Perspective | Few American Indians find home at Penn

Remember that tried-and-true line from admissions officers, "If you have two people and a common interest, then you can start a group at Penn"?

Well, that's literally the case for Six Directions, Penn's sole group for students of American Indian descent.

The two-person group focuses primarily on working with the admissions office to improve recruitment efforts, said College sophomore Megan Red Shirt- Shaw, who became co-president of the group at the start of the semester.

"We had four active members, and two of them just graduated," she said.

"There are two or three more undergrads who I've seen at meetings," said College junior Paul Garr, the group's other active member and co-president.

Red Shirt-Shaw was quick to point out that there are a few more American Indian students on campus. "We just don't know where they are," she said.

The group was co-founded in 1994 by alumna Desiree Martinez with the aim of raising awareness of American Indians on Penn's campus.

The name, according to Red Shirt-Shaw, was inspired by another organization Martinez knew of, called "Four Directions," referring to the compass directions: north, east, west and south. Martinez had heard that some tribes also included the earth and sky in the directions, and "Six Directions" was born.

In December, Red Shirt-Shaw went to the Lakota Nation Invitational, a basketball tournament and celebration of Lakota culture in Rapid City, S.D., and set up a table for Penn. Though she got about ten students' names, the process wasn't easy.

"It's definitely hard to talk to students from South Dakota who have no concept of where Pennsylvania even is," she said.

Mixed experiences on campus

For Red Shirt-Shaw, whose mother is a full-blood Lakota Sioux from South Dakota, parts of her experience as a American Indian student at Penn have been "frustrating," most of which stem out of ignorance of native culture, she said.

For example, adding her mother's maiden name - "Red Shirt" - to her Facebook profile prompted all sorts of "offensive" questions, she said. "Is it because you're wearing a red shirt in your picture? Is that a nickname?" she remembered people asking.

"It's just sad because people don't have a concept that American Indian people exist anywhere," she said.

Red Shirt-Shaw said being American Indian is sometimes wrongly seen as "sticking a feather in your hair and being very traditional."

"We're just people," she added.

At the same time, many people have been supportive and "interested" in her heritage.

"It really has been a balance," she said.

Recruitment a perennial problem

Penn's Class of 2012 boasts six self-identified American Indian students, according to Sean Vereen, an associate dean of undergraduate admissions involved in recruiting American Indian students. That's 0.2 percent of the 2,445-student class.

The freshman class at Dartmouth College, by contrast, is made up of 3.9 percent American Indian students, while Stanford University's Class of 2012 checks in with 3.2 percent. Nationally, 1.5 percent of people surveyed in the 2000 census identified as at least partially "Native American" or "Alaskan Native."

Despite ongoing efforts, attracting and retaining American Indian students is a perennial challenge for Penn. The number of self-identifying undergraduates - 34 - has barely budged since 2001, when 32 were enrolled. Recruitment initiatives then included proposals for investments in an advisory board and scholarships focused on American Indian students. In 1997 - when American Indians still composed less than 1 percent of the undergraduate student body - Penn flew six promising students from South Dakota's Pine Ridge reservation to campus for a weekend. One student enrolled as a freshman but abruptly left Penn a few semesters later.

"It's hard to sell Philadelphia," said Red Shirt-Shaw.

But Valerie De Cruz, director of the Greenfield Intercultural Center, called the idea that native students actively choose other schools over Penn a "misnomer."

Instead, it's a matter of name recognition - or lack thereof. In terms of visibility to American Indian students, she said, Penn is "sort of behind the eight-ball compared to our peer institutions."

Ann Dapice, chairwoman of Penn's Association of Native Alumni - which was founded two years ago and now has about 50 active members - agreed. Originally contacted about six years ago over concerns about recruitment and retention of native students, Dapice said Penn is unknown to a large part of the American Indian community.

"When I go out and talk to Indian students, they know about Dartmouth," said Dapice, who is of Lenape-Cherokee descent. "Students don't know about the University of Pennsylvania."

Another challenge, said Dapice, who works with students in Tulsa, Ok., is overcoming the historical legacy of boarding schools where American Indians were sent. "The stories that come down from parents and grandparents and great-grandparents are how badly they were treated when they went away to school," she said.

She added that many students don't know about financial aid initiatives and "assume they can't afford it."

"Penn needs to do some of what I've been doing," she said. "They need to come out to the conferences."

A 'concrete commitment'

Vereen said the admissions office is working closely with Six Directions and ANA to enhance its recruiting efforts.

The admissions office, ANA and Six Directions are currently compiling a list of "community-based organizations" that are involved with American Indian communities, Vereen said, so that the school can better "understand and identify" potential applicants.

The effort differed from past attempts to recruit American Indian students, he said, in its "community-based" focus.

A large part of the new recruiting effort will be carried out by members of Six Directions and ANA, he said. "No one's going to do that better than students and alumni."

"We only have so many admissions officers," he added.

Penn also participated in a workshop for high-achieving American Indian students called "College Horizons," which includes a college fair component, Vereen said.

He said the new recruiting efforts are primarily intended to raise Penn's visibility among American Indian communities and "build some momentum" in recruiting American Indian students.

"Once we build some name recognition, of course Penn has a lot to offer" to students of any background, De Cruz said.

DuBois College House has also included Six Directions in its Politics and Cultural Pluralism residential program, according to DuBois faculty master and associate Provost for Equity and Access William Gipson, and aims to dedicate a room or lounge to Six Directions after renovations this summer.

"All of this is pretty fluid right now," said Gipson, but "it will happen."

Also involved in American Indian issues on campus is the Center for Native American Studies, which puts out a newsletter once a semester and compiles a listing of courses that "touch on American Indians in one way or another," according to director Robert Preucel.

The center, which Preucel said serves as "a clearinghouse for American Indian issues and topics on campus," also works with academic departments to bring American Indian scholars to speak at Penn.

Preucel, who runs the center on a volunteer basis, is also the curator of the North American section of the Penn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. He pointed out that the Museum "consistently" features exhibits on native North and South America. Several, including an exhibit on Pennsylvania's Lenape people, are currently on display.

Red Shirt-Shaw said she thinks faculty recruitment should be the first step for Penn to enhance the American Indian presence on campus. "We're not going to build a house within the next eight years," she said, but "in having people to look up to, native students will want to come here."

Penn currently has no standing faculty that identify as American Indian, according to De Cruz.

Kenric Tsethlikai, director of the Language and Culture Program at Wharton's Lauder Institute, said some institutions invite American Indian scholars to become familiar with the institution, calling it "a chance for native scholars to network within their peer group." Other schools have a "dissertation write-up fellowship," where scholars will complete the writing of their dissertation at a school while teaching several classes, he said. "That's a way to make a concrete commitment."

"Institutions can learn from one another," Tsethlikai added.

Home sweet home?

Tsethlikai, a graduate of both Dartmouth and Stanford, said each of his alma maters has "a committed interest to developing and nurturing its native community."

"You not only have to get people to come to the university," he said. "You have to cultivate that community so that it wants to stay."

Dartmouth's Native American Program, which was founded in the 1970s, provides a variety of orientation, advising and leadership services to native students. "We're here to help in the transition from what could be a very, very different way of doing things," said Michael Hanitchak, the program's director.

In addition to the Native American House, which houses approximately 14 students and serves as a center of the American Indian community at Dartmouth, the school also offers a major and a minor in Native American Studies.

Stanford's American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Program offers similar services, and the school has an American Indian "theme house" as well as a Native American Studies department like Dartmouth's.

Penn offers no such major or minor, and De Cruz said the GIC is the closest thing Penn has to a "support space" for American Indian students.

Garr stressed the importance of a Native American Studies department. Even if American Indian students don't major in the department, he said, "just knowing that it's here shows that there's a home for native students."

Hanitchak said the relationship between community and support system was a "chicken-egg thing."

"If you have the community, then you might be able to develop the support for it," he said. On the other hand, he added, support systems like Dartmouth's Native American Program signals to American Indian students, "yes, they really want us here."

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