Virginia Myers, a third-year American Indian student at UCLA,
grew up in a home with no electricity or telephones and spent the
first nine years of her education in a three-classroom schoolhouse
on a reservation along the Klamath River in Northern
California.
When she moved to high school, she became one of 265 students
who were mostly Yurok/Karuk and Hoopa. Of her graduating class, she
was one of only a few to go on to a university.
American Indians make up the smallest group of underrepresented
minorities at UCLA ““ over the past five years, the number of
American Indians in the freshman class has hovered between 10 and
19, out of classes of more than 4,000. Out of the 12,094 students
who were admitted from the incoming class of 2006, 48 were American
Indian.
And this is not an issue unique to UCLA alone. In 2001, a total
of 269 American Indians were admitted to the University of
California, in a year the UC admitted 55,242 students.
One reason for the low attendance of American Indians in higher
education institutions is that these students are not receiving the
same resources as other college-bound students, Myers said.
“There is not the same investment in American Indian
education,” she said.
But some American Indian students said there are also structural
factors to explain why such a small portion of the student body is
American Indian, pointing to an emphasis on knowledge not taught at
many universities.
Katya Adachi, a fourth-year molecular, cellular and
developmental biology student, said American Indian students are
not getting the monetary support needed to attend college or the
support on the path to higher education.
With a lack of college preparation classes, practice exams or
counsellors, students are not made to feel that college is an
attainable goal, Adachi said.
“They’re never told that (college) is what you
do,” she said.
And because students are not expected to move on to
universities, Myers said teachers often do not set high standards
in the classroom.
Upon coming to UCLA, Myers found that she had not read the same
books in classes or been given the same quality of education as her
peers. She found herself unprepared for the challenges of
college.
In addition to being unprepared, Myers said American Indian
students often find the type of education universities offer
inapplicable to their own lives.
In coming to universities, students leave behind an intensely
family- and community-oriented culture that some feel universities
do not understand.
For Myers, the decision to leave home was difficult because it
meant leaving traditions behind. Coming to UCLA meant giving up
precious time she could have spent with her elders, particularly
her 90-year-old grandmother.
Myers said she considers the knowledge of ceremonies, language
and healing techniques her grandmother possesses as important to
her education as what she can learn at UCLA.
“I constantly ask myself, “˜Is this education (at
UCLA) relevant?'” she said.
Some of the reluctance on the part of American Indian students
to apply to college is related to a historic resistance to
Westernized education within.
Myers said the forced removal of American Indian children from
their native lands to boarding schools in the 1800s and 1900s
created mistrust in American schooling.
Children were forced to cut their hair, stop speaking their own
languages, and forbidden to practice their religion.
The slogan was “kill the Indian, save the man,”
Myers said. As a result, there has not been much encouragement from
within the community for students to seek out higher education.
Community views toward Western education, however, are changing,
and in the last five to 10 years, Myers has felt a change within
her own community.
Parents are realizing the importance of a higher education and
students are seeing how they can use their education to help their
communities, she said.
Theresa Stuart, a fourth-year American Indian studies student,
said family support is the main reason she has been able to be
successful in school.
For Stuart, her family’s constant presence and involvement
in her activities gave her the confidence she needed to come to
college.
“They gave me that moral support,” she said.
“They pushed me to strive for more.”