CHIEF DULL KNIFE, EDUCATION ADVOCATE. He was called “white man’s wife” by some people because he advocated for white man’s education, according to Dr. Richard Littlebear. Photo courtesy of Chief Dull Knife College.

Names in Indian country are powerful. Some names are spoken aloud, others whispered.

The name of the college drives the identity of the school and fuels the people’s desire to preserve their unique tribal identities as opposed to just using, for example, Northern Montana or just hinted at. They are more than just categorizing some space, object, or person. They define who we are, where we come from, drive our dreams, fuel our ambitions, and awaken our souls. They remind us of everything we wish to be, everything we hope to be.

Of the 37 tribal colleges and universities in the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, most are named after their tribe or tribal community. Seven are named after a tribal hero: Chief Dull Knife, Cankdeska Cikana, Little Priest, Red Crow, Sinte Gleska, Sitting Bull, and Stone Child. Five of the names are in the Native language: Ilisagvik (A Place to Learn), Sinte Gleska (Chief Spotted Tail), Cankdeska Cikana (Little Hoop aka Paul Yankton, Sr.), and Tohono O’odham (People of the Desert) College. The name communicates to students, staff, and visitors a strong sense of tribal distinctiveness.

The stories of historical leaders’ travail against great odds inspire new leaders. Chronicles of past feats of endurance inspire new successes in renewal of culture and values. They provide a sense of identity to students, students who are living in a TV culture bombarded with mass media images defining success in the modern world.

Dr. Richard Littlebear (Northern Cheyenne), president of Chief Dull Knife College (CDKC, Lame Deer, MT), says when the tribe chartered the college in 1975, they named it after Chief Dull Knife because he believed in the education of the Northern Cheyenne people in the white man’s way of learning. Dull Knife said, “In this time of change, let us ask for schools to be built for our education.”

“Because of this advocacy of the white man’s education, many of the people called him the white man’s wife, but he was not intimidated by this, and he stood fast to his beliefs. Naming the college after Chief Dull Knife was appropriate,” says Littlebear.*

Littlebear tells the story of Chief Dull Knife’s odyssey in the winter of 1879, a story that college students, administrators, and faculty tell often when asked about the college name. After the Cheyennes’ forced removal to Oklahoma (Indian Territory), Dull Knife led his people on a tumultuous journey of betrayal and death in an attempt to return to their homeland. Dull Knife and most of his clan and family members were shot to death by the U.S. Calvary, but a northern reservation was later established in Montana for the survivors.

Several other tribal colleges named their colleges after their tribes, like Blackfeet Community College (BCC, Browning MT). BCC President John Salois (Blackfeet) says that for the past few years, the college has been evaluating the current mission statement and assessing the community to see if the people want to change the college’s name.

Tribal colleges often use such processes to select a name – going to the people, seeking out the descendents of historical leaders, and getting permission. Several years ago, the Northern Cheyenne changed the name of their college from Dull Knife Memorial College to Chief Dull Knife College, omitting the word memorial and adding the word chief to reduce confusion about the name.

“At first we had a contest for name submissions. We took the proposal to the college board, and we contacted Dull Knife’s direct descendents for permission to change the name,” Littlebear says.

Ways of Knowing

Salois says when they first started looking at establishing Blackfeet Community College in 1974, elders were part of that process. Of major concern was the preservation and promotion of the Blackfeet culture and language. The language is prevalent throughout the campus.

SPIRITUAL RUN. The annual Fort Robinson Outbreak Spiritual Run pays homage to the Cheyennes who broke out of their wooden barracks and escaped on Jan. 9, 1879, from Fort Robinson in western Nebraska. Photo by James Woodcock, Billings Gazette.

“Elders and the core Blackfeet values are important in everything we do at the college,” says Salois. The college wouldn’t change the name without strategic planning involving all interested stakeholders of the college including tribal members, local schools, elders, and students, he says.

Blackfeet Community College has incorporated the people’s “traditional ways of knowing” into every aspect of the college, from their new vision statement to the new circular organizational chart, which more accurately reflects how the Blackfeet view one another in society, says Salois.

Students often feel lost in the mainstream. Community, the inter-dependency that is such a large part of tribal life, is important to these colleges. Providing a sense of tribal belonging and community are critical. The tribal college offers students a chance to work in an environment that will help them transition into the work world or to a 4-year college off the reservation, according to Salois.

BLACKFEET COMMUNITY COLLEGE

“Right now I see the college playing a central role within a lot of the families,” Salois says. Some families have lost their cultural connection and language. A study done a few years ago discovered that the youngest fluent speaker of Blackfeet was over 40 years old. This alarmed the tribal people at the time and the educators at the college. The college started gathering information and developing a K-12 curriculum so that cultural ceremonial traditions could be passed on to the younger generation.

Salois says Blackfeet Community College is building a cultural center to provide a place for ceremonial rituals and for keeping certain artifacts important to the tribe. Salois realizes that as an educational institution, they can’t hold traditional ceremonies on their own, but they could be a facilitator. “We can let those people who have the ceremonial roles to utilize our facilities. In this way the knowledge can be passed on in an appropriate way,” Salois says.

Both Littlebear and Salois stress language preservation and cultural preservation as key areas where elders can be used in the classroom. Their presence reinforces the importance of learning tribal languages and cultural traditions unique to the different tribes.

Shari Bremner (Blackfeet), age 45, was Blackfeet Community College’s Student of the Year last year and serves as the student class president. She describes the importance of the elders group hired through an innovative program at the Blackfeet Community College in partnership with the Blackfeet Tribe.

“They are here all day long, and if we have questions about our history, we [students] can sit down and learn from them. They sit around their own little office with a TV and bead. They all look really cute. They are learning the computer. They are real anxious when they first turn on the computer, but then they get used to it,” she says.

They serve as an advisory group for pronunciation of the Blackfeet language and for classes such as tipi making, beading, and dry meat-cutting classes. “A lot of people go in there just to listen to them. They advise a lot of younger students about the traditional laws of the reservation. They are really jokesters. They will be talking Blackfeet, and the youth will ask, ‘Are you talking about us?’” says Bremner.

Paulee Small (Northern Cheyenne), 19, grew up in a fairly culturally traditional family. For students like her, culture is a part of their daily sense of being. She attends Chief Dull Knife College where she sees students get reconnected to their culture, starting to learn their language and beadwork, traditions, and the sense of community that is essential to tribal communities.

Sharing History, Community, Identity

Cheryl Little Dog (Blackfeet), 35, is a student at Blackfeet Community College. She says students learn about their tribal history and culture by becoming involved in activities such as the Traditional Blackfeet Days and the college’s powwow. The community also gets involved. “We’re more like a big family,” says Little Dog.

PEOPLE OF THE COLLEGE. Chief Dull Knife College President Dr. Richard Littlebear and Cheyenne students Paulee Small and Perry Big Left Hand. Photo by Kathy Beartusk.

For some students like Perry Big Left Hand (Northern Cheyenne), 28, attending college means he can expand his circle of support to succeed. Big Left Hand left the reservation to join the Army and came back with a traumatic brain injury.

“When I was away in the Army, people asked me where I was from, and I would tell them Lame Deer, MT. They would ask me what kind of Indian I was, and I would tell them I was Northern Cheyenne. Having a strong identity is important because it gives people something to look forward to. It helps prove people wrong about a certain identity, whether that is American Indian or whether someone is disabled,” he says.

Some people told him he wouldn’t be able to do much after his brain injury, but he was determined. Attending Chief Dull Knife College helps him be more active in his tribal culture and learn more about the history of his people. “People should be proud to be Northern Cheyenne. It defines my identity, being a survivor. I can help other people and show them what I did to overcome such obstacles.”

For other students, attending tribal college helps to solidify what they already know and to resolve conflicts between their traditional teachings and values and those of the outside, modern world.

“I think that I am the second person in my family to go to college,” says Roman Fisher (Northern Cheyenne), 28, who attends Chief Dull Knife College. “There are so many Native Americans who think that high school is the last days of their education, and they go on to drink alcohol and do drugs.”

For the Bremner family, education is a way of becoming closer to the children. Bremner says she and her teenage daughter do their homework together. “It’s a really great feeling to accomplish something at home.”

Students learn about a wide range of subjects, including ethnobotany, criminal justice, clan systems, warrior societies, traditional modes of discipline, and Native American Law.

“In my juvenile delinquency class, we research how ancestors were treated in the missions and how they were treated historically. There’s been a lot documented about things that have gone on in our history as Native Americans and as Blackfeet. I give a lot of a credit to faculty here at Blackfeet Community College. If it weren’t for them doing the research, we wouldn’t know what we know today about our history and our values of respect for Blackfeet traditions,” says Little Dog.

“This morning we had a guest speaker come to class and talk about traditional leadership structure of our tribe. We had a big discussion about whether or not being a chief was hereditary or selective,” Little Dog says. She didn’t say what she believed but rather deferred judgment, saying women don’t talk about those things.

Using what they learn in class, students help in the preservation of cultural identity and language. Sometimes they take on the role of archivist or researcher themselves.

Fisher says, “I’m working at the IT tech center trying to broadcast a lot of elders’ lectures. We record them in high definition and broadcast that to the public. Eventually, I’m going to go online and try to broadcast to the other local colleges the history about the Cheyenne people.”

Retaining Cultural Focus

In choosing their names, tribal colleges have tried to inspire their students far beyond the usual academic institutions. A name means more in Indian Country. The name often signifies some deed, mannerism, something that happened when that person was born, or some value or moral that the family wishes to encourage in the child. The same can be said when tribal colleges choose names for themselves.

The colleges deal with TV culture and influences that often conflict with the cultural traditions that have kept the tribes strong and intact through the historical trauma of the past.

Fisher is an 8^th generation traditional singer and drummer. His family taught him songs, and he hopes to pass these traditions on to others. He says, “The reason why I’m here is a lot high school students are raised on MTV or TV and becoming acculturated just by watching all that rap. They are starting to lose focus of their own ways like singing, traditional dancing, and the language. I have younger cousins who speak kind of Black, like how they do on TV. That’s pretty weird to me growing up in a traditional family.”

“The Cheyenne have encountered so much oppression,” Fisher says. “It’s hard to get back to where we were. The people my age need to get back to that way of thinking, that knowledge of our traditional ways. That’s important because there are so many tribes that have lost their way of life, their language, their land, their identities. They are being acculturated into the modern ways.

“A lot of people my age are just now beginning to understand that we are losing our culture, language, and traditional stories at a dramatic rate. Having our own history, our own secrets, our own songs, stories of how we came to be – that’s what separates us from the rest of the world because we know where we come from,” says Fisher.

Relearning a cultural past – that may be the greatest gift from a tribal college. Small says a strong tribal identity matters to students because it “completes your self. You come from that lifestyle your parents and your grandparents have come from, that same place. It gives a sense of completion. You know yourself, the better you.”

Joye Braun, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, is a freelance writer and columnist. At the former Si Tanka University (Eagle Butte, SD), Braun edited the Si Tanka Vision and served as the college public relations officer. Her articles have appeared under her maiden name of Le Beau in various publications, including Tribal College Journal. More recently she has written for the Rocky Boy Tribal Newsletter and various online websites. Braun has photojournalist credits with New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other publications.

*The following correction to this paragraph was published in the Summer 2008 issue:  Dr. Richard Littlebear was quoted incorrectly.  In fact, it was the late Ted Rising Sun, a descendant of Chief Dull Knife, who said, “Because of this advocacy of the white man’s education, many of the people called him [Chief Dull Knife] the white man’s wife, but he was not intimidated by this, and he stood fast to his beliefs.“