Features More Than Words, A Way of Life By Laura Paskus From the Arctic Circle to the Great Plains, tribal colleges and universities are launching a vast array of new programs to revitalize and preserve Native languages. Ojibwemotaadidaa: Preparing a New Generation of Fluent Speakers By Persia Erdrich Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College’s (more)

By Heather Baxter and Martha Lee A dream in the making for many years came true in the fall of 2012 when Tohono O’odham Community College (TOCC, Sells, AZ) opened its new main campus in the Schuk Toak District on the Tohono O’odham Reservation in southern Arizona. The college can now offer students a residential (more)

Northwest Indian College (Bellingham, WA) has announced that it will host the eighth annual Vine Deloria Jr. Indigenous Studies Symposium in honor of the late Lakota intellectual. Scheduled for July 11-13, the symposium seeks to bring together Native and non-Native scholars and other tribal people who are interested in honoring the life and work of (more)

The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA, Santa Fe, NM) has announced its first graduate program, the new Low Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. The Low Residency MFA program offers a professional degree in creative writing while allowing students to live at home. The program begins with a weeklong residency at the (more)

A team of 24 students from the College of Menominee Nation (CMN, Keshena, WI) has initiated a demonstration project to reduce plastic water bottle waste. With revenue from a fundraising campaign held this past fall semester, along with a matching gift from the college’s Scott Zager Venture Fund, the team purchased two retro-fitted water fountains (more)

By blending the future of technology with the history of tribal language, Blackfeet Community College (BCC, Browning, MT) has developed Montana’s first Native American language application for smartphone users. The BCC Blackfeet Culture and Language Division has been working on the first phase of the “app” for nearly six months. The division teamed up with (more)

Leaders from the nation’s 37 tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) are calling on federal lawmakers to protect more than 88,000 American Indian and Alaska Native students and community members served by TCUs from the deep budget cuts known as sequestration. Automatic cuts equaling $85 billion will have a devastating impact on TCUs and tribal communities across the country.

Over the past few hundred years, Western science has considered Indigenous knowledge about our natural surroundings as an entirely separate way of viewing the world. In recent years that has started to change, as Native students, scientists, and writers communicate with the public about traditional knowledge. Increasingly, scientists and academics have acknowledged the crucial role Indigenous (more)

Ilisagvik College President Pearl Brower (Iñupiat) is used to the long, dark, cold winters at the nation’s northernmost tribal college—just north of the Arctic Circle. Brower was born and raised in Barrow on the North Slope of Alaska.

The science students of Aaniiih Nakoda College (ANC, Harlem, MT) are empowering themselves through place-based projects with “Life Way” knowledge gained from a Council of Elders. A grant from the National Science Foundation, “Innovation through Institutional Integration” (I3), has allowed ANC to integrate a Council of Elders; college policy (through a newly developed Institutional Review (more)