Solving the Funding Riddle
American Indian students have more avenues for funding available; the challenge now is getting the word out to them.
By Garry Boulard
When Leola Tsinnajinnie decided to pursue a major in educational thought and sociocultural studies at the University of New Mexico, she knew she could only afford to attend that state’s largest public university by getting outside support.
“The tuition was not something I would have been able to pay for myself,” says Tsinnajinnie, 27, a graduate assistant for UNM’s Institute for American Indian Education and a teaching assistant for the school’s Native American Studies program. “So I was lucky that I had other places to turn.” She was given a scholarship from her Navajo Diné tribe in southwestern New Mexico. She also received additional support from the American Indian Graduate Center (AIGC), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support American Indian graduate students.
“And even with that combined support, I am just able to pay for everything I need,” says Tsinnajinnie, who hopes to become a professor in American Indian studies and to teach at a tribal college in the Southwest.
Tsinnajinnie’s educational career has been promising so far. She is a member of the Indigenous Scholars in Dialogue for Critical Consciousness and the Native American Studies Indigenous Research Group. But some education officials with expertise in American Indian scholarship programs say such success stories remain too rare, and a lack of available money and information continue to limit American Indian enrollment in higher education.
“We help more than 100 students a year,” says Pamela Silas, director of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) in Albuquerque, N.M. Despite its name, the organization also awards scholarships for American Indians studying agricultural science, architecture, business and law.
