making of being unapologetically Indigenous in the academy. To answer this question, I offer a series of personal stories and relatives to reconnect to what it means to navigate the doctoral process. Through relationality as a methodology, I connect two sets of stories to disrupt the linear and forward-moving underpinnings of the doctoral process. I connect stories to highlight three dimensions, i.e., authenticity, vulnerability, and intentionality, to develop what it means to be unapologetically Indigenous in the academy.

As a general consensus, postsecondary credentials are key to ensuring that the United States produces economically competitive and contributing members to society. It should also be stated that postsecondary opportunities stretch beyond traditionally recognized needs; they also contribute to the capacity building of sovereign tribal nations. The Native population has increased 39 percent from 2000 to 2010, but Native student enrollment remains static, representing just 1 percent of total postsecondary enrollment (Stetser and Stillwell 2014; Norris, Vines, and Hoeffel 2012). Despite the need and growing population, American Indians and Alaska Natives do not access higher education at the same rate as their non-Native peers. Tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) continue to provide a transformative postsecondary experience and education for the Indigenous population and non-Native students from in and around Native communities. The 37 TCUs enroll nearly 28,000 fulland part-time stud...

Aim/Purpose: Neoliberal ideology in U.S. society and globally is transforming post-secondary institutions into economic drivers of their public purposes, that of promoting societal betterment and educational opportunity. Attendant with the neoliberal transformation of higher education’s purposes has been an erosion of the equity pursuits of postsecondary institutions as they privilege enrolling less diverse students more likely to persist and graduate. Background: Neoliberalism has also distorted the college access imperative and divorced it from addressing historic inequities and marginalizations present in higher education. Instead, the college access imperative is largely situated in the need to meet workforce development needs. The purpose of this paper is to increase awareness about how Higher Education preparation programs resist the neoliberalism transformation to higher education by describing how one specific such program, the Higher Education Department at the University o...

The article explores the experiences of 13 undergraduate American Indian college students who served as mentors through a service-learning course while attending a 4-year, predominantly White institution (PWI). This chapter elucidates how serving as a mentor allowed participants to draw on three culturally-relevant persistence factors in higher education: relationship, community, and power. Previous research demonstrates that service learning actively involves college students and encourages them to build a connection and a sense of commitment to the community (Lee & Espino, 2011; Rhoads, 1998). Through a Tribal Critical Race Theory lens, the purpose and function of service learning is deconstructed and redefined to fit the needs of North American Indigenous college students. This article reveals that Indigenous undergraduate students tapped into their own supply of Indigenous knowledge in relating their mentoring experience to building meaningful relationships, to being a positive ...