Bethany Shenkle says the talking circle around the campfire was the best moment. “Two members of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe came, and one woman spoke in her native language,” the Stanford freshman recalls of that summer night in the Sunol Regional Wilderness, a couple of hours from campus. “She had to learn it from records, and I was thinking it would be neat to do the same thing.”
Shenkle is a member of a small East Coast tribe of Native Americans called the Nanticokes, or “people of the tidewater,” whose Algonquian language hasn’t been spoken since the 1800s. The Delaware native was one of 15 students who spent a week on campus with the Summer Native Immersion Program. Launched in 1988, the annual session is part cultural transition and part Stanford orientation.
“The native community is so diverse, with students coming from all over the country,” explains Denni Woodward, a Mescalero Apache who is assistant director of the Native American Cultural Center. “Some have more than one tribal background and some are of mixed ethnicity, so it’s a coming together where freshmen can meet their peers and the older students who are resource people on campus.”
Stanford’s Class of ’08 includes 43 Native Americans, contributing to a total undergraduate and graduate student population of about 200 from more than 70 tribes. Native Hawaiians, Cherokees and Navajos are among the most widely reprresented, but there are always a couple of “firsts.” This year, freshman Jennifer Phillips is the first Stanford student from the Kaw people, a 2,500-member tribe from Kansas.
Before Stanford established its Native American Cultural Center in 1974, Woodward says, the attrition rate for Native American students was “pretty terrifying.” Put yourself in the shoes of someone from a small town adjoining a reservation in the Southwest, she suggests. “You probably don’t have a lot of money in your pocket, and you get a form letter from the registrar saying that if you don’t pay this bill by 5 o’clock today, you can’t take classes.” What used to happen? “Students would pack up and leave because they had no idea where to turn.”
Now, summer immersion program participants spend an hour with Mary Morrison, director of funds management in the financial aid office, getting all their financial aid questions answered and problems resolved before classes start. Students who depend on Bureau of Indian Affairs money or tribal scholarships, for example, are reimbursed after they get their grades. So Stanford administrators simply shift part of their winter University-funded financial aid packages to cover fall quarter expenses.
Students also meet with Julie Lythcott-Haims, dean of freshmen and transfer students; they tour Green Library, Vaden Health Center and the dorms where they’ll be living; and in lunch sessions they can ask the vice provost for student affairs and dean of students any lingering questions. One of the most popular sessions is with Jarrid Whitney, a Six Nations Cayuga and assistant dean in undergraduate admissions who is charged with recruiting Native American students.
