An examination of the circular relationship between place, engagement and identity is the foundation of a new publication exploring the roles of Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) in restoring and revitalizing Indigenous ways of living, languages and social practices.
Highlighting TCUs’ creation, evolution and their designation as land-grant institutions under the 1994 Equity in Educational Land-Grant Status Act, co-authors Dr. Cheryl Crazy Bull and Emily R. White Hat explore how the Indigenous concept of relationality – “the relatedness of all things” – serves as the basis for the institutions’ missions to affirm and promote Indigenous culture and ecological knowledge, as well as create economic and tribal community prosperity.
“When we think about the poverty and the challenges that our communities have experienced through that relationality and that responsibility of that circle, our TCUs have come into existence to respond to that and to heal and to help our people as we continue into the next seven generations,” said White Hat, director of strategy and national outreach of the American Indian College Fund.
The challenges that White Hat mentions include “systematic” and “deliberate” efforts by European settlers to disrupt Native Americans’ traditional way of life, including suppression of their expertise around how to hunt, gather, fish and live off of their tribal lands, the authors said. Disruption by government laws such as the Dawes General Allotment Act and the Indian Reorganization Act also sought to “sever the ties that Indigenous people had with their philosophy of the sacred circle where all things are related and spiritual,” the article said.
As a result, TCUs and other tribally-controlled environments responded by bringing in and affirming Native peoples’ “already existing individual and community knowledge,” said Crazy Bull, president and CEO of the College Fund.
“The tribal colleges and universities are fostering and putting that Indigenous knowledge like what’s reflected in our paper at the center of what’s taught in the classroom,” Crazy Bull said. “What we’re doing … is we’re saying that the space that we navigate is an Indigenous space, that the land that we’re on is land that we understand and relate to because of our Indigenous experience.”
Many TCUs have developed and offer two- and four-year degrees in environmental science, forestry, hydrology and wildlife and fisheries science based on tribal knowledge and the connections to the sacred circle, the authors pointed out.
