Native American students are rare at Iowa State, and students who are active with the three Native American student organizations are even more scarce.

Tyler Hendershot, a senior in management information systems and president of United Native American Student Association (UNASA), said he has met about 15 Native American students.

His twin sister, Tyra, who graduated last year, helped him become involved with student organizations, he said. Before coming to ISU, he said he was hardly involved in his heritage because he didn’t know very many Native Americans.

Hendershot is half Northern Cheyenne and half Sioux.

He said his parents gave him and his sister up for adoption when they were little because they felt the children would have a better chance outside a reservation, but he added that he isn’t clear on the details.

They were adopted by two non-Indians and grew up in southwest Iowa.

“When you’re little, you never realize you’re different from everyone else. Me and Tyra were the only non-whites,” Hendershot said. “We pretty much viewed ourselves as white since no one really said much about us being red.”

According to the 1995-96 ISU Fact Book, only 0.2 percent of ISU students are of American Indian or Alaskan Native descent, the smallest minority group on campus.

The numbers have been slowly increasing. Rafael Rodriguez, director of Minority Student Affairs, said this fall’s enrollment of Native American undergraduates is 70, up 11 from last fall.

In 1991, according to the fact book, there were only a total of 34 students of American Indian or Alaskan Native descent.

According to the last U.S. Census, less than 4 percent of all American Indians go to college nationwide, Erma White, program assistant for MSA, said. She said that number is substantially increasing.

“I think it’s the school system that fails them,” White said. She said many Native Americans relate similar stories of high school counselors who neglected discussing college options with them.

Hendershot said getting past the first few years of college is the hardest part. “Most Native Americans either transfer out or give up” because of lack of support, he said.

Rodriguez said Native American students are eligible for the same types of programs as other minorities, such as tutor subsidy programs, early success orientation seminars taught by minority upperclassmen, emergency loan programs and new mentoring programs that pair minorities with members of the Ames community or faculty and staff members.

However, there are less than two dozen American Indian faculty and staff members at ISU to provide role models for Native American students, Rodriguez said. Of these, only 10 are faculty members, but most of them don’t “look” Native American.

Standing Alone

The biggest challenge Native American students on campus face, White said, is themselves.

They have to try “to balance their culture with what’s out here in this multicultural atmosphere and maintain their own identity without getting lost,” White said.

Those who already are acculturated don’t face the same problems as students coming from reservations.

“It’s very difficult to leave home,” White said. “It’s a culture shock once you come out from the reservation areas.”

Hendershot said he’s also noticed it is particularly hard for students coming from reservations to stay in school.

Until she was about seven, White lived on a reservation with her family. She said they moved off the reservation because her mother wanted them to interact more with the outside world.

White is from the Winnebago tribe. She applied to ISU to humor a friend and was surprised when she was accepted, she said.

“Mom always had dreams that her children would go to college,” she said. “I was waiting to tell her.” Before she did, however, her mother fell ill and died.

White said her undergraduate years were “fast and furious,” but she had the support of a sister who lived nearby and Misquakee friends who became like a new family.

“I didn’t feel that isolated,” she said.

White is close to finishing her master’s degree, which she began in spring 1988.

Someone to look up to

“What we’re struggling for right now and what we have to have,” Les Whitbeck, interim head of the American Indian Studies program, said, “is an American Indian to permanently serve as head of the program.”

He said there are no full-time, tenure track American Indian faculty assigned to the program.

Whitbeck said the community of Indian students on campus needs leadership.

“Without Native American staff, we’re dead in the water,” Whitbeck said.

He said loneliness is one of the greatest challenges Native American students face on campus.

“Being an American Indian on a large, pretty homogeneous campus, not having their traditions respected or understood, the kind of natural rudeness that whites have,” Whitbeck said of all present hardships to them.

For example, he said the administration sent the students memos about November being Native American month, while most don’t like being associated with Thanksgiving.

Other problems

Those students who are close to their tribes often have responsibilities with ceremonies and other events which require them to go home periodically, White said.

She said most students don’t seem to have much difficulty relaying to their professors or employers that they have to leave for a time, but if they do, she is available to help them.

“Most don’t like talking about personal problems to outside people,” White explained. “When it comes to academics, they know their options but don’t want to open up to try to save themselves.”

High tuition bills are also especially challenging to Native American students, White said.

Hendershot said despite the great cry on campus for diversity, he has seen other minorities putting different groups down and even has heard about a Native American student being beaten by a few white people.

Student Organizations

One mode of support students can turn to are the three student organizations on campus — UNASA, American Indian Rights Organization, and American Indian Science and Engineering Society.

Hendershot said it is important for students to get involved in the groups and find out their ancestry. Students don’t have to look Native American to be Native American, he said.

“If you don’t get involved with one of these groups, you’re not going to get hardly any support,” Hendershot said.

With only about 10 active Native American students trying to shoulder demands from committees, schools and organizations who want speakers, and academics, “it spreads them pretty thin and they go into hiding,” White said.

AIRO has been put on hold for a while because of conflicts and difficulty in keeping people involved, Hendershot said.

Each April, the student organizations plan a symposium celebrating their culture. They bring in speakers and prepare other events for the public.

Hendershot said they are trying to bring back the Powwow part of the symposium this year. Because of time consumption and a lack of commitment, there hasn’t been one for two years.

Periodically, they have dinners for Native American students to meet each other, as well as faculty and staff members.

They also hold tutoring at a Misquakee settlement on Thursdays.

American Indian Studies

Whitbeck said about 200 students take the introductory American Indian Studies course each semester.

Only about 20 students are minoring in American Indian Studies, he said, primarily including students “who have a real interest in American Indians” and want to work in a social service area or teaching where they might interact with American Indians.

While Native American students on campus help a bit with the courses in the program, most of them don’t minor because “they already know it better than we do,” Whitbeck said.

Whitbeck said a special American Indian Studies course this semester will take students to different reservations to talk to tribal and spiritual leaders, and to see how contemporary Indians live. They will also read about each of the nations that have historical ties to Iowa.

Identification and money

The Native American Advisory Counsel, composed of members from some local tribes and Maria Pearson, adviser to Governor Terry Branstad, meets annually to discuss programs and initiatives to better establish relations between the university and Native Americans, Whitbeck said.

In an effort to attract more Native American students to Iowa, the Board of Regents recently passed a provision to give American Indian students, who are members of one of 11 tribes traditionally linked to Iowa, in-state tuition.

“That was, I think, a big, major change for the Board of Regents,” Rodriguez said. However, he said he doesn’t know how soon it will be implemented because a portion of the Iowa code needs to be changed.

Rodriguez said issues exist concerning how students must prove their heritage to qualify.

He said some colleges simply have students self-identify themselves, while others require forms.