When I started as interim president at the College of Menominee Nation (CMN) in February 2020, it wasn’t with the expectation that a global pandemic would soon follow. Yet, like all of us at TCUs, we responded because we know our responsibility for our campuses also extends directly into the tribal nations and surrounding communities we serve. This meant we not only had to affirm or develop distance learning capabilities but also ensure the health and safety of our students, faculty, and staff due to the disproportionate impact COVID has on tribal communities.

For CMN, this response included a move from face-to-face classes one week to fully online the next. Prior to this, we had estimated a one- to-two-year planning horizon to understand and implement our capacity to offer distance learning options. The pandemic and financial resources that came along created, or more accurately, forced, an opportunity to make it happen sooner.

I remember talking to our staff at the beginning and trying to understand how big of an impact this would have on our operations, employees, and students. The answers at that time were vague because of the unprecedented nature of the events occurring. Our focus was on the basics of health and safety, delivering quality courses and programming, and ensuring decisions met immediate needs but allowed for long-term development and investment. In many areas, it guided us out of an administrative concentration and back to the core cultural values that have sustained our people over millennia. Monday morning prayer.

Two years later we are offering courses, conducting meetings, and operating with greater ease across an online environment. The pandemic has been a curse because of the loss of people and the loss of language, culture, beauty, and knowledge they took with them. But the pandemic is also a blessing because it has forced us to address the long-time inequities and limited resources that TCUs and tribal communities have struggled with. Our cyberinfrastructure and reach are vastly updated and increased. Our access to educational resources, meetings, and training has also increased. The destigmatization and attention to mental health and well-being have also become a welcome focal point in our communities again.

As we move forward, CMN grapples with how we accurately measure faculty, staff, and student performance in online and hybrid environments, understanding how place-based relational learning works online. In the following years TCUs, like other institutions, will see how the lessons learned and experiences gained result in further uptake and refinement of distance learning.

In doing this work, we replicate the process of our ancestors when dealing with issues of the day, where the future is greatly uncertain, but our reliance on our past is still vital.

Pemaehnesekon (take care of yourselves), eneq (that is all),

Christopher M. Caldwell (Menominee) President, College of Menominee Nation Tribal College Journal Advisory Board