President’s Blog Blogs

A message from Cheryl Crazy Bull, President and CEO of the American Indian College Fund. It’s back to school time! Tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) across the country are opening their doors to students as they get ready to start a new semester.

Employees at the University of South Dakota were told to remove tribal affiliations and gender pronouns from email signatures, citing a policy by the Board of Regents. This move lacks support for Native individuals in higher education, according to Cheryl Crazy Bull of the American Indian College Fund, who urges allies to stand with Native faculty and staff by including such details in their signatures.

The Department of Education announced the week of February 5 that schools and agencies involved in financial aid will not receive FAFSA information—which determines student total financial aid offerings – until the first half of March. This will set college applicants behind another two months in their decision-making.

It is not enough to remove mascots publicly. We demand mascots be eliminated permanently on all fronts because mascots, words, and behaviors work to perpetuate old and harmful stereotypes about Indigenous people. Instead, we must celebrate and respect the vibrant role of Indigenous people in both American historical and modern times.

My father passed away in the last of the 1980’s. After he died, my mom gave me some of his books. Among them was The Essentials of United States History (W. Mowry, copyright 1906, 1911, 1914). It is a school textbook, and my father stamped it with the date of 1937. He was a student at Rosebud Boarding School at that time.