Staff Directory

Message From the Director.

In the past 40 years or so, Indians have largely taken over the management of our own affairs. In the process, we have created numerous regional and national non-profit organizations to help us address particular issues. No doubt you have heard from many of us seeking your support. It may seem to you, as it does to me, that Indian non-profits never go away, even those that can rightly claim to have accomplished all that they originally set out to do. Too often, the vital missions of these organizations become secondary to the survival of the organizations themselves.

That is not the case for the American Indian Graduate Center. The American Indian Graduate Center was founded nearly 40 years ago with a single, clear educational mission: to provide resources to help Indian and Native students attending graduate schools to succeed in their quest for advanced degrees from the nation’s colleges and universities. The AIGC has admirably kept its focus on this important mission, and while I am associated with the AIGC, it will continue to do so.

That means that the AIGC’s principal purpose is to raise funds from as many sources as possible to provide as much assistance as possible to Indian and Native students to enter and successfully complete their graduate studies.  We will continue to seek higher federal appropriations for this purpose; foundations and corporations will also be solicited; the growing power of our alumni and other Indian and Native people who are well established in their fields will be tapped.  And, of great importance, the tribes themselves will be asked to contribute.

An important consideration to be kept in mind as tribes enjoy increasing success in gaming and other ventures is what they do with their profits.  And the degree to which tribal money is devoted to things like Indian education – supplementing federal efforts where necessary - will be one of the things that is noticed, as political pressure builds up to reexamine various aspects of tribal participation in the national economy.  And we must not forget that, because of the structure of the BIA/BIE budget process, there will never be a time when national programs like the AIGC will be adequately funded by the federal government.  The average unmet need for AIGC-funded students is around $19,000 PER YEAR!

Those tribes that have enjoyed the sudden prosperity of large gaming enterprises have done an admirable and generous job of making educational opportunities available to their own members. I believe that those tribes that can afford to do it should also be helping Indian and Native students of other tribes, as well. This is not just because generosity is a part of most Indian and Native philosophies, but also because it is in each tribe’s best interest to have a large, dedicated, and well-trained corps of Indian and Native professionals to call upon.

I don’t know of any tribe that staffs its government and its businesses solely with members of the tribe. On the other hand, I know of many tribes that employ many Indian people from other tribes, often in positions of great importance and authority. I’ve no doubt that many of these employees, especially those with graduate degrees, have benefited from the AIGC’s scholarship program. As tribal affairs grow more complex in the future, tribes will need even more engineers, teachers, doctors, hydrologists, lawyers, biologists, business administrators, and accountants. Wouldn’t it be great if these new tribal professionals were Indians? That’s why I hope that every tribe will support not only their own graduate students, but all Indian graduate students.

Finally, it is well within our mission to examine the larger context of Indian education, to find out why the high school dropout rate is so high in this era of great opportunity for young people.  Why do so many of our young people fail to finish college; why so few continue to graduate school?  It is incumbent on the AIGC to know all we can about this so-called pipeline and why there are so few Indian and Native students in it.  So we will be looking and asking questions about where our future grad students are going to come from, and who is failing to prepare them.  After 36 years of running the American Indian Law Center and its hugely successful Pre-Law Summer Institute, I know that Indian students can work hard and produce at a very high level. When we demand excellence from our students and provide the support they need to compete with other elite students, they deliver. 90% of the students who attend the PLSI and go on to law school eventually finish with a law degree, beating the national average for law schools by nearly 20%.  I want that same enthusiasm and confidence to permeate the lives of every young Indian and Native kid from Headstart on.

It is obvious that education is a key part of enabling us as societies to realize the benefits of self-determination.  We at the AIGC are not responsible for preserving cultures, developing economies or doing any of the other macro things that Indian and Native societies must do in order to survive.  Nor is it our job to tell students what moral imperatives they should take into account as they decide what to do with their lives.  Those issues, cultural, political and personal, are far beyond our competence.  We can, however, continually improve the chances of young Indian and Native people being able to make those choices for themselves with as much freedom as possible and to develop their individual potential in the process. We intend to do just that. And if history is any guide, we know that the vast majority of these talented, hard-working students will serve in Indian communities and contribute importantly to the future of the tribes.

Sam Deloria, Director (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe)
American Indian Graduate Center