Scarlett Cortez

Tribal College Journal has announced that Scarlett Cortez of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) will serve as the next blogger at TCJStudent.org. The title of the new, bi-monthly blog will be “Shared Stories,” which she hopes will connect people and open conversations about important issues.

A junior at IAIA and a multi-talented artist, Cortez is originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is currently a studio arts major but hopes to segue into art therapy so that she can use her talents to help others. Cortez has served as the IAIA student ambassador, the Southwest representative on the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) Student Congress, and was named the AIHEC slam poet laureate in 2016. She has competed in numerous spoken word and slam poetry events and had her poem, “Worried Warrior,” published in the spring 2017 issue of Tribal College Journal. She is also an award-winning photographer, taking first place in the photography category at the 2018 AIHEC student conference in Bismarck, North Dakota.

Cortez is passionate about Indigenous peoples’ rights and American Indian higher education, partaking in AIHEC’s Capitol Hill visits in 2017 and 2018 where she spoke poignantly to U.S. senators and representatives about the significance of tribal colleges. “I know the importance of words and the wright they can carry, so I want to do my best at respecting that but still keeping true to myself,” she says.

Charlene Teters, IAIA’s academic dean, says that Cortez has a “powerful and articulate voice” and that she is ideally suited to serve as a TCJ Student blogger. “I really cannot think of a person on our campus more qualified,” says Teters. “She is an amazing young woman.” Cortez’s blog will launch on May 1 at TCJStudent.org.