The University of Wyoming Native American Education Research and Cultural Center is one of UW’s newest physical additions but the ties the university has to Wyoming’s Native American culture go back years in UW’s Multicultural Studies history.
The primary goal of UW’s Native American Center is to provide academic, social and cultural support to the Native American students on campus and their communities while making the study of Native American cultures a foundation.
“‘The Keepers of the Fire,’ our cultural outreach group and ‘The American Indian Studies Alliance,’ our academic support group, are our two main groups focusing contact and interaction with our students,” Reinette Redbird Tendore, UW graduate and new Native American Program adviser under the Dean of Students Office, said. “The Keepers of the Fire meeting, where we really focus on social and cultural support while we share dinner together, has grown from around eight students when we started, to about 20 students now.”
Part of building an educational program is recruiting students to be the backbone of the academic research and process. Much of the Native American Resource Center’s resources go to communicating educational and cultural goals to the communities around Wyoming where many current students are from. Tendore and UW students involved with the center regularly travel to traditionally American Indian communities and schools in Wyoming to present college recruits with strategies for success.
“Right now the Native American Summer Institute is our focus going into the spring,” Tendore said. “We’re in real need of educational and cultural mentors so we need students, preferably Native American students, or those pursuing education majors, to apply for those positions.”
The realities of leaving a closely-knit family and community support structure for the unknowns of university life are daunting for any student. One of the biggest challenges that Native American students face while attending college is the culture shock.
“Coming to the University of Wyoming from a small town was and still can be difficult,” UW Ecology major Ryan Hunter said. “Life as a college student away from home is very different than having all that encouragement from friends and family immediately.”
UW’s Keepers of the Fire is every Tuesday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Native American Resource Center on the corner of 10th Street and Ivinson Street. The meeting is designed to be a cultural and social touchstone for Native American students. The group meets to share their experiences from academic and social activities and create solutions and strategies for their own studies, but also for future Native American students.
“The Native American Studies program is why I’m at the University of Wyoming,” UW junior and Secondary Education History major Eric Bennett said. “We’re a communally centered culture so having this Native American Research Center at UW, a place for a culture to practice its traditions as well as evolve as an academic field, is so important to changing the perception about Native American culture both from within and without.”
Bennett also brought his sister to Laramie to attend high school while he goes to college. He hopes that his work and efforts will rub off on his sister and said that their relationship is representative of other native students sharing their college experience with younger generations.
“Having different Native Americans represented from across the nation really puts a new focus on how our culture sees academics as historically significant and how we as students can take what we gain at a college level, back to help our communities,” Bennett said.
UW Native American students and UW Education majors are asked to apply for the Native American Summer Institute soon. More information is available by contacting the UW Native American Research and Cultural Center through their institutional E-mail: aist@uwyo.edu.
