CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — When Samantha Maltais steps onto Harvard’s campus this fall, she’ll become the first member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe to attend its prestigious law school. It’s a “full-circle moment” for the university and the Martha’s Vineyard tribe, she says.
More than 350 years ago, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, an Aquinnah Wampanoag man, became the first Native American to graduate from the Cambridge, Mass., university — the product of its 1650 charter calling for the education of “English and Indian youth of this country.”
“Coming from a tribal community in its backyard, I’m hyper aware of Harvard’s impact,” said Maltais, the 24-year-old daughter of her tribe’s chairwoman. “It’s a symbol of New England’s colonial past, this tool of assimilation that pushed Native Americans into the background in their own homelands.”
Maltais will arrive on campus at a time when Native American tribes, students and faculty are pushing the Ivy League institution and other colleges to do more for Indigenous communities to atone for past wrongs, much in the way states, municipalities and universities are weighing and, in some cases, already providing reparations for slavery and discrimination against Black people.
In Minnesota, 11 tribes have called on the state university system to return some of the lands taken from tribes, provide tuition waivers to Native American students and increase the number of Native American faculty, among other demands.
Tadd Johnson, the University of Minnesota’s director of tribal relations and a member of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, said the university will establish a “truth and reconciliation” process to document the historical wrongs and determine ways to make amends.
“We’re listening,” he said. “We’re acting on virtually everything that has been thrown at us.”
Meanwhile in Colorado, state lawmakers are weighing legislation to grant in-state tuition to students from certain federally recognized tribes.
Many American universities are a product of the Morrill Act, a law signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 that funded the creation of public colleges through federal land sales. But an investigation by High Country News last year suggested nearly 11 million acres designated for so-called land grant colleges were actually taken from roughly 250 tribes.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology near Harvard, Native American students this past semester dug into the renowned school’s Native American legacy, including how it continues to benefit from its status as one of the nation’s original land grant colleges.
Luke Bastian, a 22-year-old Navajo student from Phoenix, says he and other students presented their class projects to MIT’s president earlier this month as they urge the institution to create a Native American studies program.
University officials say conversations with Native students are ongoing and Bastian is optimistic they’ll make progress. Students have already successfully lobbied for a designated campus space for Native students and convinced MIT to drop Columbus Day in favor of celebrating Indigenous People’s Day, he said.
Some universities have taken laudable steps in recent years to prioritize the needs of Native students, say Indigenous community advocates.
However, during the pandemic, Native students experienced the sharpest college enrollment decline of any racial or ethnic group, as economic hardships, health disparities and the challenges of remote learning in isolated tribal communities forced many students to quit school, said Crazy Bull.
At Harvard, there’s concern that Native students are being asked to take temporary leave from campus due to poor grades at rates higher than those of the overall student population, according to Emily Van Dyke, president of Harvard’s Native American alumni group.
That suggests Native students are struggling to adjust once they arrive on campus, said the 39-year-old Seattle resident and member of the Siksika Nation in Canada. The number of Native students enrolled in the school of more than 6,700 undergraduates has dropped in recent years, from 45 in the 2009-2010 school year to 16 in 2019-2020, according to university data.