Budget threatens Native American courses

Two departments are planning to axe the university's only two Native American-centric courses due to budget cuts, causing the university's American Indian community to take action against what they see as continuous neglect.

The departments of American studies and anthropology are cutting the courses - Survey of American Indian Cultures and Native American Images in Film and Media - because they are not required to complete either departments' major and are therefore first on the chopping block in a time of tightening university budgets.

"From the point of the department, it's a money issue," said anthropology professor Suzanne Gordon, who helped create and now teaches the Survey of American Indian Cultures course. "But I don't know how you can understand American history and American culture if you don't understand Native American history and culture. I think this is important stuff."

A petition the American Indian Student Union hopes to present to the administration in support of keeping the courses already has 800 signatures. The group will also be holding a meeting tomorrow to discuss the future of the courses. Other minority group leaders are planning to gather as well in a show of solidarity with American Indian students, who say they have faced struggles like this for years.

Professors of the two Native American-focused courses were not told about the departments' plan to cut the two classes until earlier this month, when questions were raised by Gordon.

"I just sent Dr. Struna [chair of the American studies department] an e-mail saying that I'd be interested in continuing the class," Gordon said. "She said the department just did not have the funds and that they pretty much just had to teach the classes that were required for the major."

The news of the proposed termination of the courses has rapidly spread through the campus' American Indian community and larger Native American populations in Washington and Baltimore.

Though the university continues to offer courses that address Native American subject matter, the two threatened courses are the only ones that specifically focus on Native American history and culture, American Indian Student Union president Dustin Tyee Richardson said, adding the number of Native American courses has significantly decreased since his arrival at this university three years ago.

In the past, there were up to six Native American studies courses. Because the university was unable to find permanent faculty to teach them after several professors left, the courses were phased out until the survey class and the film class were resurrected last summer, Richardson said.

"The university is obviously a very hostile environment for Native Americans," he said.

According to university census data, about 0.4 percent of undergraduates identify as American Indians, making them the smallest recognized minority group on the campus.

Richardson, who is a member of the Blackfoot Nation, said being such a small minority often makes it difficult to raise awareness about the issues they face both on and off the campus. He added that though he and other AISU leaders have met with university officials in the past, little progress has been made.

"We've talked with Dr. Cordell Black and Robert Waters about this," Richardson said. "They know what's going on, but the university does not support Native Americans."

But Associate Provost Phyllis Peres said the university administration had never issued a recommendation to do away with these courses.

"In my office, there have been no proposals to discontinue or terminate those courses," Peres said, adding departments often discontinue classes to weather budget cuts.

Advocates of the AISU and Native American studies courses said one of their long term goals is to convince the university to instate a Native American studies minor - a feat rendered nearly impossible so far by the small number of American Indian students on campus, and now the threatening of the only two classes the university provides.

"The truth is, when it comes to Native American culture within the United States, there's nothing really offered," Richardson said. "[The AISU] has been around for three years and we've been fighting, fighting and fighting for basically a Native American studies minor, for more courses, for more faculty. And the truth is, following traditional routs, we've pretty much only lost ground."

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