American Indian Culture and Research Journal

What barriers do Native American and Alaskan Native students face in higher education? How are these barriers to student success being addressed theoretically and practically? To engage these questions, this special issue of the American Indian Culture and Research Journal seeks to open this dialogue and create a compilation that professors and service providers may use to enhance American Indian studies and other academic curricula. Contributors to this special issue explore a broad range of educational, cultural competence, mental health, advocacy, and efficacy concerns.

Studies on Alaska Natives in higher education draw attention to the need for indigenous-centered analyses that subvert potential erasures of their presence. This essay outlines a "tribalography of presence," an applied theoretical framework that interweaves indigenous knowledge with ethnography, historiography, and cultural theory, and privileges indigenous worldviews, acknowledges a diverse range of inter- and intratribal alliances and differentiations, and advocates for empowerment and healing. Its implications are discussed in part through a brief description and analysis of the "Alaska Native Scholars Project," a work in progress that documents a lineage of Alaska Natives who have earned research doctoral degrees.

This paper explores and analyzes what is done for students in general and for Native American students in particular to (a) support readiness for postsecondary education, (b) increase recruitment and access, (c) improve transitions, and (d) support survival to completion. Recommendations are offered for moving beyond the current fragmented and marginalized approaches in order to develop a comprehensive system of student and learning supports.

This article examines the development of leadership skills among Native American college students through the Oklahoma Native American Students in Higher Education (ONASHE) annual conference. It provides opportunities for students to develop and strengthen their leadership skills through interaction with tribal leaders, contemporary and leadership focused workshops, and fellowship with other Native students. A research study was designed to assess the impact of ONASHE on the development of leadership skills among student attendees of the conference. Three major themes emerged regarding Native student leadership development, including developing a positive self-image, community building, and Native role models.

Americans talk about captions as if they are only for foreign films. The problem with such an assumption is that it lends an illusion that the benefit of captions does not extend past translation. This article examines the extent to which using closed-captioned video material in the college classroom can be a useful universal teaching tool in enabling Native American and Alaskan Native student achievement.

As part of the UCLA university setting, the Tribal Learning Community & Educational Exchange is built into the colonizing narrative and yet aims to address and foster decolonizing narratives. Indeed, as a program it not only exists between that "us-them" barrier but is designed to address that barrier. As the former director, I am aware of its presence between. This article discusses the Tribal Learning Community & Educational Exchange (TLCEE) and how it functions to allow productivity in that space. TLCEE's vision is to make higher education accessible to citizens of Native nations in several ways: on campus, online, and through in-person workshops in the communities.

This essay responds to two questions: What barriers do Native American and Alaska Native students face in higher education? How are these barriers to student success being addressed theoretically and practically? I address these questions with recommendations for a critical pedagogy applied to the classroom, and with a description of learning experiences outside of the classroom that I have found to be engaging and empowering for Native American students.