Native Americans at Brown: An Elusive Goal- by John Crouch

Native Americans at Brown: An Elusive Goal

By John Crouch, Attorney at Law, Crouch & Crouch, Arlington, Virginia; (703) 528-6700;
Brown Daily Herald , Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island (U.S.)
Other Crouch Articles

As Native Americans at Brown's founder graduates, the two year-old group remains active and has slowly come to define itself around a single purpose: getting Native students to Brown. To emphasize that its name reflects a goal, more than a reality, the group has unofficially renamed itself "Native Americans at Brown?"

Next semester, N.A.B. plans to bring teenagers from the nearby Naragansett, Mashpee or Wampanoag communities to tour Brown, hoping to give them a better idea of what goes on here, and what it takes to get into a good school. Member Leise Thomason '92 plans to spend winter break visiting reservation schools throughout Arizona, enouraging students to apply, and the group will send information to Native American applicants.

Members are also planning a G.I.S.P. for next semester on "Native Americans in Education," which will, among other things, study how to make colleges like Brown "more conducive." The group continues to encourage professors to include more Native American subject matter in the curriculum, and to help publicize native-related lectures. To raise money for a "Cultural Week" this spring, they have been selling Navajo crafts in the Post Office. Thomason said that by buying direct from the artists, they have given them a better deal while keeping prices low.

The group has put two nationwide native-related bulletin boards on the mainframe at the C.I.T. Native-Net disusses concerns of aboriginal people in this and other Continents, while Numkena created ACIS-Net for other Natives studying science and engineering.

Native Americans are by far the country's poorest, least-mobile race. Ted Crowell '93.5 claims that if anyone at Brown can be called "third-world," then Native America is "fourth-world." Since most Native students are in the Southwestern or Plains states, very few attend colleges on the coasts, but even fewer return to the reservations. Brown's admissions office would like more Natives to apply, but Numkena doubts that many people know "where to find them," since Indian schools tend to be in remote rural areas.

There are also growing numbers of American Indians in many cities, including Providence, where the Rhode Island Indian Council assists people from all over the nation - even Aleuts! N.A.B. members occasionally volunteer at Council events.

Closing the gap between Brown and Native Americans is a frustratingly double-edged struggle. Members want more Native students to be ready and willing to come to Brown, but they also question whether Brown is ready for them. "Everybody expects them to be wearing a war bonnet," complains Leise Thomason '92. "You have to build up an understanding." Numkena suspects that the Admissions office, and even the Third World Coalition, are "completely clueless" about how most Native Americans live and what problems they face.

The group has been slow to rectify the Brown community's misconeptions, mostly because it is small and represents a part of the population that is barely here. There are rarely enough members who feel they have the knowledge, or the time, to represent the group in the Third World Coalition or at the Admissions office. Jason Isaacs '92 lamented that some programs were hard for N.A.B. to work with simply because they were so "bureaucratic."

While few Brown students are very typical of the races they represent, members of N.A.B. are overwhelmingly likely to occupy the ambiguous fringes of various identities. Numkena is Navajo, Hopi, and Karok, but grew up as a virtual foreigner on the White Mountain Apache reservation. He often notes that "Native Americans at Brown is a misnomer." The constantly shifting membership includes people of various races who are part American Indian, graduate students who study Natives, Anthropology concentrators, R.I.S.D. students, and other students interested in Native issues.

Limits must sometimes be set, however, though no one feels justified being the one to assert them. At a lecture by Navajo artist Don Whitesinger of R.I.S.D., a young white man claimed to be Native because "anyone can be a Native American if they live in harmony with the earth." Whitesinger replied that Native Americans were not just a lifestyle, but real twentieth-century people, many of whom have twentieth-century problems.

This is the principal message N.A.B. wants to convey, although it also encourages interest in Native history and art. Presently, they try to represent the interests of people who "have no voice" at or around Brown. As Healan Daston '94 put it, they hope that their group can make itself merely "transitional," giving way to a Native American community that "will grow here."