The DU While Native project is a five part series, explaining the unique situation Indigenous students are in by attending DU, considering the institution’s history in the Sand Creek Massacre; highlighting the struggles these students face on campus and on their journey through higher education; telling stories of their resistance and survival on campus and more. It serves as a space in which Native students at DU can tell their own stories—stories often shared by many Native students around the country. It serves to educate those outside of the community and give insight to the devastating national statistics about the retention of Indigenous students in higher education. Some students have chosen to use pen names to protect their safety on campus. If you have any questions or comments, please send them to duwhilenative@gmail.com.
Every Native student, or student of color for that matter, has the story. It’s often referred to in our communities as “that story” or “the story.” We have many stories throughout our time in higher education, but this one is the first story: the first time a marginalized student can recall realizing that they were not supported by their university in the ways that they needed, when they realized they were misunderstood as a student of color at a predominately white institution (PWI) or when they realized their experience in higher education would be drastically different than that of their white peers. We all have that story.
My story happened the first quarter of my freshman year. Before entering DU, I decided to join the DU’s Social Justice Living and Learning Community (SJLLC), a program for freshmen in which 22 incoming students are able to take a year-long social justice oriented class and live together in a dedicated hall for the LLC, creating a community committed to social equity. I remember thinking that by joining this community, I would meet like-minded students who had similar passions to myself, and I was thrilled to find out that I had been accepted into the program.
Within the first few weeks, however, we had a class centered around the topic of affirmative action in higher education, which turned into a wider discussion about race. I started the class feeling excited, since racial justice was my own personal passion, but by the end of the class I felt disappointed and isolated. At least half the class was opposed to affirmative action policies and believed that the U.S. was “post-racial,” so race need not be considered in universities’ application process.
I remember frustratedly explaining my stance on the issue, stating that the groups that affirmative action seeks to help are often the most restricted from access to education due to systemic barriers. I was then shut down because of my Indigenous identity, which led to a feeling of shock and disappointment. One student responded, “Well of course you think that, you benefit from it. Don’t Native Americans get free tuition?” I had to quickly overcome my shock in order to explain that was not the case, to which the student simply shrugged.
These types of stories are shared by all Native students—ones that include the feeling of absolute shock when a fellow student on campus spews out a ludicrous myth about the Indigenous community, and then feeling deeply misunderstood and isolated. There isn’t one Indigenous student who can’t pinpoint the first microaggression they’ve faced on campus. These encounters and more are what shape their higher education experience, making their journey at college a daily struggle.
Why Native students choose the path of academia
The journey of higher education for Indigenous students at DU first starts with their choice to go to college. Many students state that the reason why they choose to go to college is not only because their family encouraged them to choose higher education as a path but because they want to make a difference in their communities.
Raelene Woody, a third-year Diné student, said, “I chose to go to college because I saw that there was a lack of Indigenous scholars, and I’m a first generation student so my family really put pressure on me to go. And I really wanted to give back to my community, especially after all that they’ve given me and how much they’ve cared for me and helped me grow.”
She continued, “So, I really want to go back and see if I can implement change through my degree and education, especially since there are so many problems on the reservation, like alcoholism, historical trauma—and a lot of that comes from systemic oppression and a bunch of policies that were designed to eliminate Native people. But I feel like, as a scholar, I can help change that and help my people grow.” Raelene specifically hopes to work in public health to address health concerns in her community.
N. Rose, a second-year Diné student, said she chose to go to college because of both pressure from her family and knowledge that getting a degree was the best way to create change in her community. “Ever since a young age people, everyone around me told me that education is important, and if you want to do something and make life better for the tribe as a whole, something you can do is go out and get a degree and use it to do something that benefits everyone. So that was something I always wanted to do. There was never a doubt in my mind about going to college.”
As to why Native students chose to come to DU, many students say that they heard about the school from friends, family or recruiters who come into their communities, but the reason why they eventually choose to go to the school is because of the scholarship money they received.
Raelene said she found out about DU because she knew a student whose family was friends with hers. So when her high school class came to visit the campus and her friend gave her a tour of the school, she decided to apply as her last option. Though she got into schools that were higher on her list of schools of choice, she decided to go to DU because they gave her the most funding. She is the recipient of the Native American Community Scholarship, which covers the full tuition cost of the university.
T. Lovely, a first-year student from the Laguna Pueblo nation in New Mexico, said she found out about DU from a college-access program called College Horizons. One of her mentors in the program was someone who worked at the university, but she didn’t think of DU as an option because she thought she would only be able to afford schools in her home state of New Mexico. It wasn’t until she had been awarded the Davis Scholarship, a scholarship that pays the full cost of college attendance for college-ready, first-generation students from New Mexico, that she began to look at schools out of state. She said, “I chose Denver because of that scholarship and because it was still close to home so I could travel back and forth.”
The shock of DU’s culture
While Indigenous students make the choice to come to DU, they often feel shocked by the culture that they are confronted with when they arrive on campus.
Alexis White Hat, a second-year Lakota and Diné student from the Rosebud reservation, said that the transition of coming from a reservation to an urban, white-dominated space was difficult. She said, “Coming from the reservation was a big culture shock, especially coming to DU, because when we moved in, everyone was bringing in these flat screens [TVs] and furniture, and I was like, ‘what?’ And I was used to seeing Natives around, and all of a sudden I was the only Native around. Some of my experiences are, I’d be in class, and I’d look around and I’d be the only minority in class. Or whenever I would talk to people, they’d be like, ‘Oh, you’re Native? Do you still live in teepees?’ and stuff like that.”
Raelene described her shock when she arrived to campus after having attended an all-Native boarding school, “There was a sense of community [at the Indian Boarding School], and here everything was individualistic and I wasn’t used to it. So, there was just a lot of adjustment issues, as well as things going on at home that I couldn’t necessarily just go back to.”
Having culture shock due to not being in a space that is predominantly Native is an experience unique to Indigenous students living on or close to their reservations. Native students from urban areas, commonly referred to in our community as “Urban Indians,” might have different experiences.
Salma Ramires Muro, a fourth-year Chicana-Indigenous student from the Apache tribe who has lived in Los Angeles and Denver for the entirety of her life, spoke to this issue, “From what I’ve seen over the years, I do think that there is a distinct difference in how students from reservations are treated, and also in how they are affected by the area, as opposed to Urban Indians. We were already exposed to some of this very, very saturated racism and micro-racisms, and we’re used to it by now. It’s not a good thing, but it has made our skin thicker. In that sense, we’re somewhat more prepared for it compared to students from the reservation who have been around people like them for the majority of their lives. It’s a huge culture shock to have to see someone who’s not like you and then them tell you that you don’t belong.”
But even for Native students from urban areas, they still describe DU’s culture as shocking. Salma explained that even though she has lived in Denver for over ten years, she was still shocked by DU’s lack of diversity because it wasn’t representative of the community in Denver she grew up in. She said that it was isolating being one of the only students of color, and that she sometimes feels like a “quota kid”—someone the university only let in because they needed more diversity.
Salma isn’t the only student who was shocked by DU’s lack of diversity on campus. L. Rose, a second-year Lakota student, said she was “extremely shocked” by the lack of diversity on campus, “It’s more than just coming from a reservation and growing up where half the people you know are Native, it’s just that… going to the city, you expect to see a lot of diversity because it’s a city and it’s very, very big, and I get that DU is a private school, but even with all the alliances and the fact that they claim to have diversity, they still lack in a lot of areas.”
Indigenous students coming to DU weren’t just shocked by the lack of diversity on campus, but by the fact that the institution has rooted itself in an identity seemingly celebratory of settler colonialism and westward expansion. DU’s old mascot, Boone, named after Daniel Boone who murdered thousands of Indigenous people in the Shawnee tribe, as well as their Boone-inspired nickname, the “Pioneers,” leave Native students with a reminder of the genocide their ancestors faced and the colonization of their land, culture and people.
“I think it’s [the ‘Pioneer’ nickname] so problematic, it’s offensive, it’s all types of things,” Raelene said. “I didn’t really know that DU referred to its students as ‘Pioneers’ until I came here. They don’t mention anything like that in their acceptance letters, and so, when I came here I got my ID card and it was just so..ugly. There’s no other word I can use to describe it right now. I really didn’t like it.”
She went on to discuss how the nickname affects Native students, “I think it definitely impacts Indigenous students’ experiences in a negative way from what I’ve seen. It brings up an association to a very whitewashed history. I think DU tries to say it has a positive connotation, but really, to Indigenous students, to people of color, to women, it might have an entirely negative connotation. It means something entirely different because of DU’s history and its role in the Sand Creek Massacre, and as well as John Evans’s role in, quote, ‘pioneering’ the West..I think that term and DU’s history makes it harder for students to feel welcome.”
Unlike Raelene, L. Swift was aware of DU’s nickname, but didn’t come to dislike it until she was on campus and experienced how ingrained the term ‘Pioneer’ was in DU’s culture. She said, “At first, I didn’t really care about the term ‘Pioneer’ when I was looking up DU. I heard ‘Pioneer,’ and I was like, ‘oh, that’s a weird nickname,’ but I didn’t really think much of it because I didn’t really care about sports and all. But coming here and seeing how idolized Boone is and how some DU students really do take the term ‘Pioneer’ to heart, I’m against it now.”
Struggling at a PWI
The shock of coming to DU leads to a sense of isolation, regret and even depression for many Native students. These feelings often come with thoughts of transferring or dropping out of DU.
Raelene was the only Native student in her class to enter DU, and she explains the experience as one that was really difficult for her. She said it was the Native community on campus that encouraged her to stay, “It was really hard. I almost dropped out after my first quarter, but I think what kept me here was older students who were still here, and of course, Viki. I think she really helped. I was always in Viki’s office crying. I really didn’t like it here, especially because I had nobody that I could relate to that was my age. I didn’t really have friends [my age].”
Being the only Native student in her class affected her mental health, Raelene explained. And though it didn’t hinder her academic performance, it made it difficult for her emotionally and mentally. “I was very depressed. I sometimes just laid in bed for the whole weekend. I didn’t do anything. It was really hard to relate to anybody besides the couple of Native students that were here, and again, they were like, two years older than me at the time,” she said.
Many Native students speak about experiencing extreme homesickness during their time at DU, and how that contributes to their struggles at the university. Students from reservations have a deep connection with their homes and cultures, so being away can be more difficult for them than for other students.
As well as the culture shock and homesickness Native students experience at DU, they also tell stories of times they have faced “microaggressions.” Microaggressions is the word commonly used to describe marginalized groups’ experiences with subtle or unintentional statements, incidents or other forms of discrimination, and is something Indigenous students say they have to navigate regularly while attending DU.
“So, it was literally my first day,” Alexis said, beginning to tell her first story, similar to my own, “we were on a retreat for 1GenU , and T. Lovely and I told our stories of growing up on reservations, and this guy came up to us and said, ‘Yeah, I’ve been to the Apache reservation and helped them build houses. You guys are pretty cool people.’ and I was like… we didn’t really say anything, cause we were like, ‘what?’ And then the first day of Orientation Week, someone sat down next to us and was like, ‘So you guys are Native right? Do you live in teepees?’ and I was like, ‘Um, no, we live in houses like everybody else.’”
T. Lovely, who is Alexis’s roommate, also spoke about microaggressions that took place on the floor of their dorm, in which students would ask about the community’s “gambling problems.” She said, “It’s like, I know a lot of the times people aren’t trying to be rude, but for me, it’s a lot of trying to educate people and put them in their place.”
As well as experiencing microaggressions, Indigenous students, especially upperclassmen, report that they do not feel supported by DU’s administration or the institution as a whole.
Salma said there were times that she didn’t feel supported by the university, but the moment when she really felt as though the institution did not care about Native students or other marginalized students was when she attended one of DU’s Board of Trustees meetings this Winter Quarter. “[The meeting was] about ten or so trustees who were invited to hear first-generation students’ opinions, so myself and another peer went to that, and we were the only two Native/Indigenous students there… I saw the dishonesty there, I saw the distinct lack of caring from our Board of Trustees. Hell, one of them actually said she knew everything that has been happening [on campus] detail by detail and she just shrugged her shoulders when asked why she didn’t do anything.”
Even the first-year Native students at DU question whether or not the university cares for their wellbeing. Alexis said, “I think they put up a front that they care about how we are and how we feel, but honestly, just within the first quarter and the first couple weeks of my second quarter, I haven’t seen any support.”
Native students’ resilience at DU is a story of hope
Though Native students’ journey at DU is difficult, they still find ways to survive and thrive on campus. While this may seem like a story of sorrow and gloom, it’s the opposite: it’s a story of resilience. Many Indigenous students at DU express the desire to drop out and return home, but every student within the last four years has stayed at the university, despite all the reasons they have to leave. Many times, it’s because they feel a responsibility to something greater than themselves.
T. Lovely spoke about her duty to her family, “I’ll be honest, I really wanted to leave this place, because it was pretty bad during my first quarter, but the more I thought about it… I have a niece back home, and I think she was the main motivation. ‘Cause, I’ll be honest, I didn’t have the heart to tell my sister I wanted to come home, but before I could tell her that she said that my niece really looks up to me and she wants to be like me, and it’s like… I can’t leave, I can’t give up.”
N. Rose said that her family motivates her to stay in college, as well. “What motivates me to stay at DU is my family. I have an older sister who went to college, too, but she dropped out. It was really hard for her to be in that environment and to deal with, so she dropped out. So I’ve gotten the furthest in college. Which is cool, but at the same time, it’s really stressful, because everyone’s looking to me. And I was always a good student, so everyone is like, ‘She’s going to do it, she’s going to be fine. She’s fine. There’s nothing wrong.’ Which is kind of a lot of pressure. But I do want to be that example for my younger sisters, and for my cousins and for my entire family. And to be the first one to graduate from college would be a really cool thing to do.”
She continued to say that she recognizes that college is also important for herself, “So that motivates me when things are really hard to deal with, as well as the thought of what I want to do after this. This is a stepping stone for me. I need to do this so that I can go and do what I want to do, and do things my way, and make the best choices for myself, my family and my community.”
For Raelene, what keeps her at DU is the students that will come after her. She said, “I don’t want them to have the same experience I did. I don’t want them to feel the way I did — to not feel like they aren’t good enough, to not have to isolate themselves… I want them to feel welcomed here. I want them to feel like they’re cared about, that they’re valued and appreciated. And so I stay because of the youth. I want to change things here at DU so that Native students can come here and enjoy their time here. There’s a thing that Lyla June always says, and it’s that, if you don’t have anything to live for you live for the youth, and I feel like I am a person who lives by that. Everything that I do is for the students and for the youth in our communities.”
At an institution where Native students feel isolated, unheard and disserved, and whose existence was founded on the genocide of their ancestors, surviving is an everyday act of resistance. There’s honor and hope in that. In the next piece, how Indigenous students survive and resist on campus will be examined.
