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Program to Develop Culturally Relevant Science Programming to Benefit Tribal Communities and Lands in Northern Great Plains States Denver, Colo.—August 5, 2021–The American Indian College Fund’s Obdaya Opta Tate Kin Kah’Boke (Winds Blowing Across the Prairie) project...

Computer science education provides today’s college students the necessary skills and opportunities to thrive in today’s world. Yet American Indian and Alaska Native peoples are still and have been historically underrepresented in the computer science fields. To remedy that, the American Indian College Fund launched its Tribal College and University Computer Science Initiative to create new and expand existing computer science programs at higher education institutions serving American Indian and Alaska Native students to meet the community and workforce needs of Indigenous communities and to provide career opportunities for Native students in computer science fields.

The College Fund learned the MacKenzie Scott Foundation, headed by the billionaire novelist and philanthropist of the same name and her husband Dan Jewett, selected it to receive an unrestricted gift. Cheryl Crazy Bull, President and CEO of the American Indian College Fund said, “This gift is timely and pivotal because, in combination with the generosity of our network of current and future supporters, we now have the capacity to grow greater opportunities for American Indian and Alaska Native communities and to create lasting change. MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett’s acknowledgement of our work is a testament to the important role of education to transform the lives of our students, their families, and communities.”

The College Fund is committed to eliminating the college attainment gap among Indigenous people and continues to appreciate and rely upon the support of every one of its current and future supporters to meet its goals to transform the lives of Indigenous students, their families, and their communities through a higher education.

June 8, 2021, Denver, Colo.—The discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of 215 Indigenous children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada has, once again, ignited the trauma of Indigenous people across North America.