2009-10 Annual Report - American Indian College Fund

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Promotes
Faculty Growth at Tribal Colleges
Diana Canku
Thomas Antell
Turtle Mountain
Community College
was founded in 1972
and serves the Turtle
Mountain Band of
Chippewa. The college
offers a baccalaureate
degree in teacher
education, two
associate’s degrees
and eight technical
certificates. The
school is working to
preserve Ojibwa, the
traditional language
of the Anishinaabe
people, and Michif,
a mixed language
based on French,
Cree, and Ojibwa.
Diana Canku (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate),
president of Sisseton Wahpeton College (SWC)
in South Dakota and a 2009-10 academic year fellow
in the American Indian College Fund’s Andrew
W. Mellon Career Enhancement Program, became
the fifteenth program participant to complete her
doctorate degree.
The program was funded by the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation to increase the number of faculty
possessing a terminal degree at the nation’s 33 tribal
colleges and universities. Under the program, each
faculty fellow is provided with financial assistance to
complete the dissertation writing process. The objective
is to increase intellectual capital, job satisfaction
and retention among faculty at the tribal colleges.
In February the foundation announced a renewal
grant for $450,000 to continue the program, which
has funded 17 tribal college faculty Ph.D. candidates
to date, including three in 2009-10.
Dr. Canku says, “I find working in the field of
education to be the most rewarding area that I have
worked in to date… My long-term plans are to continue
working here at SWC teaching until I retire.”
The foundation is also providing research opportunities
in Indian country with a $500,000 renewal
grant for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Faculty Research Program. Despite being one of the
fastest-growing populations in America, Natives were
often excluded from academic research, resulting in
inaccurate or irrelevant data on American Indians. The
faculty research program allows Native professors to
conduct research at their schools and in their communities,
putting them in the rightful place of telling
the Indian story and increasing the number of faculty
research projects within the tribal colleges.
Program fellowships give tribal college faculty
funds and time off to complete scholarly research
projects, prepare publications and present research at
national conferences with the support of a tribal college
student research assistant. To date, eight faculty
research fellowships have been awarded, with two this
fiscal year.
Thomas Antell (Minnesota Chippewa) is a 2009-
10 faculty research fellow focusing on how data on
American Indians was collected in anthropology.
After moving to the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe reservation
to attend at the tribal college, Antell noticed
that the classroom, which was once used to destroy
Native culture, “was now being used just as effectively
to restore what was stolen.” Later, as a professor
there, to accurately preserve his culture, he decided
to research and reevaluate source material about the
Ojibwe people and develop a response to anthropological
history that was written by non-Natives. His
research is allowing the Ojibwe to provide its own
narrative of their culture to future generations.
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