38-years-old, Eunice Abrams had three children, no job, no car, not even a telephone. Because she had always struggled in school due to dyslexia, going to college seemed daunting to say the least. And on the Fort Peck reservation in eastern Montana, there weren’t a lot of economic opportunities either. It seemed Eunice Abrams and her family had few options. But there was one—Fort Peck Community College (FPCC).

With open enrollment and remedial classes, FPCC offered Abrams hope. She moved to the town of Poplar and with the help of college administrators enrolled in classes. In many ways, it seemed that the college was specifically tailored for Abrams and other “nontraditional students” with families. There were family nights with full meals, convenient childcare, a wellness center, as well as counseling, mentoring, life skills classes, and cultural activities for the entire family. Although Abrams lived just a mile from campus, the Northern Plains winter made the walk difficult, sometimes even dangerous. Recognizing this, FPCC arranged for a tribal bus to pick her up so she wouldn’t miss a class. Serving students with families has always been central to the FPCC mission. “Our tribal college exists to help that person,” stated the college’s president Jim Shanley. “We have to help that person because that person is part of who we are.”

In the late 1990s, FPCC had developed the Fort Peck Family Services Model Program, as part of the Kellogg Family Collaborative Project. It was through the program that FPCC strengthened its services to help students like Abrams. Salish Kootenai College, Blackfeet Community College, and Stone Child College also participated in the project, developing their own family-oriented programming. Although each program varied, they all worked under the central premise that families needed to be woven into the college’s fabric and that the tribal college is part of the community, not separate from it. “The typical university student is treated only as an individual,” Shanley observed. “But Indian cultures are about families.”

FPCC and President Shanley’s philosophy was and continues to be rooted in traditional Assiniboine values of the tadaguyebi: Share what you have. Always help your relatives. Respect your elders. Do your best to always help people. Take care of those who cannot care for themselves. Protect, love, and respect little children. These are just a few of the cornerstone principles that have guided FPCC through the years and made it one of the most important institutions serving Fort Peck’s Assiniboine and Sioux tribes.

Today, Native students face challenges far greater than non-Natives. Poverty rates of Indian people living on reservations are roughly four times the national average. Moreover, reservation poverty is significantly more extreme, with families subsisting off income that is less than 75% of the national poverty level. The US Census Bureau calls it “deep poverty.”

Such economic obstacles are coupled with historical ones. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, boarding schools like the Carlisle Industrial School were located over 1,000 miles from many tribal homelands, separating children from their families and working deliberately to destroy Native languages, spirituality, and traditional tribal values. Although Carlisle closed its doors in 1918, the federal government’s policy of encouraging Native families to relocate to far-off urban centers continued this trend into the 1950s and 60s.

Yet in many ways, such concerted efforts have only made Native peoples and families more resilient. Despite historical trauma, overwhelming challenges, daunting statistics, there has been a regeneration of tribal values, Indigenous languages, and efforts to strengthen Native families. And in many Indian communities across the United States, tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) are leading the way.

Take for instance United Tribes Technical College (UTTC), which like FPCC has built-in family support systems. In the feature article, “Whole Family Engagement,” UTTC’s tribal science outreach coordinator, Anna Bahnson, illuminates how the college has catered to students with families and dependents by developing a food pantry, daycare, and even an elementary school—all right on campus. Through the stories of three students—Kimberlee Blevins, Muriel Friday, and Berlin West—Bahnson shows how every student’s story is unique, underscoring the importance of taking a multifaceted approach to serving tribal college families.

Like UTTC, Diné College has likewise implemented a variety of initiatives to cater to families. In this edition of Talking Circle, Terra Lamotte-Harvey and Annabah Conn discuss how America’s first tribal college developed its family outreach over the years, most recently constructing a new family housing complex just minutes from classrooms, the library, cafeteria, and daycare. Lamotte-Harvey and Conn chart a path for how other emerging TCUs can implement strategies and programs that put tribal college families front and center.

Many tribal colleges have received a major boost in serving students with families from the American Indian College Fund. Beginning in 2011, the organization launched its first early childhood initiative called “Sacred Little Ones.” College Fund program officer Cheryl LaRose tells us in her feature article, “Nurturing the Wakanyeja,” how early learning centers on TCU campuses not only offer an education based on Indigenous values and knowledge, but also give students with children the support they need to accomplish their academic goals. Through meticulous research and planning, the College Fund established the initiative with five main objectives: integrate Native language and culture into the early learning centers, document children’s development, strengthen teacher quality, establish educational pathways for Native children, and, perhaps most importantly, engage intergenerational families and communities. Such a comprehensive approach is how and why TCUs are at the forefront in regenerating Native families.

Finally, read this issue’s Profile to get a more intimate look at one tribal college legacy family. In “Like Mother, Like Daughter,” the College Fund’s public education director, Dina Horwedel, traces the lives of Leia Fish and her daughter Jayda Loonsfoot who attended Blackfeet Community College (BCC) and Haskell Indian Nations University, respectively. As a young mother, Leia recalls how BCC set her up for success, enabling her to uplift her family and influencing Jayda to follow in her footsteps.

Students like Eunice Abrams, Kimberlee Blevins, Muriel Friday, Berlin West, Leia Fish, Jayda Loonsfoot, and the myriad other TCU students with families underscore the power and efficacy of tribal colleges in sustaining communities and building resilient Native nations. “We don’t exist as individuals without a context,” Jim Shanley observed. “At Fort Peck we acknowledge our students’ familial contexts. . . . As the work of mitigating poverty and strengthening Indian communities succeeds, [a] vision of an ideal Indian educational system moves far beyond effective remediation to include the preservation and survival of living Indian languages and Indian cultures.”

Bradley Shreve, PhD, is editor of Tribal College Journal.

REFERENCES

Ambler, M. (2001). Eunice Abrams: One Family’s Story. Tribal College: Journal of American Indian Higher Education, 12(4), 13.

Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. (2008). The State of Native Nations: Conditions Under U.S. Policies of Self-Determination. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mainor, P. (2001). Family Matters: Fort Peck Community College Tests Holistic Approach to Student Success. Tribal College: Journal of American Indian Higher Education, 12(4), 10-13.

Shanley, J. (1999). Traditional Assiniboine Family Values: Let Us Bring Back Something Beautiful. Tribal College: Journal of American Indian Higher Education, 11(1), 12-17.