College tuition breaks for Native students spread, but some tribes are left out

SALEM, Ore. — Jaeci Hall completed her dissertation in tears. She was writing about the importance of revitalizing and teaching Indigenous languages, specifically the Nuu-wee-ya’ language and her tribe’s dialects. “I spent months writing,” she said, “just crying while I wrote because of how it felt to not be recognized.”

This story also appeared in Oregon Public Broadcasting

Hall — who graduated in 2021 with a doctorate in linguistics from the University of Oregon — is the language coordinator for the Coquille Indian Tribe.

But Hall is not part of the federally recognized tribe of the Coquille. She’s part of the Confederated Tribes of Lower Rogue, which she described as the descendants of nine women who relocated and returned to the Rogue River after the Rogue River Wars of the 1850s in southern Oregon. Despite their rich history and Hall’s documentation of her heritage, Hall and her ancestors are not acknowledged by the United States government as a tribal nation.

Hall’s status meant that when she was earning her degrees, she didn’t qualify for financial assistance designed for Native students. She would not have been eligible for tuition waiver programs instituted in Oregon last year that reduce or eliminate costs for students who belong to federally recognized tribes.

Oregon instituted a statewide tuition waiver program for Native students last year, but it applies only to those from federally recognized tribes. Credit: Don & Melinda Crawford/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

For decades, a handful of individual states and schools have offered financial assistance to Native students. A new wave of offerings this past year – spurred in part by growing land rights movements and a larger focus on racial justice following the murder of George Floyd – shows the programs are becoming increasingly popular.

The programs are meant to help reduce the barrier of cost for Native students, who have historically faced significant challenges in attending and staying in college. Native students have the lowest college-going rate of any group in the United States, a third less than the national average, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And since 2010, Native enrollment in higher-ed institutions also has declined by about 37 percent, the largest drop in any student demographic group. Studies suggest affordability is one of the leading causes of attrition.

But in nearly every iteration of these programs — old and new — only some Indigenous people benefit.

That’s because the U.S. government does not formally acknowledge the status of an estimated 400 tribes and countless Indigenous individuals, thus shutting them out of programs meant to reduce barriers to higher education. Tribes have to meet several criteria in their petitions for federal recognition, including proof they’ve had decades of a collective identity, generations of descendants and long-standing, autonomous political governance.

As a result, thousands of Native students aren’t getting the same opportunities as their peers in recognized tribes and are left with a disproportionate amount of debt. Affected students say the disparate treatment also leaves social and emotional wounds.

“I made it through it,” Hall said, adding with a laugh that she did most of her dissertation work remotely during Covid, often with her toddler playing around her. “And I would have made it through it better if I had had more support.”

Native students have the lowest college-going rate of any group in the United States, a third less than the national average, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Credit: Shae Hammond for The Hechinger Report

Hall is now paying off about $190,000 in student loans, the cumulative cost of her undergraduate degree from Linfield College in Oregon, her master’s at the University of Arizona and her doctorate from the University of Oregon. A loan forgiveness program through her work will cut her obligation to roughly $50,000, but the total harms her chances of receiving a loan or improving her credit.

Hall’s children, who has Native status because of her father’s enrollment in a recognized tribe, will likely have opportunities Hall did not. If her daughter, for example, a Eugene middle schooler, maintains a 3.0 grade-point average, she will be able to attend the University of Oregon for free.

There are “so many people that are stuck in poverty and stuck in situations where they can’t get an education,” Hall said. “I started thinking … how hard their lives are, and how much of a difference could be made.”

Individual schools and states across the country have instituted varying forms of these tuition programs over the years. The University of Maine, for example, has had a tuition waiver option since the 1930s. The program helped the school retain its Native students during the pandemic at higher rates than the national average, according to Marcus Wolf, a university spokesperson. Michigan and Montana have had waivers available for Native students for almost half a century.

Oregon joined this list, beginning with the 2022-23 school year, when then-Gov. Kate Brown announced the introduction of a statewide grant fund. The Oregon Tribal Student Grant covers tuition, housing and books at public institutions and some private universities for undergraduate and graduate students belonging to Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes. The money is awarded only after students apply for federal or state financial aid.

In its first year, 416 students received the grant, according to Endi Hartigan, a spokesperson for the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission. Oregon lawmakers allocated $19 million for the first year — based on an estimate that 700 or more students would receive a grant — and this legislative session, they codified the program in state statute and allocated $24 million for the next two years.

Several state universities – including Western Oregon, Oregon State, Portland State and Southern Oregon – also began providing an additional form of financial aid. Last year, these schools extended in-state tuition prices to members of all 570-plus federally recognized tribes in the U.S., regardless of what state they live in. The same is true for the University of California system, the University of Arizona and other institutions across the country.

The University of Oregon has tried to extend its tuition waiver programs for Native students to at least some members of unrecognized tribes. Credit: Don & Melinda Crawford/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Western Oregon started its Native American Tuition program last fall. It’s been a slow start to get students interested, with public records requests revealing that fewer than 10 students applied for or participated in the program in its inaugural year. However, the impact it has on those students is substantial: The university estimates the program saves participating students nearly $20,000 per student per year.

Anna Hernandez-Hunter, who until June was the director of admissions for Western Oregon, said the numbers are low because the program is new and the university enrolls few students from out of state (only about 19 percent of undergraduates). She said the university has made the application process easier for next year, published more information online and made sure admission counselors are sharing the information with prospective students.

But eligibility for that program, like the vast majority of such tuition offerings, requires enrollment in a federally recognized tribe.

Western Oregon’s Office of the President, as well as communications and admissions officials with the University of Oregon, declined to comment specifically on why unrecognized tribes are excluded from the programs. One university official said on background that, generally speaking, program staff at any university have to follow federal and state guidelines, as well as standards for who qualifies for the resources.

Institutions typically validate a student’s enrollment by requiring a federally issued tribal ID or a letter from a recognized tribal council confirming enrollment. Native advocates said some students don’t have this kind of documentation even when they are enrolled in a recognized tribe. Documentation depends on the information families can access to prove their lineage. Enrollment requirements differ from tribe to tribe, and after generations of forced removal and assimilation, such documentation can be limited.

Limiting which Native students get financial assistance is especially significant, given the rising cost of post-secondary degrees. According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees at a public, four-year school was $10,940 for in-state students in 2022-23 or $28,240 for out-of-state students. And research by the Education Data Initiative shows Native students borrow more and pay more per month in student loan debt than their white peers.

Native students have the lowest college-going rate of any group in the United States, a third less than the national average, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Some colleges or states have agreements with specific unrecognized tribes. Oregon, for example, allows members of Washington’s Chinook Indian Nation, which is fighting to regain its federal recognition, to at least access in-state tuition because the Chinook have tribal boundaries in Oregon.

Jason Younker leads the University of Oregon’s Home Flight Scholars Program, which is one of the school’s many assistance programs available for Native students. Launched last October, Home Flight not only works to recruit more Native students to the university but also provides funding, mentors, culturally specific programs and support to help Native students adjust to life on campus.

Younker said students can prove their eligibility for the program by showing a Certificate Degree of Indian Blood card (CDIB) instead of enrollment records. Blood quantum, or the measurement of someone’s “Indian blood,” has a long, controversial history in the U.S. And certificates are only available to people related to members of recognized tribes. But Younker said this allows someone to show they are Native without enrollment records since some tribes’ enrollment requirements exclude those who still have high percentages of Native blood.

Younker, who is part of the Coquille tribe, said the university allows students to show blood quantum via a Certificate Degree of Indian Blood card (CDIB) — which is only available to people related to members of recognized tribes — instead of enrollment records since some tribes’ enrollment requirements exclude those who still have high percentages of Native blood.

Program leaders also allow students, even those from unrecognized tribes, to apply to Home Flight via letters from council members, in an attempt to extend this support to at least some of Oregon’s unrecognized students pursuing undergraduate degrees.

Younker said the question should no longer be: “Can I afford to go to college?” The question should be: “Where can I go to college?”

“Each and every one of us has had an ancestor that sacrificed and survived so that they could have the choices that they do today,” he said. “I always tell students: ‘It doesn’t matter where you go; it matters that you do go.’”

But he said tuition assistance isn’t enough to attract and retain Native American students. To succeed in this, colleges must also recruit on reservations, provide academic counseling, cultural support and a community of peers, and include Native leaders in major decisions at the university. “If you don’t have those kinds of things, you’re not a very attractive school — no matter how much tuition you waive,” he said.

For students and parents like Yvette Perrantes, the lack of support affects multiple generations.

Perrantes wanted to go to college as an adult so she could move into a higher income bracket. She’s a member and leader of the Duwamish Tribe, who lived on the land that is now South Seattle, Renton and Kent, and have been called Seattle’s first people. They’ve fought a decades-long battle for federal recognition that continues today.

Without tribal status and consequent financial aid, Perrantes owed $27,000 in student loans after finishing her associate degree in clean energy technologies at Washington’s Shoreline Community College in 2014. She deferred her loan payments until she no longer could. Threatened with having her wages garnished, she filed for bankruptcy. Her credit score took a hit. She had to keep making payments, but now had no chance of leasing a car, getting a credit card or exercising other opportunities.

Yvette Perrantes is a member and leader of the Duwamish Tribe. They’ve fought a decades-long battle for federal recognition that continues today. Credit: Photo provided by Yvette Perrantes

Her son was looking into college at the same time Perrantes faced these financial hardships. He hoped to receive an athletic scholarship, but when he tore his ACL, the young student-athlete stopped pursuing higher education altogether. In his eyes, Perrantes said, all it would lead to was debt.

The effects of exclusion from federal recognition and benefits are compounded, Perrantes said, for those who come from families, like hers, with intergenerational trauma and parents who are “doing a lot of healing themselves.”

Not “being included in this process with the federal government and not having equal access to student loans and money for education, and more interest rates, you know, everything that comes along with federal recognition,” she said, “it’s pretty crushing to the spirit.”

Perrantes now works as a program manager for Mother Nation, a Seattle-based nonprofit that focuses on cultural services, advocacy, mentorship and homeless prevention for Native women. She worries that students who go out of state for school may be disproportionately denied aspects of their identity. If someone isn’t a recognized tribal member, she said, they aren’t allowed to participate in certain cultural practices such as burning, smudging, harvesting certain trees or having an eagle feather. Those barriers are even more pronounced when the person is from a different state.

“[H]ow are we going to be educated enough to cite policy, to fight for recognition? We need more Natives who are educated and who are willing to do the work for the people.”

Yvette Perrantes, a member of the Duwamish tribe and a leader on its council

“Being Native and being grounded in your ways, traditionally, and being out of state, outside your family, outside of your tradition, outside of your culture, and then you’re not being able to practice your cultural ways. You know, I think it’s impactful on your emotional, spiritual and mental health,” she said. “We need those to sustain ourselves as students.”

Perrantes still encourages Indigenous students to pursue education at all costs. That way, she said, they can be the ones making laws and the ones teaching their history in the classroom. “The pen is mightier than the sword,” she said. “I know that sounds so cliche, but how are we going to be educated enough to cite policy, to fight for recognition? We need more Natives who are educated and who are willing to do the work for the people.”

As states and institutions expand tuition waiver programs, Hall, the doctoral graduate from the Confederated Tribes of Lower Rogue, would like to see different ways used to verify a claim of being Native and for resources to extend to unrecognized students. Her advice for Native students is to be as stubborn as they can, to believe in themselves and to remember that any kind or any level of education will improve their lives and that of their community.

“We all have some history. We’re survivors. Regardless,” Hall said. Education “is an answer to the prayers of our ancestors, no matter if we’re recognized or not.”

This story about Native American tuition waiver programs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Why are we still mismanaging beavers?

A surge in efforts to find ways to co-exist with beavers continues to be opposed by ag lobby and other landowners

Habitat helper: For all the good they do, beavers often get the short end of the stick. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

By K.C. Mehaffey. May 25, 2023. Recognition that American beavers are a vital and often missing component of riverine habitats is growing nationwide, especially in the Pacific Northwest.

Nearly wiped out across the West a century ago, beavers have spent recent decades regarded as a nuisance animal.

Now, their reputation as a keystone species is slowly taking hold.

The dams they create, for free, offer many of the same benefits as costly rehabilitation projects. Their work has been shown to expand floodplains and wetlands, recharge groundwater, provide higher summer flows, improve water quality, create healthy habitat for salmon and encourage a greater diversity of plants and animals.

The natural water storage they create slows the runoff process, keeps freshwater habitat cooler later into the summer and helps counter the impacts of drought.

And as wildfires become larger and more intense with climate change, beaver ponds have been shown to provide firebreaks and offer refuge for aquatic and land animals.

But environmental groups say policy makers in Oregon and Washington—where beavers continue to be managed as furbearers, nuisance animals and even predators—have been slow to respond.

Oregon—the Beaver State—allows unlimited killing of beavers, and has no mechanisms in place to track how many are taken each year. State agencies have no authority to manage them on private land, and do not know how many beavers there are or where they’re causing problems.

In Washington, despite a pilot program that helps relocate nuisance animals, beaver enthusiasts say not enough effort has gone into helping private landowners learn to live with them.

With the pilot program about to become permanent, objections are being raised that trappers are allowed to take relocated beavers.

And a major agricultural lobbying group remains opposed to legislation that would make it harder for farmers and private landowners to simply slaughter beaver populations where they find them.

All of this could be about to change—but will it?

Proposed legal protections

In Oregon and Washington, proposals to provide beavers with greater protections are afoot.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife managers say that making the state’s relocation program permanent could begin as soon as this year. They also point to an opportunity to add beavers as a “species of greater conservation need” in the agency’s statewide wildlife action plan.

In the Oregon Legislature this session, a bill to remove the “predator” status of beavers passed the House in April and won the support of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources in May. House Bill 3464A is waiting to be heard by the Senate, but is among hundreds of bills stalled by the Republican walkout, now in its third week.

Beaver backer: Rep. Pam Marsh Photo: Oregon State Legislature

Beaver supporters say provisions in the bill are small but important measures that can help prevent the indiscriminant killing of beavers and help landowners learn to live with North America’s largest rodent.

Rep. Pam Marsh (D-Ashland)—the bill’s primary sponsor and chair of the House Committee on Climate, Energy and Environment—says it’s going to take time for beavers in Oregon to be seen as friends instead of foes.

Her bill, she says, is the first step.

Removing its “predator” status would move management of beavers from the Oregon Department of Agriculture to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, where they can be overseen as wildlife instead of agricultural pests.

Landowners could still kill them on their own property, but most people would need a permit to do so.

After introducing the bill—and before the walkout—Marsh worked with Republicans in her committee and agreed to amended language to gain more support. Under the amended bill, landowners with beavers causing damage that imminently threatens infrastructure or agricultural crops could bypass the permit, and owners of small forestland are exempt.

But, if the bill becomes law, everyone would have to report the beavers they kill to the state, giving ODFW an opportunity to estimate out how many beavers are in the state, understand where and how they’re causing problems and provide landowners with options other than killing them.

Marsh believes public support for beavers in Oregon is growing. She’s introduced bills to help protect beavers in the past but they didn’t go anywhere.

“We just heard increasing voices across the state for stepping up for beavers,” says Marsh. “We’re seeing beaver-affinity groups, and increasingly seeing landowners who are raving about the results” of allowing beavers to reclaim portions of their property.

Marsh admits beavers can quickly damage property if they’re not properly directed.

“When you know how to work with them, there’s a tremendous capacity to store water and to keep people safe during wildfires,” she says.

Broad support for beavers

In committee hearings, many people testified in support of Marsh’s bill. In the Senate Natural Resources Committee, with the added amendments, only one person out of 48 people testified against it.

Marsh is particularly compelled by on-the-ground stories from people who decided to work with beavers on their property instead of trying to get rid of them.

Among them: Kaitlin Lovell, owner of a 20-acre farm near Colton, Ore., who testified before the Senate committee on May 10.

“Most beaver conflicts you can find a solution for.” —Jakob Shockey, Project Beaver

Lovell says when she decided to encourage beavers to take over about five acres of her land, she was expecting some of the ecological improvements that resulted.

“What we didn’t expect was the economic benefits,” she told the committee.

Lovell testified that her drinking well no longer goes dry. Her primary pasture stays green much later, allowing her to feed stock animals late into the summer without having to supplement their pasture with hay.

And when she evacuated her land in 2020 when the Riverside Fire ranged five miles away, she went to her beaver pond to take a picture of her farm that was threatened by wildfire. She said trees were breaking on her property from the 70 mph winds, and the sky was orange from the nearby blaze.

“In the beaver ponds, it was as if somebody put a glass dome over the ponds,” she said. “It was 10 degrees colder, and it was still. There was no wind. The trees were barely registering, and in that moment, I realized that there’s a lot more happening in these beaver ponds, especially during wildfires, than we’ve even begun to investigate.”

Lovell says the livestock they left behind in the haste of evacuation found refuge there. And the wildland firefighters who used the farm as the entryway to fight the fire identified the ponds as a backup water supply.

“That’s the climate resilience that we really didn’t see and anticipate,” she said.

Farmers: “Not so fast”

Despite growing support for beavers, and compromises made in Marsh’s HB 3464A, the Oregon Farm Bureau remains opposed to it.

Lauren Poor, the farm bureau’s vice president of government and legal affairs, told the Senate committee the bill would create an unnecessary and complicated system of managing beavers for private agricultural land owners, who can now kill beavers without a permit, and without reporting it.

Lauren Poor. Photo: Oregon Farm Bureau

Poor said the bill doesn’t require permits for small forestland owners, but farmers with beaver problems must be facing an imminent threat to infrastructure or crops to bypass the permit system.

Her testimony was the lone voice of opposition to the amended bill.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife took a neutral stance.

Brian Wolfer, acting wildlife division administrator for ODFW, says he’s explained to thousands of landowners who have problems with other furbearers that kill permits are really a short-term solution.

“When wildlife is on someone’s property, there are conditions that are favorable to them,” he says.

Removing one animal does not remove whatever is attracting the animal, so he works to educate landowners about coexistence strategies.

Beaver control

Jakob Shockey has spent years educating landowners across Oregon about how to coexist with beavers.

Shockey is executive director of the Jacksonville, Ore.-based nonprofit Project Beaver (formerly The Beaver Coalition) and owner of the wildlife control business Beaver State Wildlife Solutions.

“I’ve managed to make a full-time job out of helping the monkeys outsmart the rodents,” Shockey told the House Committee on Climate, Energy and Environment in March.

Jakob Shockey, Executive Director Project Beaver

Jakob Shockey. Photo: Project Beaver

Shockey told the committee about tools he uses to help growers and other landowners benefit from beavers without the damage that comes with them.

He says pond levelers work like the drain in a bathtub that can be set at any level to prevent the flooding of crops; electric fences have been highly successful at keeping beavers away from orchards; and methods to cage off irrigation culverts prevent them from getting blocked.

“We can come up with some pretty crafty things. Most beaver conflicts you can find a solution for,” says Shockey.

Changing the “predatory” status of beavers would also remove language that labels them as agricultural pests, says Shockey.

“A lot of folks feel like, if they have a pest species on their land, in order to be good stewards of that land they have to get rid of that pest species,” he says, adding that the label sends a signal to landowners that isn’t helpful. “Most folks I end up working with didn’t have any idea that another solution was available.”

Shockey says that landowners who get caught in the endless treadmill of trapping beavers to get rid of them instead of finding a permanent solution to live with them end up impacting neighbors who would benefit from them, too.

“Beavers are territorial, and they mate for life. If you remove one, another family will move in, so you’re going to be depopulating the surrounding region of beavers,” he explains.

Shockey believes the top priority in beaver management should be helping people learn to live with them in the places they choose to repopulate.

“The fact that in the House they were able to work together and get bipartisan support [for HB 3464A], I was just tickled. It feels like the bill we’ve all been hoping for for the last decade.”

Shockey hopes the Oregon Senate can meet and vote on the bill before this year’s legislative session ends.

Washington’s 69,000 beavers

In Washington, the state legislature recognized the vast ecological benefits of beavers more than a decade ago, and outlined their benefits in a 2012 law that directed the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to authorize beaver relocation and work in partnership with agencies, tribes and nonprofit groups.

The program was expanded in 2017.

“I think the habitat division [of WDFW] is quite aware of the ecosystem benefits of beavers, and as far as I know they are moving ahead and working with others to help them,” says Washington Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Melanie Rowland.

But, Rowland notes, the beaver’s status as an unclassified species still allows unlimited trapping for five months of the year.

And while on paper WDFW is supposed to encourage landowners to coexist with beavers, she’s not sure how far that goes in practice.

Gnawing issue: Washington’s program of relocating beavers has earned mixed reviews. Photo: Methow Beaver Project

Last year, Rowland asked Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife staff for a briefing on its beaver management. Her main goals were to find ways to support landowners with nonlethal solutions when they have a problem beaver, and to evaluate the impacts of trapping on the state’s relocation program.

“You spend all this time and money and energy relocating a beaver—which is not an easy thing—and then the law says anybody who wants to can go out and kill that beaver. That is the first thing that should go,” she says. “Beavers that have been relocated shouldn’t be trapped.”

But her idea for a temporary moratorium on trapping received significant pushback—some of it from fellow commissioners.

During a December 2022 briefing, WDFW Wildlife Program Director Eric Gardner said that an estimated 69,000 beavers live in Washington, where they’re classified as furbearers.

He said about 500 to 700 trapping licenses for beavers are sold annually, but only about 110 license holders report trapping beavers.

Gardner outlined the harvest of beavers since 1984, which reached a peak of about 10,000 beavers trapped in 1986.

He said the rates of trapping fluctuated almost solely due to the price in pelts until a decline began in 2000, when body-gripping traps were banned in Washington.

In 2021, 714 beavers were taken by trappers in Washington.

Adding in the number of beavers killed by wildlife control operators or special trapping permits for problem animals, a total of 1,782 beavers were taken that year, said Gardner.

Five months after the briefing, Rowland says she believes the way beavers are managed in Washington is inconsistent, with different provisions for the animal as furbearers, as nuisance animals and for conservation purposes.

Given the importance of beavers to the ecosystem, she’d like to see more protections in place, especially for beavers that are relocated.

“It’s too long. This has been known and stated by the legislature since 2012, and we still have not changed anything about the trapping of beavers,” she says.

Rowland sees several avenues to help strengthen beaver policies, including in the next update to the state Game Management Plan, and a proposed Commission Conservation Policy that would point to the conservation of Washington’s biodiversity as WDFW’s top priority. It states, “This responsibility is becoming increasingly difficult with the amplified effects of climate change, growing human population and development, resulting in fragmented or lost habitat, invasive species and increasing disease.”

Rowland says that beavers can be key to conserving biodiversity in riparian habitats, but that state policies have changed at a “glacial” pace.

“There’s no question there’s lots of activity and recognition of the habitat value of having beavers,” she says. “In terms of moving people—the hunters and trappers and landowners that just think of beavers as vermin, nuisances or pelts—I have no idea if that’s changing.”

To Shockey, the public’s perception of beavers changes one landowner at a time. He says even though Oregon is still working to legally change the status of beavers, he thinks the Beaver State is well positioned to lead the Northern Hemisphere in developing a healthier relationship with nature’s greatest engineers.

With help from agencies and Washington organizations, Project Beaver developed a manual for best management practices to help people coexist with them, which people in Europe are looking to adopt, he says.

Once people stop fighting with beavers and start working with them, says Shockey, they’re sold.

As a supporter of Columbia Insight‘s recognition of Earth Day, the Gorge Rebuild-It Center has sponsored this story.

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Why are we still mismanaging beavers? was first posted on May 25, 2023 at 7:25 am.
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