Fall 2021

Indigenous students choose their own paths to college success.

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

The nation’s Indigenous peoples—infinitely varied in their cultures and scattered all across the continent— have at least one thing in common: Essentially, they’re forgotten. Overlooked. Invisible. Whether they live on a faraway reservation, along a suburban street, or in the high-rise condo unit next door, we non-Natives don’t see them. Not really.

Read president’s message from Jamie Merisotis

JASMINE NEOSH AN ENVIRONMENTAL WARRIOR FINDS HER TRAINING GROUND

College of Menominee Nation: An environmental warrior finds her training ground

While in her 20s, Jasmine Neosh immersed herself in Chicago’s art and music scene, often jamming with friends on her uniquely crafted, fretless banjo. But when protests erupted in the northern Plains over the Dakota Access Pipeline, Neosh knew she had a duty—as a Native woman and an environmentalist. Now, at age 32, she’s studying the Earth-friendly ways of her people on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin.

FEATURED STORIES

DINÉ COLLEGE: REVAMPED HIGHER EDUCATION, WITHOUT LEAVING HOME

Diné College psychology student Harley Interpreter spent her freshman year at a large state university, but she was put off by the dominance of white European perspectives on campus. “The Western world approaches everything as if theirs is the only way,” she says. “But we have our own ways.”

MENOMINEE EQUIPS WARRIORS FOR THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE EARTH

Jasmine Neosh had arrived at an inflection point. In the fall of 2016, the Menominee tribal member was waiting tables and tending bar at an upscale Chicago eatery as the protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline grew into a full-blown crisis in the northern Plains.

ALASKA-BORN NATIVE SCHOLAR WORKS TO REORIENT RESEARCH

In the early 2010s, Lisa Dirks was visiting her relatives in Alaska when she noticed an article in the Aleut Corporation newsletter on their dining room table: an item that looked like a research article. As a scholar, researcher, and tribal member, she was curious about its contents, so she picked it up and began reading.

TRISTON BLACK AND HARLEY INTERPRETER

INCORPORATE NAVAJO TRADITION INTO CAREER PATHS

Triston Black and Harley Interpreter, both members of the Navajo Nation are both affiliated with Diné College, the tribal college on reservation land in Tsaile, Arizona. They arrived at Diné along separate paths, but each is committed to helping the Navajo people build a better life—Black as a high school teacher, and Interpreter by improving mental health treatment on the reservation by working to “decolonize” the field of psychology.

Focus author: Suzette Brewer

This issue of Focus was produced by an all-Native team of journalists led by Suzette Brewer, a member of the Cherokee Nation. Read more about her and the team.