About three hours away from Syracuse, on the Seneca Indian reservation, Whitney Brooks grew up with her aunt and uncle living next door, her cousins just down the road. And living with her immediate family, she didn’t have to go far for that strong sense of community.

Coming to Syracuse University, Brooks lost those instant ties she had back home. Forming bonds with students hasn’t been easy, but her ties with fellow Native American students have grown deeper.

‘Having other Native students here helps a lot, knowing we’re not alone,’ said Brooks, a sophomore nutrition major. ‘There were a lot of Natives who went through college alone, and we have other people.’

This year marks the third anniversary of the Haudenosaunee Promise scholarship, which offers full financial assistance to citizens of the six Haudenosaune nations: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora. SU itself is located on Onondaga territory.

And enrollment numbers show the scholarship’s effect. During the 2005-2006 academic year, there were 46 enrolled American Indian and Alaska native undergraduate students, according to the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment. The next year, undergraduate enrollment jumped to 81. Current enrollment is 118 undergraduate Native students.

Before the Promise scholarship, Regina Jones, director of the Native Student Program and assistant director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, said the chance of her walking across the Quad and seeing another Native student was slim to none.

But the creation of the Promise scholarship by SU and the Haudenosaunee communities has given many Native Americans the opportunity for a college education that normally wouldn’t be available to them. There is no limit to the number of scholarships awarded each year, and students must be enrolled full time and maintain a 2.5 grade point average.

Still, those 118 students represent only 0.9 percent of the entire undergraduate population, and Native American students said they still feel like an underrepresented group on campus.

Nate Rivera, a member of the Seneca Nation, said fitting in and relating to other students is difficult and can make life on campus challenging.

‘We come here, and it’s hard to fit in and relate because people don’t know what you’ve been through,’ said Rivera, a freshman in the College of Human Ecology. ‘There’s a lot of ignorance.’

He began to notice it when he started playing lacrosse for his high school in Hamburg, N.Y., about 30 minutes away from the Seneca reservation. Rivera said he remembers teammates asking him to do a rain dance so practice would get cancelled.

Coming to SU, Rivera said he was used to the stereotypes. He and Brooks said they encounter it on a regular basis.

‘When I first got here, I had a little more hope in things like, I’ll meet new people and have new experiences,’ Brooks said. ‘But now I’m at the point where I haven’t met that many people, and it’s discouraging when you talk to people who are different than you and just get ignored.’

This is where Jones and the Native Student Program are vital for students. Jones is the helping hand to Native students when they’re feeling disconnected with campus life. Shavon Thomas, a senior anthropology and Native American studies major, calls Jones their ‘Native mother’ away from home.

‘Their value systems, priorities and beliefs are very different form the broader community,’ said Jones, a member of the Oneida Nation. ‘I’ve been trying to help them be solid in the foundation of who they are.’

A small house on Euclid Avenue serves as the meeting place for Native students. It houses Jones’ office and a lounge where Native students often meet up, talk and just hang out, Jones said.

Community is what Native students treasure the most. It’s the thing they miss the most from back home and the thing they value the most while at school.

‘I consider the other Native students my distant cousins. We all know each other pretty well,’ said Thomas, a member of the Mohawk Nation. ‘I have created tighter bonds with the other Mohawk students because we usually travel together.’

Despite the growing number of Native Americans coming to campus from nearby reservations because of the Promise scholarship, students said it doesn’t make the adjustment to college life any easier.

Philip Arnold, a professor in the religion department who teaches courses relating to Native Americans, said he’s seen how difficult it is for students to adjust.

‘They come from very insulated communities with a lot of stresses that other people don’t know about,’ said Arnold, whose wife is Mohawk and children are Oneida.

But having more Native Americans in his classes has improved the learning experience for his students. Arnold said it’s hard because he doesn’t want to pick on them to talk about their experiences, but it seems they like being able to educate others. A way to combat the ignorance.

Arnold knows some Native students personally outside of class, and said he’d like to be involved more outside of the classroom.

Students often go home to reconnect with their families and communities, sometimes out of necessity, since life at SU is so different.

Brooks said it’s a different mindset for Native students, who know they need to use this opportunity and bring it back to their families and communities. She was accepted to Columbia University in New York City but chose Syracuse, because it was closer to her home.

Going back home is just a matter of being able to relate again, said Brooks and Rivera. They’ve talked to people who think they live in tepees and aren’t ‘authentic Indians’ because they don’t wear headdresses. Both Rivera and Brooks agree that given another chance, they don’t think they would pick SU because of its environment.

‘If I wasn’t getting my education paid for, I wouldn’t be here,’ Rivera said. ‘I wouldn’t put up with it.’

‘A lot of people ask me, ‘What are you?’ and I want to say ‘A human being,” Brooks said. ‘The ignorance is a big social roadblock for us. There’s so many strong attached stereotypes. But I just focus on why I’m here, the opportunity I have.’

Many of the Native students at SU are the first in their families to come to college. Thomas’ parents never had the money or opportunity to attend school, but she and her three older sisters have gone to college. Rivera said he’s one in four of his immediate family members to get a higher education.

‘I came here with a great opportunity and to do something for my community, family and myself,’ Rivera said. ‘My dad worked for everything we ever had, and that’s what I want to do.’

Jones said she sees the internal struggle all the time between needs at home and their education. She said given the choice, she knows students will pick home.

But at the same time, their families are encouraging and supportive. She said students stay because they made it their goal. They want to be a role model for others back home. And they made promises to themselves and to their family.

While the number of Native students is still small compared to other groups on campus, as long as they have each other and their common bonds, it makes things easier.

‘When we’re at the Native house hanging out, it’s like an automatic sense of community with other Native students,’ Brooks said. ‘And back home, there’s a deep appreciation for one of us that can make it, there’s a lot of support – it’s a big deal that we go here.’

eaconnor@syr.edu

Published on March 22, 2009 at 12:00 pm