Editor’s Note: Each November, National Native American Heritage Month celebrates the traditions, languages, and stories of Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and affiliated Island communities.
By Richard Oshkeshequoam, Registrar, College of Menominee Nation, and Co-chair, AACRAO Native American Caucus
In September 2026, tribal colleges and universities received welcome news: a one-time federal funding increase to TCUs for fiscal year 2026. Just four months earlier, the administration’s FY2027 budget proposal would have eliminated all dedicated TCU funding. At the College of Menominee Nation, where I serve as registrar, that kind of whiplash is familiar, as it is at all 37 institutions of the tribal college movement. What is less familiar to many of my registrar colleagues is what tribal colleges are, and how much of our students’ success passes through their offices.
This Native American Heritage Month, I want to share a short history of how Native nations took education back, a few things I wish every registrar knew about TCUs, and some questions worth asking in your own office.
From Assimilation to Self-Determination
In 1819, Congress passed the Civilization Fund Act, setting aside $10,000 a year “for the purpose of providing against the further decline and final extinction of the Indian tribes” and for “introducing among them the habits and arts of civilization” (text of the Act). The money went to missionary societies, and the law laid the groundwork for the federal boarding school system. Interior’s own investigation identified 417 federal Indian boarding schools and at least 973 children who died while attending them. Those schools ran on children’s work: training in the “industrial arts” meant farming, laundry, sewing, and repairs, and Interior acknowledges the system’s true cost must include Indian child labor. On the Menominee Reservation, St. Joseph’s Indian Industrial School in Keshena appears on Interior’s list, operating from 1883 to 1952. Today, in that same community of Keshena, CMN teaches the Menominee language that those schools once tried to silence.
The 1928 Meriam Report exposed overcrowding, malnutrition, disease, and inadequate medical care in these schools. In 1969, the Senate’s Kennedy Report, “Indian Education: A National Tragedy, A National Challenge,” declared federal Indian education a failure. By then, Native nations had stopped waiting. In 1968, the Navajo Nation founded Navajo Community College, now Diné College, the first tribally controlled college. In 1973, the presidents of the first six tribal colleges founded the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which was central to passing the Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act of 1978 and to winning land-grant status for TCUs in 1994. Today AIHEC represents 37 TCUs serving more than 27,000 students from over 250 tribal nations.
The Menominee story is the one I know best, and it is a story of persistence. Federal termination of the Menominee Nation took effect in 1961. The Nation won restoration in 1973, and twenty years later it chartered its own college. Today Wisconsin is home to two TCUs, both accredited by the Higher Learning Commission: Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University, chartered by the Lac Courte Oreilles Tribal Governing Board in 1982, and CMN, chartered by the Menominee Nation in 1993.
What I Wish Every Registrar Knew About TCUs
- Chartered by tribal nations. A sovereign nation charters each TCU. The Menominee Nation chartered CMN, and our mission reflects the Nation’s priorities.
- Accredited like yours. TCUs meet the same institutional accreditation standards your campus does. Our credit deserves the same evaluation you give anyone else’s.
- Land-grant, with a difference. TCUs received no land and no formula research or extension funding. To qualify for research grants, we must partner with an 1862 or 1890 university or a federal agency.
- Funded differently. Federal operating funds count only Native students who are tribal members or children of members. Non-Native students, about 22% of TCU enrollment nationally in fall 2022 and about 8% at CMN in fall 2024, generate no federal operating support, and states contribute little.
- Culture is curriculum. When you see Native language, history, and culture courses on a TCU transcript, I’d ask you to evaluate them on content and outcomes, as you would any course.
- Students with obligations. Many TCU students are older, attend part-time, and balance family and community responsibilities.
What TCUs Return
TCUs generated $3.8 billion in economic growth and supported 40,700 jobs in FY2022-2023. At CMN, a Lightcast study with AIHEC found that our college added more than $16 million in income to the Menominee Reservation and Shawano County economy that year, supporting 321 jobs, about one in every 68 in the region.
For us, even the partnering requirement has become a strength. Our Sustainable Development Institute developed a theoretical model of sustainability rooted in the Menominee Nation’s long practice of forest stewardship. The model weighs six dimensions together: land and sovereignty; the natural environment, including people; institutions; technology; economy; and human perception, activity, and behavior. At its center is autochthony, the understanding that the Menominee originate from their land. The model now anchors partnerships such as the POSOH project with UW–Madison, which blends Traditional and Scientific Ecological Knowledge in science education.
Questions for Your Office
These are the questions I’d put to any registrar’s office, including my own:
- When did your office last evaluate a transcript from a tribal college, and did the credit transfer?
- Do your equivalency tables and statewide transfer agreements include the TCUs nearest you?
- Do your residency, readmission, and stop-out policies work for students who step away to meet family and community obligations?
- Who at a TCU could you call this week?
Coming Full Circle
Tribal colleges are keepers of culture, language, and knowledge. Many families displaced by relocation, termination, or the boarding schools, and many people finding their way back to their roots, turn to tribal colleges to reconnect. In that sense, the tribal college brings education full circle, back to the way Menominee children once learned: Kaehkēnawāpataew (“s/he learns by observing”), where the whole community is the teacher.
I’ll take up these questions in Long Beach at the 112th AACRAO Annual Meeting, April 4-7, in “Our Ancestors’ Vision: A Registrar’s Introduction to Tribal Colleges.” In the meantime, as co-chair of the AACRAO Native American Caucus, I’d welcome hearing from colleagues ready to start the conversation on the Caucus page.
share