Colleges Reach Out to Native American Students
Given higher education’s obsession with diversity, many Native American students could probably attend the college of their choice with a free ride if they would just apply.
FOX News reports.
Programs to recruit, retain Native American college students grow nationwide
A growing number of universities are offering programs to recruit and prepare Native American students for a transition to college life that can bring on a wrenching emotional conflict.
Many young Native Americans find themselves divided by their desire for a higher education and the drive to stay close to home to hold onto a critical part of their identity. Sometimes, families discourage children from pursuing college, fearing once they leave the reservation they won’t come back.
To help prepare them, dozens of schools have started mini-college boot camps, including the University of California, Riverside, Yale and Duke.
Officials say they want to help students understand that they can make the transition between life on the reservation and college, and prepare them so they don’t flounder once they arrive.
Programs to recruit, retain Native American college students grow nationwide (FOX News)
Comments
This is an EXCELLENT topic.
I live in Alaska and we have a large Native population. The Natives here have, per an agreement with the federal government, tax free corporations FOREVER.
Let me start of by saying I have served with many folks who are Native. I won’t do the “white man bow and scrape” and say “oh, I love them and they are excellent”. Why? Because they are people – and I don’t classify them by race. Some a great, some a dirtbags – same as every other group.
I have deployed twice, and had many Native Soldiers who I have served with, at home and overseas.
About two years ago I ran into a man at a retreat who was Native, and served on the board of one of the TAX FREE Native corporations. Now, let me start off with I am NOT the biggest fan of how some of those corporations are run – nepotism, favoritism, and cronyism abound in how things are divided up.
We got to talking about one of the villages under his purview – and how, in 2008 (this was in 2012) it had no running water yet. The guy I had deployed with lamented this fact numerous times. I brought up that subject and Mr. Board Member’s response:
“Well the federal government needs to take it’s responsibilities seriously and get it done.”
I pointed out that **I** paid property taxes and that I paid to get and keep running water where I live, why should everyone else (the tax payer) pay for Native villages to have a sewer system.
I then said and then asked “You guys have an EXCELLENT education program. Why don’t you ensure more folks in the villages get educated, and they can leave the nest, and pay you back over 10-20 years, thereby filling the coffers, providing a follow on generation with an education, and raise the standard of living?”
His answer was very telling:
“But, then people will leave the villages, not come back, and it would destroy our culture.”
He would rather people stay in the villages, live in dependency (to include being dependent on the Native Corporation), to ensure HE has a job, whereby people have to come to him and beg patronage, and never improve their standard of living.
The very thing he complains about having been “done to his people” he wants to keep for the status quo, so he keeps his $100k+ a year job so people have to come to him, hat in hand, begging for “help” while he has no intention of those people becoming self sufficient.
It was a rather contentious conversation – to say the least.