From the age of five, Darla Pikyavit grew up in a Mormon home in Las Vegas, Nevada, raised by non-Native American parents. She wasn’t taught about her Southern Paiute culture or history. Her lack of cultural identity led her to try to fill that void with drugs and alcohol. But she eventually learned about her Indigenous heritage and visited a tribal community. “Once I got culture, traditional foods, animals, my culture back into me—finding out who I was—I was able to part from that road,” she says.

Pikyavit often shared her story of redemption through cultural reconnection with the students she served as the former director of student services at Little Priest Tribal College in Winnebago, Nebraska, in the hopes they might learn from her experience. “When I share my story with them, I’m very open with my story and the road I’ve traveled,” she explains. “Some of them don’t get it. Some of them don’t want to be part of their Native culture. They’re not ready.”

Like so many tribal colleges and universities (TCUs), Little Priest Tribal College is working to address the mental and behavioral health of its students, incorporating cultural education as just one tool in its efforts to reverse generations of historical trauma and socioeconomic challenges facing Native American students.

In 2019, suicide was the second leading cause of death for American Indian and Alaska Natives between the ages of 10 and 34, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between 16 and 24% of Native Americans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, compared to between 4.8 to 6.4% of all Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health. Further, American Indian and Alaska Native people suffer from the highest rates of drug overdose death rates, according to the CDC.

As she learned more about the nation’s 38 TCUs, Dr. Belinda Hinojos, director of clinical training and college services at Morningstar Counseling, said she was surprised to discover how few of them offered mental and behavioral health services for students. Coming from a counseling program at a predominantly white university, Hinojos knew that larger institutions routinely offer such programs. “It was an expectation at these other universities yet tribal colleges did not have these same kind of services,” she says.

Kristine Sudbeck, academic dean for Nebraska Indian Community College (NICC), says her college’s students navigate many socioeconomic challenges, including housing and food insecurity, suicide ideation, and intergenerational trauma. Sudbeck adds that many Native American college students still struggle to see education as a benefit to their communities, especially in light of the boarding school era. “Boarding schools and missions had a lasting impact on how people understood what schooling should be like,” she observes.

Unlike many mainstream institutions, TCUs focus on repairing the intergenerational trauma that many students bring with them, Sudbeck says. “As a tribal college, we serve a greater purpose of trying to heal those types of experiences,” she explains. Sudbeck adds that NICC helps its students learn their Indigenous languages, cultures, and history as the college understands how a strong sense of identity can improve students’ mental and behavioral health.

Founded in 2012 in Nebraska, Morningstar Counseling offers a host of services for TCUs that can be tailored for each institution’s needs, including individual counseling; group counseling, such as talking circles and support groups; and educational workshops on topics like suicide prevention, test anxiety, and self-care during finals.

Moreover, Morningstar works to Indigenize its services for its Native American clients. One of the ways it does that is to honor Native American healing ceremonies, such as the sweat lodge and sundance, that students use as part of their healing journeys. The firm also works to incorporate crafting, smudging, traditional singing, drumming and dancing, and traditional medicines and teas into the workshops it provides.

Kyle Baxter (Umonhon), a provider for Morningstar, says the firm has worked to redefine what self-care means for Native American students. “We try to Indigenize what self-care looks like,” Baxter states. “It’s not like the face masks and bubble baths. We talk about beading, smudging, sweat, prayer, going with family to doings. That is self-care.”

The benefits of traditional healing practices have been well-documented. A 2012 study titled “Community Partnership to Affect Substance Abuse among Native American Adolescents” showed that Native talking circles were more effective at treating Cherokee youth with substance-abuse problems than substance use education alone. And a 2003 study, “Sweat Lodge Ceremonies for Jail-Based Treatment,” found that Navajo patients who attended multiple sweat lodges reported a significant decrease in the number of alcoholic drinks consumed.

Pikyavit, who recently left her position as director of student services at Little Priest College, says the college’s students face many of the same challenges other students from Native American communities face, including problems with alcohol and drug use, grief from loss, trauma, depression, and suicide ideation. She notes that students often struggle to talk about the challenges they are facing, such as grief. “What I’ve experienced since I’ve been here, there’s been a lot of grieving,” Pikyavit asserts. “So last year there were a lot of deaths in the community.”

Students also struggle to meet their basic needs, such as securing food and housing and paying their bills. Constantly working to meet those needs “takes a toll on some of our students,” she says. Pikyavit adds that Little Priest Tribal College offers cultural workshops, including moccasin making and Indigenous games and storytelling. The college also teaches students about seasonal ceremonies hosted by tribes. One of those ceremonies is the spring renewal ceremony. She notes that the ceremony marks the start of the Indigenous new year.

Pikyavit says she would like to see more students take advantage of mental and behavioral health services offered by the college, adding that she often attends Morningstar sessions where just one student or one other staff member is participating. “Our thing is to always refer them to Morningstar to decide whether they take it upon themselves to accept the help from them or not,” Pikyavit says.

Kim Barrows, dean of student affairs at Aaniiih Nakoda College, explains that many of her college’s 135 students have parents and families that are struggling with issues like substance abuse and domestic violence. As a result, they face depression, anxiety, and feeling overwhelmed. “They’re just facing all different kinds of things that are kind of normal on reservations,” Barrows affirms.

She says the college is working with Morningstar to address its students’ mental and behavioral health problems. “My hope is that more students will take advantage of this, and staff, and it’ll just help our students move forward with their educational journey, intact with what’s going on with themselves.” In the end, Barrows wants them to “just be successful students and go out into the world and conquer.”

Kevin Abourezk (Rosebud Lakota) is deputy managing editor at ICT.