College Has Served State’s Indians Through 3 Decades of Adversity

Slowly, in the darkness just before dawn, the small group of young Native Americans crept up to the metal fence surrounding the drab cinder-block Army buildings. The cool November morning in 1970 was foggy, providing even more cover.

On cue, they climbed over, surprising the few soldiers left to guard the defunct communications center. The carefully planned “occupation” had succeeded and, in a symbolic exclamation point, the Native American group pitched a tepee. Outside, Chicano supporters cheered.

Not exactly the way most schools of higher learning begin.

The standoff continued for months, to the chagrin of government officials, the FBI and local residents, who dubbed the fledgling DQ University “Terrorist Tech.”

“We were accused of having guns and training revolutionaries. We were supposedly sending messages overseas to the Soviet Union and China, using the old communications equipment,” said Dave Risling, a Hupa Indian from Humboldt County, a DQU founder and now chairman of its Board of Directors.

Nearly 30 years later, Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl University, California’s only tribal college, survives. Tempers have cooled, replaced by the unglamorous work of building a school from nothing. Few noticed, for example, when the lights went out because DQU could not pay its electric bill.

Named after the founder of the Iroquois federation and an Aztec prophet, the school is mainly a curiosity to passersby on Yolo County 31. But inside the school, located in a few ramshackle buildings on 643 dusty acres in the Sacramento Valley, the struggle continues.

It is an effort with important educational implications for Native Americans, historically among the nation’s poorest performing students. Although the number of American Indians in college has increased, their overall educational attainment remains the lowest of any ethnic group in the United States.

Outside Indian circles, there is growing recognition that DQU and schools like it are critical links in the education chain and vital channels for Indian advancement.

“For many years, this nation failed to address the critical needs of American Indians,” said a 1997 report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. “Today, tribal colleges are offering . . . the chance to build knowledge, skills, confidence and pride in a way not possible for non-Indian institutions to offer.”

Lack of Funds a Perennial Problem

If the dream of Indian self-determination were the sole criterion for survival, DQU’s future would be assured. What the school lacks, and always has, is money--just like the nation’s 30 other tribal colleges, the most poorly funded higher education institutions in America.

The ongoing financial difficulties have pushed DQU to a perpetual existence on the brink, which shows in the inability to pay competitive salaries, its revolving door of instructors and its deteriorating buildings.

“You have to be dedicated to work at DQ,” said the school’s president, Morgan Otis, a longtime Native American studies professor at Sacramento State who took a pay cut to run the college last year.

Although the two-year, accredited school is open to anyone, its primary mission is intertwining tribal culture with traditional community college courses. Students are encouraged to explore their Indian roots in and out of the classroom.

Environmental Issues 301, for example, looks at uranium mining on reservations; Social Science 242 is called Indian interpretation of early U.S. history; and freshman composition, English 101A, requires students to read essays on the Native American and Chicano experiences.

A few hundred yards from the last campus building, up a dirt road, past darting ground squirrels, are the ceremonial grounds. There, students can participate in powwows or gather inside a small canvas sweat lodge on a starry night and pray, enveloped in steam hissing from volcanic rocks heated by a campfire.

The school may “not be glamorous or architecturally beautiful, but DQ has an honesty and is at peace with nature. We’re not going in circles here,” said Karla Valenzuela, a 20-year-old from the nearby town of Dixon who is part of a troupe of Aztec dancers.

For some California Indians, DQU offers the first real taste of traditional Native American ceremonies, a legacy, officials say, of the annihilation of California tribes in the aftermath of the Gold Rush.

At the tail end of most demographic and economic categories, American Indians are on education’s bottom rung. About 85% of California Indians never complete high school, according to a report by the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges Accreditation Commission. More than half of all California Indians above the age of 14 have no formal education beyond the sixth grade. Indian students have a 60% dropout rate between kindergarten and high school.

And although rich gaming tribes have grabbed the spotlight by spending tens of millions of dollars in the fight over casino gambling on tribal lands, the economic reality for most Native Americans is dismal. More than 70% of California’s 300,000 Indians earn less than $3,000 a year, statistics show.

DQU’s students reflect those numbers. A typical DQU student earns less than $1,500 a year and comes from a family with annual household income of $6,000. Not surprisingly, many of DQU’s incoming students are considered academically under-prepared.

“We’re a school of last resort for a lot of our students,” said Rick Heredia, the school’s spokesman.

The school’s small size and informality provide a support system. Classes seldom number more than 15 students. About 45 students live in the dorms, and 40 or so commute from nearby towns. Another 400 students across the state receive DQU-sponsored instruction on their reservations.

“Clearly, we’re a lot more personal here,” said David Childress, who has taught at the college for 15 years, longer than anyone else.

Judging DQU’s success is difficult, and statistics can be misleading. Silva Burley, for example, dropped out twice before finally earning enough credits to transfer in 1997 to Evergreen State College in Washington, where she recently earned a bachelor’s degree in tribal administration.

DQ officials have focused hard on increasing the course completion rates while reducing the number of dropouts. Course completion rates have risen from 20% in 1992 to nearly 70% in 1997, while the dropout rate has decreased from 80% to 20%.

“We’ve added services, emphasized better staff training, brought in new technology, a whole range of things,” said Suresh Tiwari, dean of faculty. “The culture has changed.”

Instructors point to what they see as the steady improvement in the quality of entering students. They are younger, in their early 20s, not early 30s. More have completed high school rather than earning a graduate equivalency diploma.

Vince Wyatt is among the better-known students. A Washoe Indian from Nevada, he has been at DQU for 3 1/2 years. He is the school’s former student body president and, at age 42, one of its oldest pupils. He was among those responsible for resurrecting the sweat lodge.

He considers himself an activist, is suspicious of the Board of Directors and is often at odds with the administration, particularly over the dearth of student activities, the limited facilities and their poor condition.

Despite the problems, Wyatt supports DQU’s mission, its effort to help Indian people. He knows firsthand what can happen without such assistance. As a teenager, he was admitted to UC Davis under a special program for minorities. He soon foundered.

“I didn’t fit in materially or emotionally or spiritually,” he said.

After one semester, he returned to the reservation. Now he plans to graduate from DQU in June and transfer to a four-year college.

“One of the beautiful things about DQ is to . . . come and learn who you are as an indigenous person,” he said. “I’m very optimistic about [the school’s future]. The real DQ will never die.”

Born From UC Davis Ethnic Studies Program

For generations, Indian education consisted of placing youths in Indian boarding schools, but as the 1960s dawned, Native Americans increasingly criticized the practice as “whitewashing.”

“We had young kids in Indian boarding schools,” Risling said, “and when they came out, they didn’t know who they were.”

The seed of DQU first emerged at UC Davis and its fledgling ethnic studies program. When the Army announced it was closing its communications center several miles west of the campus, some of those connected with the Native American and Chicano studies programs asked for the property.

But there was a major competitor: UC Davis, which wanted the land for a primate research facility. The government sided with UC Davis. The Indians protested and, as part of their strategy, decided to occupy the property while they fought the government in court.

After five months of occupation, the university withdrew its claim. DQU opened its doors in 1971; by the end of the decade, it was fully accredited.

As part of its evolution, the school, while still cognizant of its Chicano roots, is now entirely controlled by Native Americans, who make up the entire Board of Directors. The parting was generally amicable, both sides say.

What has not changed is the school’s bleak financial condition. Its $2-million annual budget relies mainly on the federal Tribal College Act, which provides only about two-thirds of the amount California provides state community college students. DQU doesn’t qualify for state funding.

“We don’t have alumni with money,” Risling said. “It takes several generations to get that going. Our graduates get a job and raise families.”

If the school can hang on, the financial future may be brighter. In 2001, the government will give the school full title to the property, giving DQ the freedom, for example, to sell part of the land to raise money.

Until better financial days arrive, however, the school will continue to cling precariously to its special educational niche.

“There really is a place for DQ,” said Childress. “If it survives the next few years, I think it will survive a long time.”