UMaine Delegation Works to Boost Native American Enrollment
Contact: John Bear Mitchell, 581-1417; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — Since 1935, members of Maine’s Native American Indian tribes have been offered free tuition at the University of Maine, but historically, very few have taken advantage of the offer.
In the last 20 years, 402 Native American students from 23 tribes nationwide have graduated from UMaine, according to John Bear Mitchell, associate director of University of Maine’s Wabanaki Center, a support center for Native students.
Educators at UMaine have begun a major initiative to identify and eliminate social, economic or other barriers between Native young people and success at college.
A delegation from UMaine that last week made its second visit to Aroostook County to meet with tribal officers and young people to discuss new relationships that can result in more of the tribes’ youth enrolling at UMaine and succeeding. Representatives from more than a half dozen departments or colleges spent the day with representatives of the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians near Houlton discussing barriers that can prevent Native young people from getting to college, and also sharing a traditional Native American meal of hulled corn soup, moose meat and fiddleheads.
“The visit went better than planned and we had a great discussion about the next steps between the UMaine delegation and the tribes,” says David Slagger, an education major in the College of Education and Human Development and a member of the Aroostook Band of Micmac Indians. “We want our tribal youth to feel embraced when they come here.”
Being accepted at UMaine is just the first step toward a college education, Slagger says. It’s a big difference between life in rural Northern Maine, for instance, and the university community in Orono, where more than 10,000 young people from throughout the world bustle about at any given time.
“A lot of times, when our youth come to the Orono campus, they bail,” Slagger says. “They say, ‘Wow, look at all the people. Am I going to fit in?'”
Last August, the UMaine delegation visited the Aroostook Band of Micmac Indians and a group of young people from that tribe toured the Orono campus in October. Slagger and O.J. Logue, associate dean for academic services in the College of Education and Human Development, are enthusiastic about the outreach.
“The students really felt welcome and were really impressed with the campus,” Logue says. “We hope that we will create a strong dialog with the Micmac and Maliseet communities about making higher education more accessible and attainable. We’re feeling really good about how it’s going.”
Members of the UMaine delegation who went to the Maliseet tribal offices in Littleton were from the College of Education and Human Development, Native American Studies, the Wabanaki Center, the ALANA Center, the UMaine Folklife Center, Peace Studies, and the English, history and New Media departments.
In spite of the low number of Native students graduating from UMaine, the Orono campus saw more Native students graduate in the last two decades than all of the other University of Maine System campuses combined, says Mitchell. He says the Wabanaki Center provides critical support for Native students.
While Maine has two other Native American tribes, the Passamaquoddy and the Penobscots, both are geographically closer to the Orono campus than tribal youth in Aroostook County, and they traditionally have had closer relationships with the university.
Maliseet Chief Brenda Commander says the visit opened the door to better communication between her tribe and the university.
“I thought it was very, very positive,” she says. “We were really happy to host the event.”
It was helpful to talk about how to improve college enrollments and retention rates for tribal students, she says.
In February, the university will host a visit from tribal leaders and several Maliseet high school students interested in getting a closer look at the university. In the meantime, the university delegation members will discuss what can be done to increase the number of Native student applicants and improve the environment for Native youth once they arrive.