Volume X Fall 1998 #1

Land-based colleges offer science students sense of place

By Marjane Ambler

The Navajo student bends over the map and traces the course of the San Juan River on the electronic digitizer. As Linda Bidtah works, the river appears on the computer screen. Soon the screen shows the Diné College-Shiprock (New Mexico) campus and the abandoned uranium mill site. Linda knows the families whose water supply might get tainted by the mill tailings. She knows the river. She attends the college. This is home, Diné Bikéyah.

The class material is relevant and compelling, not an abstract requirement for a degree. Although their GIS (Geographic Information System) classroom is located in a temporary modular building, 200 miles from the nearest university, Bidtah and her classmates Maxine Walter and Angie Bee are using state of the art technology-technology that provides a new perspective on the environmental issues of the Navajo homeland, Diné Bikéyah. The T-1 line carries data and maps not only from state and federal land administration agencies but also from their own tribal capital in Window Rock, Arizona.

This Fall issue of Tribal College Journal is devoted to math and science education. Land-based tribal colleges and universities such as Diné College have a unique responsibility. The majority of their students are usually members of the local tribes. Thus, unlike state-funded universities and community colleges, the tribal colleges are located in the homeland of their students, the students' parents, and many generations before them. Each is chartered by its students' tribal government. Their science and math classes prepare students who will eventually manage the forests, farmlands, fish, mines, streams, and lakes on their reservations and elsewhere. Their students will administer healthcare, engineer highways, maintain computer systems, and create businesses. Although located primarily in rural areas, American Indian reservations have not been immune from environmental problems. Shiprock is one of many reservation towns affected by mining or milling of energy fuels or precious metals. Since reservations were set aside as permanent homelands, their air and water quality is especially important. Relocation is not an option if the nest becomes fouled. The health of the land and resources is directly related to the health of the people. The tribes need their own geologists, nurses, doctors, computer software programmers, hydrologists, algebra teachers, and mining engineers.

Early in their studies the tribal college students feel the weight of this responsibility, as evident in the comments reported by Michele Allen in her article in this issue about the Model Institution of Excellence based at Oglala Lakota College (Kyle, South Dakota). Kullo Sam wants to start a manufacturing plant on the Pine Ridge Reservation to produce computer hardware. After earning his Ph.D., Patrick Jones would like to work for the National Science Foundation or the Environmental Protection Agency to gain experience to make life better on the reservation. George Tall is a cofounder of a tribally owned business that thins pine trees on the reservation and will eventually build homes. After attending Stanford University and medical school, Tatewin Means hopes to own her own medical center specializing in pediatric cardiology. Unlike many Indian people their age, these students have the capacity to dream of themselves making a difference.

Creating educational models

Despite the great need for Indian scientists, Indian students have historically been underrepresented in college science and math classrooms. Thus tribal colleges and universities such as Diné College and Oglala Lakota College have been forced to look at innovative ways of attracting them and keeping them interested in science and math courses. Oglala Lakota College has been officially designated as a Model Institution of Excellence by the National Science Foundation, but other tribal colleges are also creating national models with significance for both Indian students and non-Indians. When conventional teaching methods are used, it's not only Indian students who are scoring low in science and math. Research has shown that all students respond better to hands-on education, according to Judy Gobert, program manager for the All Nations Alliance for Minority Participation. Similarly, students of all backgrounds respond to methods that make science and math relevant to their daily lives, tapping their natural curiosity.

Tribal colleges are forging new ground as they orient their curriculum to place and culture. At Shiprock, Dr. Steve Semken and Frank Morgan integrated Navajo pedagogy into an introductory physical geology course for Navajo students, incorporating the Navajo model within an earth systems curriculum. The Navajo interpretation of nature attributes changes in the surface environment to interactions between Nohosdzáán (Earth environment) and Yádilhil (Sky environment). Semken and Morgan say the course enhances Navajo students' ability to do science while reinforcing their understanding of their culture. They believe that the capacity to draw on two systems of scientific knowledge better enables their students to hypothesize and think critically.

Diné College-Shiprock, Northwest Indian College, Salish Kootenai College, and others are breaking down the walls separating geology from history and biology from physics. At Diné, they have tried to link natural and social systems in courses such as ethnogeology, collecting case studies of the geological influences of selected military, political, economic and environmental episodes involving Native lands in the intermountain West, according to a paper presented to the Geological Society of America by Dr. Semken, Carolyn Goldtooth-Semken, and Laurencita Luna.

In a new program starting this fall, Northwest Indian College (Bellingham, Washington) is integrating tribal issues such as treaty rights, sovereignty, and culture with biology, economics, and political science. Students can earn a two-year degree in Tribal Environmental and Natural Resource Management from the program, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. In addition to NWIC and Western Washington University faculty, experts from tribal and state government and from industry will bring a "real world" perspective into the classroom, according to Dan Burns of NWIC. NWIC collaborated with Evergreen State College and Western Washington University to develop the degree. Upon graduation, students may work as technicians or transfer to one of the partner universities to seek a bachelor's degree in Natural Resource Management, Planning, Pre-Law, or Environmental Studies.

Salish Kootenai College (Pablo, Montana) is integrating environmental sciences across the curriculum. For example, Dr. Lorie Colomeda teaches social and environmental ethics, bringing students from human services and environmental science together. An environmental science instructor gave guest lectures in anthropology and tribal government courses. Ethics are an integral part of the curriculum at SKC. Goals for the college's Bachelor of Science in Environmental Sciences degree include not only standard requirements but also the ability to develop an approach to environmental research and management that "honors the tribe's cultural values." The graduate will also be able to apply conflict resolution techniques that "build support among tribal and non-tribal members for strong environmental policies," according to the course description on the college's website (skcweb.skc.edu)

While not located on a reservation, Haskell Indian Nations University (Lawrence, Kan.) is also contributing students who can help tribes all over the country with natural resource management with a cultural foundation. The North Central Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Institutions of Higher Education (NCA) recently accredited Haskell's Bachelor's degree in Environmental Science. Haskell's videotape series, All Things Are Connected: The Sacred Circle of Life, is recommended by Dr. Lorie Colomeda in her "Resource Guide for Teaching Math and Science to American Indian Students" in this issue of the Tribal College Journal.

Tribal college students and faculty are conducting research that affects their families and neighbors. Judy Gobert of All Nations AMP believes strongly in the value of research to make learning hands-on, as well as relevant to the student and valuable to the community. In order to receive the National Science Foundation funds through the All Nations AMP, partner institutions have to include a research component for students. Examples are described in the article in this issue by Frank A. Finley about AMP-funded research at Little Big Horn College (Crow Agency, Montana) and Fort Belknap College (Harlem, Montana). On the Fort Belknap Reservation, water quality has been the topic of dinner table conversations for years because of the adjacent gold mine. Now students at the tribal college are conducting research that will either confirm or allay their neighbors' fears.

In their AMP-funded research, students at Little Big Horn College are following elk through the alpine meadows of the Big Horn Mountains just as their ancestors did. Instead of bows and arrows, however, these students carry the strange metal antennae used to detect signals from the elk's radio collars. In a separate research project funded by the state of Montana and the Department of Energy, Little Big Horn College students are accompanying their science instructor, Rich Stiff, to research fish health in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. Such research has many advantages to both the students and the community: Students get training in field research techniques and analysis, and they can collect data more frequently and at less expense than distant contractors could.

In addition to curriculum development and research at their own institutions, many tribal colleges are trying to improve K-12 science and math education, too. They recognize that many Indian students have been poorly prepared in younger grades. For example, the Tribal College Rural Systemic Initiative is a program based at Turtle Mountain Community College that seeks to achieve systemic reform of school systems in a five-state area using tribal colleges as the catalysts for change. Funded by the National Science Foundation, it supports changes in mathematics, science, and technology education.

Obstacles many

Of course, not every science and math class at the 31 colleges in the American Indian Higher Education Consortium is a model program. It is much easier for any instructor to rely upon textbooks than to create new culturally relevant and place-oriented curriculum. Innovation necessarily involves risk. Bringing culture into the classroom can trivialize it if only token efforts are made, such as using a tepee instead of a cone in a solid geometry class. In their attempt to emphasize culture, programs may not devote enough attention to science, resulting in students who are ghettoized and competent to enter only their local tribal employment market. Addressing fundamental differences in the very nature of science will take decades, as Jack Barden points out in his essay in this issue.

Many of the tribal colleges' science and math programs receive support from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the U.S. Forest Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, etc. Nevertheless, the colleges remain chronically under funded. With such high goals and such limited resources, their ambitions might exceed their grasp. When instructors must raise their own funds, teaching sometimes suffers, as Dr. Ravi Srivastava says in his article in this issue. Tribal college students often arrive for their first day of class unprepared for college work; funding both remedial courses and higher level math/science courses strains already stretched budgets.

Despite such obstacles, many tribal college and university faculty are designing curriculum and research projects centered on their students' sense of place and their culture. They are striving to make science matter to their students while encouraging them to dream of futures as scientists, mathematicians, and computer experts serving their people and their lands.

Marjane Ambler has been the editor of the Tribal College Journal since 1995. She encourages any tribal colleges that were neglected in this issue to write or call with information about their innovative math and science programs.

For further reading:

Semken, S., & Morgan, F. (1997) Navajo pedagogy and Earth systems. Journal of Geoscience Education, 45, 109-112.

Willeto, P. (1997) Diné College struggles to synthesize Navajo and Western knowledge. Tribal College Journal, 9 (2).

Math, science, and medicine. Tribal College Journal, 3 (3).

Medicine: blending western training with traditional healing. Tribal College Journal, 5 (3).

Wildlife management: Can Native and Western wildlife managers find common ground? Tribal College Journal, 7 (4).