Education is the Key to Sovereignty

by Amanda Smiles/For Indigenous Peoples Media Project at POOR Magazine

"Education is the key to sovereignty." Quanah Brightman's words echo in my ear as I pass by a white and blue campaign sign urging me to vote yes on Propositions 94-97, which would allow four of California's largest gaming tribes to add 17,000 new slot machines to their casinos and generate approximately $1.5 billion in new revenue a year. The sign promises that a yes vote would help to protect California's budget and economy, but I wonder who's promising to protect California's native people, especially when DQ University, California's only tribal college, has been closed for the past 3 years due to lack of funding.

DQ University (DQU) was founded in 1971 after a group of Native American's formed an occupation on the land, demanding the federal government hand over the land to be used as a place for higher learning. The government eventually conceded and in 1978 DQU opened the campus as the first and only indigenous-controlled institution of higher learning located outside a reservation. DQU's opening was a landmark event in Native American history, not only because it was indigenous controlled, but also because it opened as a university for all indigenous people, including Chicanos.

I sink back to my childhood, remembering my father, who is half-Lakota, and the words he would speak to me about Native Americans throughout the country. As a child, as I am sure it is for many adults in this country with no connection to indigenous people, the idea of Indian and reservation was an abstract concept. The only way I could grasp the poverty accompanying native people was when my father and I would go yard saleing. There he would urge me to find sweaters and stuffed animals, that we would then pack into boxes which were stored until late fall, when my father would ship them off to "the reservations."

It wasn't until I was 19 and I took a road trip via Greyhound to visit my dad that I witnessed my first reservation. While driving through New Mexico I became alert as we passed by devastated homes, not large enough for whole families, juxtaposed against glittering souvenir shops, selling "authentic" Native American handicrafts, not unlike the ones I remember from my childhood. Once I realized what I was seeing, I grasped that there was a whole other part of America, which is ignored and treated like the Third World. The rest of the trip was a wash of sadness and questioning for me, until I arrived at my father's house and told him what I saw, asked him what could be done, and he replied, "Education."

For more than 25 years, DQ-U operated as an education center accessible to Native people in California and beyond due to it’s affordable tuition and Native-oriented curriculum. Beside graduating many native people who have gone on to work in public, private, and tribal sectors, DQ-U has also served as an important gathering place and meeting ground for cultural and political events, spirituality conferences, ceremonies, concerts, and festivals.

In 2004 DQ-U lost its accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) because it was not a four-year university. This sent the school into financial turmoil, which, combined with the Boards mismanagement of the school, forced DQ-U to close its doors. Unaware of the school's closure, student returned to the school in January of 2004 to begin spring semester. When students became aware of the school's closure they, in the tradition of going full circle, formed an occupation of the school and have occupied the land ever since, demanding the school's reopening.

In the state of California, gaming is the primary financial livelihood for Native American tribes. The gaming industry brings in close to $7 billion a year in revenue for gaming tribes and these tribes are allowed to use the money according to their discretion. Although gaming tribes and the California Nations Indian Gaming Association (CNIGA), the organization that represents and monitors them, claim that money goes into funding education for Native people, many poorer non-gaming tribes disagree. In the case of DQ-U, CNIGA has refused to support the school, leaving the college to fend for itself.

However, gaming tribes have been willing to support California's public universities, where the population of Native students is less than one percent. In 2004 gaming tribe San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, which operates a casino in San Bernardino, gave $4 million to UCLA to support tribal education. Similarly, in the fall of 2004 the tribe gave $3 million to San Bernardino State, which was one of the largest donations by any Native American tribe to a California State campus.

"The question we have as students and former students is why? For my people, the Lakota people, if someone is at your house you offer them a glass of water or something to eat. No one goes hungry in our tribe," says Quanah Brightman, vice president of the United Native Americans (U.N.A.) and former DQU student. "The only way for indigenous people to become sovereign in this nation is for gaming commissions abroad to start giving money to other communities. To become one nation."

Quanah's words remind me, again, of my father. Clippings of my childhood creep back to me, as I recall the period in my life when my dad began to take a leadership role in the Native community in Hawai'i. The house we lived in slowly became occupied by families from various tribes from different parts of the country, who came to stay with us, some for only a few days and others for months.

The adults cooked together and we had our meals as a home, all of us kids played together and people took turns watching us, often our parents would leave without us even noticing, but it always was shifting. When I asked me father about this he simply told me that they needed a place to stay and, "We always take care of our own people, Amanda."