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Changing Landscapes in Higher Education - Ep 76
813 Plays1 year ago
On today’s episode, Jessica welcomes back Dr. Jason Younker (Assistant Vice President and Advisor to the President on Sovereignty and Government-to-Government Relations at the University of Oregon and Chief of the Coquille Indian Tribe) on the podcast. Dr. Younker was a guest on Heritage Voices Episode 73 “Exploring the Ethics in Experimental Archaeology”, but Jessica invited him back because there was clearly so much more to discuss. In this episode, we talk about how Kennewick Man and the Coquille Tribal Council set him on his path in Anthropology and higher education.
We talk about the devastating effects of termination and the important distinction between diversity efforts and sovereignty. Finally we talk about his efforts in New York and Oregon to build relationships between Higher Education and Tribal Nations in order to improve higher education for Indigenous students. Even if you are an Arizona Wildcat like Jessica, this episode might just make you want to become an Oregon Duck!
Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/heritagevoices/76
Links
- Heritage Voices on the APN
- University of Oregon Many Nations Longhouse: https://longhouse.uoregon.edu/
- Coquille Indian Tribe: https://www.coquilletribe.org/
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Transcript
Introduction and Land Acknowledgment
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Welcome to Heritage Voices, Episode 76. I'm Jessica Equinto, and I'm your host. And today we are talking about changing landscapes in higher education. Before we begin, I'd like to honor and acknowledge that the lands I'm recording on today are part of the Nooch, or People's Treaty Lands, the Dinatá, and the ancestral Puebloan homeland.
Dr. Jason Yonker's Background in Anthropology
00:00:27
Speaker
And today we have Dr. Jason Yonker back on the show. Jason is the assistant vice president and advisor to the president on sovereignty and government to government relations at the University of Oregon and chief of the Cokewell Indian tribe. He received his PhD in anthropology from the University of Oregon and returned to Oregon after teaching at the Rochester Institute of Technology for a decade. Yonker received the prestigious Eli S. Parker Award from the American Indian Science and Engineering Society.
00:00:56
Speaker
for his work with tribal governments and students in higher education. He is the past president of the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists and is originally from Charleston, Oregon. So welcome back to the show, Jason. Well, thank you. I'm very happy to be here. Yeah. So if any of you missed it, Jason was unfortunately rather briefly on a podcast episode not too long ago. He had to jump off the call.
00:01:25
Speaker
We had had some technical issues, so he had had to jump off a little bit earlier than we were hoping for. So that episode is Episode 73, Exploring the Ethics in Experimental Archaeology. But I was very interested in talking to Jason Moore, so I'm very excited that we get to do a full episode with you today.
Path to Cultural Resource Management
00:01:46
Speaker
Outstanding. I don't know who would listen to me for that long, but I'm pretty happy to be back.
00:01:53
Speaker
Yes. Well, you know, it's funny. I've said this a million times in emails, but I don't think I've ever said it actually on the podcast that just about everyone that's on there is like, Oh my God, I hate my voice. So like every single person. So you're not alone. Well, I don't know if I hate my voices. Some people tell me I like it too much.
00:02:15
Speaker
Oh, there you go. Okay. I'm really interested in, you have a little bit different of a journey to getting to cultural resource management than a lot of people. You started out in communication and gifted and talented education. And so I'm curious like where you thought you were going to go when you were younger and then how you ended up in the CRM world.
00:02:42
Speaker
Oh man, that's going way back, but I do recall it finally. I had just finished my master's degree in education at Oklahoma City University and was going to return home to Coos Bay and teach. That's what I thought I was going to do. But at that time it was in the early nineties and my tribal council desperately needed an anthropologist.
00:03:12
Speaker
And they pulled me aside and said, you know, we recommend that you go to the University of Oregon studying under these people because we desperately need an anthropologist.
00:03:26
Speaker
So whenever your tribal council encourages you in that way, it really means just go and do. So they sent me to the U of O. I studied specifically under John Erlandson and Madonna Moss, a number of other people who had already been working with my tribe, the Coquille Indian tribe on the Southern Oregon coast.
00:03:49
Speaker
And during my time in graduate school, it was my responsibility to build the cultural resource program for the tribe. We were very aware and afraid of the implications of Kennewick Man, and very nervous that we didn't have an anthropologist to be in the room for deliberations that directly affected us.
00:04:13
Speaker
So that was my role and that's how I got into it. Having never taken an anthropology course in my life, I was thrust into graduate courses.
00:04:25
Speaker
I did survive. I think it was a pretty bumpy ride for me, but I had a cohort of native students who were graduate students in anthropology. There were seven of us, which is absolutely unheard of in anthropology at that
Impact of Kennewick Man on Anthropology
00:04:43
Speaker
time. So I relied very heavily on their companionship and their learned experiences as well.
00:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, so are they all still working in CRM today?
00:04:56
Speaker
They're either faculty CRM or a couple of them are chairs of their respective tribes. My son is actually in anthropology at Oregon State University and his advisor is one of the native persons that Dr. David Lewis, who was my office mate at the University of Oregon.
00:05:23
Speaker
the world is, you know, while it's very large, it's not that big. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. You'll have to encourage some of them to come on this podcast. Sounds like a nice group. So that must have been like a very different experience. Were there a lot of non-native study or students in your cohort as well? Or was it mostly these predominantly, these seven, I think you said?
00:05:48
Speaker
Oh no, we had lots of non-native graduate students as well. But I think the influence that we had, the seven native graduate students, on those individuals completely changed the way Oregon does cultural resource management. One of them ended up being Dennis Griffin.
00:06:11
Speaker
ended up being the lead archaeologist for the state of Oregon. Another is a professor, a tenured professor, down at Southern Oregon University. And another is one of the world's leaders in ground-piercing sonar. And so, they were able collectively
00:06:34
Speaker
to provide aspects of their particular research that helped the rest of us in our research. So, when we developed our CRM department for the co-coiled tribe, we had a particular way of how we wanted to disguise some of our cultural sites
00:06:58
Speaker
And so we created a method that eventually was duplicated by the state of Oregon. And if it hadn't been for Dennis Griffin and his work with us, I don't think they would have adopted our way of protecting sites, which, you know, it helps if everybody's protecting sites in the same way. So it truly was a Department of Anthropology effort to include Native Americans.
00:07:29
Speaker
And then the side bonus was that all of us native students had direct impacts on
00:07:38
Speaker
everybody else as well. And I'm curious, I wonder, so you mentioned that it was Kennewickman that brought you to the University of Oregon, at least. So I mean, I wonder if that had an influence on why all seven of you like happened to join at that exact same moment, first of all. And then second of all, you know, I don't know if all of our listeners are familiar with Kennewickman. So maybe if you could give a super basic
00:08:07
Speaker
overview. I mean, anyone that's taken an anthropology class has definitely heard about Kennewick Man, but there might be some listeners that haven't. So if you could just give a little bit of background there. Well, Kennewick Man is one of the most misunderstood ancient
Post-Graduation Journey and Tribal Work
00:08:24
Speaker
skeletons that was discovered in the early 90s, eroding out of the banks into the Columbia River. And originally it was supposed
00:08:35
Speaker
that it was a Caucasian skeleton that predated any other human remains in North America. Unfortunately, by determining prematurely that it was Coccasoid, this also comes at a time when Indian gaming was
00:08:54
Speaker
being introduced. And so not only was it the implications stating that Native Americans weren't here first and had no claims to the lands that they were on because a Caucasian was here first, one lone Caucasian. It was also being used as fodder to undermine other acts of sovereignty.
00:09:19
Speaker
for tribes. And it's also about the same time that we had NAGPRA legislation coming through. So, you know, all of these were the perfect storm that attracted Native Americans to anthropology departments. And ultimately, as study went on with Kennewick Man, they found out that it truly was not a caucasoid. So, it's
00:09:47
Speaker
It's kind of bittersweet. It's bittersweet in that that kind of assertion would have been made to begin with. But it also had the benefits of producing the new anthropology that we now live in, where we are trying to understand why are we doing the study that we are doing? And are these colonial? Are these oppressive?
00:10:16
Speaker
And are they including the voices of the indigenous people in explanations? So I think in the early 90s, we were trying to figure that out. And there were a number of native graduate students at the U of O. We had our impact, but across the nation, natives gathered in anthropology classes. That was the beginning of the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists, too.
00:10:46
Speaker
So when we started that up, again, it was to bring us all together as a cohort and say, oh my gosh, you're going through what? Yeah, we're going through that over here too. When you're going through troubled times, it's always nice to hear that somebody else is experiencing it as well and likely able to provide some help.
00:11:10
Speaker
or advice in those areas too. So Kennewick man is a very complex issue. I am certain we could talk the entire podcast about it, but it certainly was a motivation for me to get into anthropology or at least to be compelled to get into anthropology by my travel counsel.
00:11:29
Speaker
So when you came out of graduate school, you know, that was the original goal. Did you actually end up working on things related to Kennewick, man? Or did you end up moving on to very different things?
00:11:43
Speaker
Oh my goodness. You know, I, my entire time as an anthropology graduate student, I asked myself, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Okay, I'll go get a job with tribe after this and I'll continue working on the stuff that I'm working on. So I ended up graduating and you know, I had returned home to become a teacher.
00:12:07
Speaker
And both of my parents were teachers. So it was natural for me to say, okay, I'm going to go home after graduation, just become a teacher or work with the tribe. And the chief of our tribe at that time, after I graduated, said, you need to go teach. I said, what do you mean I need to go teach? I thought I was going to work with the tribe. He goes, no, you need to go teach those who are going to determine our future.
00:12:34
Speaker
And he was specifically saying, go teach, go write, and stand up in front of people who are not Coquille and make sure that they know about us. We are one of the, the Coquille Indian tribe was, was terminated in 1954. And we're very afraid of being terminated again. And so even in the late 1990s, early 2000s,
00:13:02
Speaker
Here they were telling me to go away, but it made sense
Coquille Tribe's Restoration Efforts
00:13:08
Speaker
because I ended up getting a job in New York. Here's people don't even know where Oregon is half the time, let alone the Pocwell Indian tribe, but they have an impact.
00:13:21
Speaker
If I write a paper for a well-known journal and it says, Cokewell Indian Tribe, Cokewell Tribe, Cokewell, if it says all of those things, that doesn't go away. If you make an impression in front of a bunch of students who are non-Indigenous, your impression as a Cokewell scholar doesn't go away. So when termination, if and when it comes again, people will be able to say, wait a minute,
00:13:48
Speaker
I had a professor or I read a paper and these are historical documents or historical accounts that attest that we are still here. So the Chief Tanner telling me that I needed to go away and teach and teach others about the coquille, it made sense to me.
00:14:13
Speaker
the vision that my tribe had for me to go become an anthropologist. And then afterwards to really knock me on the side again, say, go away and teach. You don't question that kind of wisdom. I won't question that kind of wisdom anymore. Well, now you're the one passing that wisdom down, right?
00:14:38
Speaker
Well, I passed something down. I don't know if it's wisdom, but I'm sure I'm sure I've confused a few people. Before we get too far from this, I'm curious. I didn't realize that Cookwell was one of the terminated tribes. So what was the process like to get that federal recognition back? Oh, goodness.
00:15:05
Speaker
So yeah, we were the last tribe in Oregon to be restored in 1988. And so the
00:15:18
Speaker
experiences that I have as a terminated Indian. I spent 20 years as a terminated Indian, where you can't say that you are Indian. They ask you, well, what are you? You know, they look at me and people say, what are you? Are you Mexican? Are you Chinese? And I can't even say that I'm Indian, even though I grew up
00:15:42
Speaker
about a hundred yards from where my dad's village would have been, was. So, and on the same body of water. So all of the things that I knew growing up were of no value because somebody decided that we were no longer Indian. The restoration process was horrible. We had to testify that we were who we were, and we were where we were from,
00:16:12
Speaker
And we had to convince people that really didn't know much about termination altogether, and that it impacted Oregon more so than any other state in the nation. I believe it was 61 bands and tribes were terminated in western Oregon alone.
00:16:37
Speaker
So, and now you take a look at Oregon and you see confederated tribes of the Salettes. Well, that means that there's a whole bunch of those bands and tribes in that confederation. The Coquille were a single tribe, but we too have a lot of bands within our tribe. So getting from the point of termination in 54 to 1988, our tribal membership has scattered across the globe.
00:17:07
Speaker
And now those who had remained home are trying to get restored. And the question is, is there anything to restore? And so we had to justify our actions from termination to restoration that we had remained a tribe and we truly were the descendants of the coquille. So that's having to prove who you are. It's very
00:17:36
Speaker
difficult. Many individual natives are constantly questioned about who they are and how much Indian are they. And they have to answer those questions over and over and over and over. When you have to do that for an entire tribe, it's exhausting. And it's defeating. And you are reluctant
00:18:04
Speaker
to get restored because you know if you're terminated again, you might have to go through that pain all over. Sometimes it's easier just to ignore who you are and people find comfort in that. But to much satisfaction, the coquille did continue to meet regular sense termination
00:18:34
Speaker
and eventually by 1988 were restored. All right. Well, on that note, we're actually already at our first break. It always comes so fast. When we come back, I want to talk more about, you know, you got sent to New York and let's talk about that journey when we come back here in a minute. We are back from our break. So where we left off,
00:19:01
Speaker
The tribal council had switched and told you to go teach and you moved to New York.
Government Relations and Tribal Collaboration at RIT
00:19:10
Speaker
Can you tell us about the work that you were doing when you were in New York? You know what? I ended up going to New York kind of on a fluke. I had four job offers, which was unheard of. And I went with the one that paid the most.
00:19:31
Speaker
They hired me at RIT to start a Native American Studies program to be a contribution to the Native American community. And I told the provost at the time, I said, that's not really a contribution to the Native American community. While Native American Studies is a comfortable area for Native scholars,
00:20:01
Speaker
We need to create a government to government relationship with tribes. And that is more of a contribution to Native American communities than a Native American Studies program. It's not that Native American Studies is an valued program. If an institution is at a point where they have a Native American Studies program and they want to add a government to government,
00:20:27
Speaker
then that's an advanced institution. But at RIT, it wasn't at the time that I had arrived an advanced institution. So New York being the location of the oldest democracy in the world, in the Hona di Shoni, the Iroquois Confederacy, I was just very fortunate to be in their backyard.
00:20:57
Speaker
Now, I truly realized that I was an out-of-town Indian, but for the first time in their history, a university within the state had come to the Hona-Jashone Grand Council and said, we would like a government-to-government relationship with you, from president to tatadaho, president of the Grand Council.
00:21:25
Speaker
They appreciated that so much that they invited us to the longhouse to present our proposal. And so I convinced the entire presidential cabinet and the president to go to Onondaga in Syracuse, New York, and to ask them for guidance in preparing
00:21:52
Speaker
a Native American Advisory Council at RIT. Now, we went to that longhouse and all of the big brothers and little brothers and faith
Return to Oregon and Educational Priorities
00:22:05
Speaker
keepers are all sitting in the longhouse and the guests are sitting in the middle of the room. I'm sitting there with
00:22:13
Speaker
all of the vice presidents and the president and some department heads and some native students and non-native, just a whole contingency from RIT. And they are speaking their language. For the first two hours, they spoke their language. And there was no English. It was all about the opening prayer, giving thanks.
00:22:40
Speaker
And I could just see my career going out the window while all of this was happening. Luckily for me, it was one of the most moving experiences that any of the upper administration have ever had. It was one of the most moving experiences that the Hona Doshoni had, having a university come to them and say, please help us.
00:23:08
Speaker
help us be the destination for your students. Now, at the time, RIT didn't offer any scholarships. It was a very exclusive, big, private institution, focused on technology. But it had degree areas that were very useful for the Hone-Jishoni. And we said, we simply want to
00:23:34
Speaker
align our priorities with your educational priorities so that you would have better success in retrieving your scholars should they come to RIT. And so for four or five years, we were able to meet not only at RIT, where the Haudenosaunee would come to us, but also in their longhouse. And they simply advised us at a government to government level.
00:24:01
Speaker
a level that is expected by the Hona di Shoni. If you have the Queen of England come to New York, you do not have them meet up with somebody in diversity, equity, and inclusion. You have the Queen of England meet with the President or the Governor or the President of the United States. So the Hona di Shoni know that.
00:24:30
Speaker
They know that this is the level at which they are, as a sovereign domestic nation, are supposed to communicate. Helping RIT establish that, we went from two graduates in my first year that I was there.
00:24:50
Speaker
to 31 graduates in the last year that I was there. We graduated 92% of our students during my time at RIT. And we did not offer a single scholarship. The Hona de Shoney recruited for us simply because we went to them. And we asked for forgiveness for not being there earlier. We asked for their assistance to make
00:25:20
Speaker
the institution better, and we asked at the right level of communication. So my time at RIT was actually a very good learning experience on how to work with tribal governments and governments within an institution, which led to me returning to Oregon and doing the same thing that I am currently doing right now.
00:25:49
Speaker
But I would say that my experience in RIT was, again, one of those visions that somebody had on my behalf, maybe it was Chief Tanner, that knew that I was going to RIT to publish, to teach students, teach them about the coke well, and also at the same time,
00:26:13
Speaker
Learn myself. What is the proper etiquette when you are talking with tribes and at what level should you be talking with tribes? That experience in Rochester, New York has paved the way for the successes that I've experienced here in Oregon.
00:26:33
Speaker
Okay. So the Haudenosaunee, the Rochester Institute of Technology went to the Haudenosaunee for advice. And what would you say were the broad strokes of the advice that the Haudenosaunee gave back to the university? The one question, and we really limited, because this is early on in the relationship building and relationships with tribes, they're easily messed up.
00:27:02
Speaker
but they are very long term. And so we asked them one thing, what are the degree areas that we should be emphasizing and changing to meet your needs? What are the most desirable college degrees that your students and your tribe need?
00:27:29
Speaker
And they replied, business, law, medical sciences, environment, and teacher education. And we said, we can do business, we don't have a law school, we have some medical sciences, we definitely have environmental technology and sciences, and we have some teacher education, but not a whole lot. We can't rebuild the institution, but we can sure make those programs
00:27:58
Speaker
fit your needs the best. And so those were the those were the five areas that they advised us and we were able to say, you know, we're not going to say that we can deliver all of these things, but we certainly can try in the areas that are already our strengths.
Diversity and Sovereignty in Education
00:28:15
Speaker
And you guys can help us adjust them and make them stronger. So it was those five degrees that ended up being
00:28:24
Speaker
what they desired most. Now, as irony will have it, when I returned to Oregon, I knew all the tribes and all of the tribal councils. My dad was on tribal council for forever. And so everybody knew him and then knew me through him. And so when I asked the same questions to our Native American Advisory Council,
00:28:49
Speaker
their responses were identical—business law, medical sciences, environment, and teacher education. I found that quite remarkable that both sides of North America would have this—Indigenous would have the same identical responses to those questions.
00:29:12
Speaker
So now we're talking a little bit about Oregon and what it was like when you came back to Oregon. You had a really good experience in New York. What ultimately brought you home? You know, the University of Oregon has had a Native American Advisory Council since 1996. I was actually here when it started. I sat on it as a graduate student. My father was on it.
00:29:37
Speaker
unfortunately for me. You know, you never want to run into your parents, but I'm sitting on the same council that my father was on. But it was started by Dave Frommyer back in 1996. Like I said, relationships with American Indians usually last generations. And we had had some hiccups.
00:30:07
Speaker
while I was gone. And so, I had never left Oregon, really, to tell you the truth. There, several presidents had come after Dave Fromeyer.
00:30:21
Speaker
good friends here in a higher administration would call me and say, okay, what should we do? We had a new president. I said, well, go make sure you go visit all of the tribes personally with the president. That will reestablish a relationship that you will have lost with Dave's retirement. And so, you know, they kept on doing that. Well, diversity and inclusion
00:30:47
Speaker
That came through in the 2000s. And the first knee-jerk reaction was to put Native Americans into diversity and inclusion, equity and inclusion. And like I learned when I was working with Ohno Doshoni, there's a certain level of communication that you must maintain.
00:31:16
Speaker
you can't just bump it down because there's a new movement going on or there's a new effort going on. And so, when the tribes were in tribal relationships were moved into diversity, there was a lot of apprehension around that on the tribal side.
00:31:41
Speaker
And so we went through some growing pains here at the U of O while I was in New York. And when they decided to realign, the U of O decided to realign what is now my position, they put it as a direct report to the president. So we changed it back to the way that it used to be and with
00:32:11
Speaker
They brought me in to apply for the job. I got the job. And the good thing was, is that I was already a known quantity.
00:32:22
Speaker
I'm from Oregon. I know Oregon. I knew all the tribal chairs. I, for the most part, knew the tribal councils. People knew me because of my father's reputation. And the funny thing is, is my dad told me when I was going to college as a freshman, he said, don't mess up my name. It's not yours. And you know, here I am coming back to the University of Oregon and he's still saying the same thing. Don't mess up my name. It's not yours.
00:32:50
Speaker
And so I came back to the University of Oregon in this brand new high profile position that was meant to maintain the strong relationships that we had. So for me to be able to come in as a known quantity, it certainly helped the institution regain its footing. But there's always new things that you have to do
00:33:19
Speaker
to make sure that your institution is doing its very best to be inclusive, to show and demonstrate equality and equity. And diversity is so important on college campuses. It's a diverse world out there. And if we're going to train scholars, we should be training them in the context in which they are going to be working in the future.
00:33:48
Speaker
So I understand the importance of diversity. I do not agree with diversity supplanting sovereignty and sovereign domestic relations. And so once we got that part figured out, then it was about removing the cost barrier at the University of Oregon.
00:34:16
Speaker
and trying to find ways to get more native students, those who are our first generation, especially from tribal Oregon reservations and regional reservations onto our campus and to make our campus more appealing than any other campus. That is
Tuition Policies and Native Student Access
00:34:38
Speaker
what university institutions can do under diversity and
00:34:45
Speaker
sovereignty relations. So there's a partnership, but there's also a line that must not be crossed when you are representing the president and working with sovereign domestic nations. Yeah, absolutely. And okay, we're at our second break point, but I definitely want to touch back on this concept of diversity versus sovereignty.
00:35:12
Speaker
when we get back after the break because I think there's often a lot of confusion there and you mentioned that apprehension and I think a lot of times people don't understand where that's coming from. So let's touch back on that here in a moment. So now that we're back from the break, I want to go back like I mentioned before the break and touch back on that diversity versus sovereignty issue and why
00:35:38
Speaker
you know, being lumped in this category of diversity was so uncomfortable. You know, first of all, I don't think they made treaties with diverse on the name as an excuse of under diversity. They made treaties with sovereign domestic nations, tribes, whose lands were dissolved in the process. Diversity is
00:36:08
Speaker
Those types of efforts should include Native Americans, but they should not include government entities. And sometimes we don't see tribes as sovereign domestic governments. We only see them as institutions, see them as one of the protected groups.
00:36:37
Speaker
tribes have much more specific enrollment methods just like any country would have, like the United States. You have to be A, B, and C to become an American citizen. Well, the same thing applies to tribal governments. We have requirements for you to become a citizen of a sovereign domestic nation.
00:37:08
Speaker
In diversity efforts, you can take anybody who checks the box, and that isn't always the way that things should be done. Like I said, I believe Native Americans should be part of diversity efforts, but the governments are to be nurtured through the relationships
00:37:37
Speaker
designed by and in effort of the president of the institution. That's how governments work. And the Honnage is shown here a great example. Tada Daho, Sid Hill, he only meets with one person when it comes to government-to-government regulations. Well, he'll meet with
00:38:01
Speaker
particular tribal chiefs or chairs or government officials, but he meets exclusively with the President of the United States. He knows that his role is not to diminish the seat that he currently sits in. Now, if you apply that to the state of Oregon and to the nine tribes, they too will not diminish the chairs that they hold.
00:38:30
Speaker
in their governments by meeting with people who are in diversity, equity, and inclusion. The relationship has already been established with the president and that's the relationship to be retained. So I do enjoy being part of diversity. The work that I do needs to make sure that there is a very
00:38:56
Speaker
finite line between DEI and sovereignty relation. So let's keep talking about Oregon. And what are some of the efforts that you have really focused on in your time in Oregon? Oh, goodness. You know, I had a whole list of things I wrote on my board when I first came back and increased native faculty on campus.
00:39:24
Speaker
help Chumala get better tuition rates. There's just a number of things that I had. Expand the longhouse, which I haven't got to quite yet. I got to find somebody with $20 million to help me with that. If you're listening and you have $20 million. Yes. I'll put my number in the chat.
00:39:54
Speaker
I think probably my biggest accomplishment has been in tuition equity in each and every one of our treaties that says access to education. And when education, higher education has become so expensive that you can no longer afford it. You end up in situations that many tribes are in, very poverty-stricken and with all of the bad things that go with poverty.
00:40:23
Speaker
We all know that education is the silver bullet out of poverty and that tribes need future stewards to come back to their reservations and to help them rebuild from generational trauma and institutional devastation.
Mentoring and Educational Advocacy
00:40:46
Speaker
meaning that the government put us in these places out of the way where we don't have a chance to have an economy. And so how do you get native students who can't afford to go to college to, you know, if they are truly a scholar and graduate high school, they're already defeated. They already say, well, I can't afford to go to college, so where am I going to go work? There's no work on the reservation, so I have to leave the reservation.
00:41:15
Speaker
And then they rarely return. Tuition, the cost of higher education is extraordinary. It's extraordinary for everybody. But when you and your family only make $10,000 a year, that's a different level of poverty. And some of our reservations here in Oregon are at that very destitute level.
00:41:43
Speaker
So in 1996, we passed the residency by Aboriginal Rite. It gave 43 tribes who had Aboriginal Rite to Oregon, like the Nez Perce and the Wallowa Valley. They definitely are from Oregon, but they're paying out-of-state tuition. So when we passed our tuition effort at that time, Nez Perce were allowed to come to the University of Oregon
00:42:12
Speaker
under in-state tuition rates, a $20,000 to $25,000 discount. One year later, the state of Oregon passed the residency by Aboriginal right, forcing all of the Oregon University system to apply that to their tuition schedule. And so our Native American Advisory Council had immediate impact. Within two years, we had a significant reduction in tuition rates.
00:42:41
Speaker
By 2006 or 2007, we added a few more names to that list. There were some adjustments, some tribes that had been terminated, restored, and were terminated again. We maintained our promise to them and kept them on that in-state tuition list.
00:43:09
Speaker
But by 2015, when I had returned to Oregon, I noticed that Chamala, the oldest running Indian boarding school located in Salem, Oregon, and I had joined the school board at Chamala. Chamala
Closing Remarks and Gratitude
00:43:32
Speaker
School was not built for Oregon Indians.
00:43:36
Speaker
It was built for out-of-state Indians. And if anybody knows about boarding schools, Indian boarding schools, they know that the students were taken from their parents intentionally to separate them from their parents. So the Coquel were sent to Carlisle out in Pennsylvania. And Chamala was largely for Arizona, New Mexico, Montana,
00:44:05
Speaker
Alaska, and the student body still reflected that old determination. So they go to Chamoa for four years, and then they graduate, and they find out, even if they're duck fans or not, they've gone to school for four years here, that because their address is from Arizona, that they have to pay out-of-state tuition. So we at the Oregon Legislature to add
00:44:34
Speaker
Chamawa Indian School graduates all the way back to 1930. If you graduated in 1930, you're eligible for in-state tuition rights as well. So that was another tuition. We're eroding that tuition barrier. Just recently, the Oregon Tribal Student Grant was passed, and I helped author this between Oregon State, Portland State, and the University of Oregon. But the Oregon
00:45:03
Speaker
tribal student grant was just funded and passed and it provides the full cost of attending a institution of higher education in the state of Oregon. And so any tribal member, any tribal citizen from the nine federally recognized tribes in the state of Oregon
00:45:30
Speaker
are eligible to attend and everything is covered. That's amazing. On top of that, the University of Oregon knows, because we've been in the business of trying to nurture and build cohort education, since 1996 at least, that it's a lot more than cost barrier. We offered the Home Flight Scholars Program. The Home Flight Scholars Program
00:45:59
Speaker
allows any citizen of a federally recognized tribe, all 574, as long as they are Oregon residents, can come to the University of Oregon with a tuition waiver. So if you are a citizen of a federally recognized tribe and you are Miami,
00:46:20
Speaker
or you are Navajo, or you are Anandaga, and you live in the state of Oregon, you can come to the University of Oregon and have your tuition waived. But we also know that there are other things that influence the success of Native scholars. Acclamation to the campus, living and learning in a cohort. We have a Native American dorm here,
00:46:47
Speaker
We have the entire fourth floor set aside for American Indian scholars, and they spend their first year, if they want to, their second year, even their third year, they could spend their living with other Native scholars. We also have the Many Nations longhouse. We received a very generous donation
00:47:09
Speaker
And unfortunately, it's never enough. I swear, the native kids that come to the U of O have never been fed before, but we have a pantry, a food pantry. And because it was an add-on to the university, I actually have to fund this. I can't believe how much those kids eat.
00:47:29
Speaker
But they quite literally walk into the longhouse, which is right across from the native dorm. They load their backpacks full of food. They go to class, they come back for lunch, they eat more food, and they just keep doing this. And the pantry, it's always needing to be replenished. And land acknowledgments, University of Oregon knows that land acknowledgments are
00:47:59
Speaker
It's a good first step, but it is not necessarily the final step in acknowledging where the institutions are or who the students are that are on your campus and they need to appreciate where they are going to school and who was there first. The University of Oregon's land acknowledgement was asking the nine federally recognized tribes of Oregon
00:48:27
Speaker
if we could install their flags in the center of campus. So we have Oregon's nine flags flying in the center of campus at the Student Union. About 7,000 students
00:48:45
Speaker
pass by there every single day. But as a native student, when you're coming on to campus here in Eugene, to see the native dorm, to see the longhouse, to be able to access the pantry, to take classes from the Northwest Indian Language Institute, to be part of the teacher education program,
00:49:12
Speaker
And then to walk over and get a cup of coffee at the Student Union and see your tribal flag flying, that is a huge statement that the university has made and an endorsement by the tribes that we truly understand that land acknowledgments, as nice as they are, there still needs to be more action behind those land acknowledgments.
00:49:39
Speaker
So all of those things contribute to making a welcoming campus environment for students who are coming onto campus from very remote locations, very different populations. At least they can see people that look like them. Well, I mean, it sounds like you've done really incredible work so far, but what's next? Like, what's, what's the next thing you want to tackle?
00:50:08
Speaker
Oh, I would like to take a nap for about two or three years. Netflix and chill. That's what I want to do. No, the important part for any native that is contributing to or doing whatever they are supposed to be doing is to make sure that there's somebody that's that follows you. You cannot simply do your job.
00:50:37
Speaker
and then leave. You have to mentor the person that's going to come behind you because, you know, institutions, we tend to change our minds, change our faces frequently. I frequently update the tribal chair list
00:51:01
Speaker
and contactless. And I give it to everybody that we, senior communications, you know, the president's office, make sure that we know when birthdays are, make sure we know, you know, who's recently passed. There's just so many things that you do because you are in a personal relationship as an institution to a tribal government.
00:51:23
Speaker
One of the things that I have to do is to make sure that I am not working in a silo. I am working with other native communities, native faculty and staff, so that the momentum we have won't slow down. There won't be any hiccups like we had in previous years.
00:51:49
Speaker
The tribal councils do not change significantly over time, whereas university presidents come and go, more so than tribal councils change. So you've got to really
00:52:11
Speaker
make sure that the institution knows that we change a lot quicker than tribal councils. The names might change, but they're all related in some way. We're at the end. So I just want to ask as the final question, you know, if there's anything else that you want to share or anything that you wish that I would have asked you? Well, I will say this, and this is for all American Indians that are out there.
00:52:40
Speaker
Every one of us has had ancestors that sacrificed and survived so that we can have the choices that we do today. Now that we have the tuition barrier tore down here at the University of Oregon, the question is no longer can I afford to go to college. The question is where do I go to college? Choose where you are comfortable. That is going to be the biggest difference in your transition.
00:53:08
Speaker
and make sure you take a look at the University of Oregon. I think you've definitely sold it. I can't imagine anyone listening to this not being like, I want to go to the University of Oregon. Also that Rochester Institute of Technology place seems pretty neat too.
00:53:30
Speaker
All right. Well, thank you so much for your time and all of the work that you've done, you know, across your journey. And just really appreciate, again, you taking the time to come back, not just once on this podcast, but twice. So thank you. Thank you, Jessica. I appreciate you guys having me.
00:53:52
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Heritage Voices podcast. You can find show notes at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com slash Heritage Voices. Please subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play Music Store. Also, please share with your friends or write us a review. Sharing and reviewing helps more people find the show and gets the perspectives of Heritage Voices amazing guests out there into the world.
00:54:14
Speaker
No, we just need more of that in anthropology and land management. If you have any more questions, comments, or show suggestions, please reach out to me at Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org. If you'd like to volunteer to be on the show as a guest or even a co-host, reach out to me as well, Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org.
00:54:32
Speaker
You can also follow more of what I'm doing on Facebook at Living Heritage Anthropology and the nonprofit Living Heritage Research Council, or on Twitter at LivingHeritageA. As always, huge thank you to Liable Enqua and Jason Nez for their collaboration on our incredible logo.
00:54:57
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.