Friendships That Create Kinship: Native American Student Sense of Belonging at Predominantly White Institutions
Indigenous scholars in colonial institutional settings face the reality of what it means to be a person of color in American society. To be Native American in places where Indigenous people are underrepresented at the university level presents its social and cultural dominated environments and its day by day lived experience by Indigenous students and other minority groups. Native American college students who experience higher education embody many intersectionalities as indigeneity and western ways of expression are lived and experienced. Both individual and collective identities must then navigate this phenomenon. As Indigenous scholars are presented with these lived embodied paradigms in white academic institutions, relationships are cultivated by independent and collective senses of belonging. Navigating these parallels in fixed social and institutional environments are expected and carried out by its structure.
These embodied experiences of Indigenous students create a unique lived kinship between multiple individual identities and collective practice with institutional surroundings. Indigenous students inherit the system presented before them in a way that requires them to find their sense of safe place. Places where identity could be expressed within the progressive state of collective friendship that similar share identities start the groundwork for generating relationships. Friendship, by extension, has the potential to bring another form of inclusive and exclusive kinship to the arena. These ways of viewing kinship within this framework are helpful, could be expanded, and explored more in these relationships Both Indigenous and western ways of knowing, the expressed collective indigeneity explored here could take on many forms and should be explored further. Cultivated Space intends to touch on these topics. I venture for a better understanding of how Native students establish kinship at the undergraduate level, despite the social and cultural domination of their white peer counterparts.
The lived experience of Native American college students in higher academia is challenged by a two-world paradigm that encompasses what it means to be Indigenous in a colonial nation-state society of the United States. Indigeneity may be thought to be pushed aside to adapt and assimilate to western colonial ways of knowing on the educational level. How Native American students find a sense of belonging at that university level is limited as the lived experience is challenging to grasp in nature and has yet to be deeply explored in its research and scholarly literature. Indigenous scholars and their relationships among fellow Native scholars are presented with multiple barriers that quarrel with shared and individual indigeneity, “Native American college students specifically, the cultural processes of disadvantage they encounter are likely also shaped by the juncture of these socio-historical patterns of racialization with the cultural hegemony of US higher education” (Cech 2019: 360) and as a deep history rooted in discovery and settler colonialism. In a wider broader sense, Indigenous students and people of color are at a social-cultural disadvantage when immersed in higher academia. Although these disadvantages may come off as clear-cut, these experiences create kinship between peer-to-peer student relationships during all the chaos.
The structures in place that students are expected to learn and flourish do not accommodate the social, emotional, and mental wellness of Native American students on a holistic level and the ancestral bonds they bring with them. This, in turn, affects the day-to-day experience of a student's sense of belonging in white institutions in higher education. In other words, as Kim Tallbear demonstrates, “We Native Americans have been racialized as such within the broader American cultural milieu...they have impinged upon our ability as Indigenous peoples to exercise self-governance” (2013: 32). Tallbear uses “they” as an indicator of those in control of scientific research in genome and DNA in association with tribal belonging and genetic science. Here I use “they” to confront institutional structures with inherent capitalistic values as an integrated part of their existence, an absolute authority that could very well affect how belonging is sensed from the embodied Native American student within the spectrum of an institution; how relationships are created and maintained within its traditional bounds.
The campus culture of white institutions accompanies the displacement, with continual trials and tribulations of being a Native American student of color. The interrelatedness between Indigenous students and their peers becomes an obvious question of navigation which goes hand in hand with the personal histories shaped by the experiences in life through institutional practice. The labeled minority then inherits the walking marker in greater white American society.
The lived experience is one in which the social and structural violence of race is not only confrontational in single events but is interwoven within the day-to-day existence of the labeled minority groups.
To give the label “minority” in association with Native people implies the presence of a set hierarchical structure, completely undermining those who continue to be a manifesting product of resilience and resistance in the present day—inherited from their tribal communities and people's history. Tribal Critical Race Theory is a valuable tool that uses indigeneity as a way to analyze and act upon logically, which is then used as a mode of navigation through western institutionalized settings, “a foundation in culture, knowledge, and power, the beliefs, thoughts, philosophies, customs, and traditions of Indigenous individuals and communities serve as a foundation from which to analyze the schooling practices, self-education, and experiences of Indigenous peoples'' (Brayboy and Mckinley 2005: 437-438). These holistic attributes are practiced and experienced through the lens of Indigenous epistemologies, which become fluid throughout the lives of Native American students. This realm of critical thinking is natural and unique in how it is practiced and embodied. I suggest that the thought process of Tribal Critical Race Theory serves as an ideological pathway to challenge these barriers that colonial institutions perpetuate. Indigeneity ought to be expressed to create progressive discourse in creating positive campus climates for Native Students and those who come after. Critical thinking in this way is informed by the values and morals of tribal people to continue persistence within various academic arenas, “the cultural norms of an institution are centered around Whiteness, which can and does create isolation and alienation for non-White students despite no overt racial animus” (Tachine 2017: 800). The goal then is not only to grasp the true sense of belonging on college campuses but to understand the duality of both isolated and immersed belonging. This cultivated kinship is then exclusive between Indigenous students, institutions, and campus climate.
Native students' holistic sense of belonging spreads across the board, from personal histories to tribal identities to classroom interactions. Exploring both personal and shared kinship among these students has not been widely discussed in pursuit of its discourse. Amanda Tachine also suggests that much of the research “surrounding sense of belonging concerns the relationship between the student and the campus community. Missing is the relationality among students, their families, and home communities in developing their sense of belonging” (2017: 789). Her research focuses on first-year undergraduate Native American students' sense of belonging, highlighting that not much is researched about Indigenous scholars. Little knowledge exists about how connected they feel to the fellow Indigenous students around them (Tachine 2017: 786). These formal (in the classroom) and informal spaces create friendships that have not been widely explored. I believe that these friendships that extend beyond the institutional setting are a form of kinship created and cultivated by their personal histories and relationships to the world around them, away from their family and tribal communities. In this sense, the aspect of a tribal community could be established in academic spaces between peers, professors, and academic advisors. This fascinating phenomenon will change as time moves forward and institutional structures continue to engage with students of color. Undoubtedly these interactions are intertwined and rooted in the form of kinship. Native American students who relate to their cultural roots and all forms of indigeneity are the minority in white-dominated environments, in which “they” create a way to navigate these structures.
In an institution where indigeneity is absent from the larger picture, student-led organizations like the Native Student Alliance (NSA) at the Univerisity of Denver where Indigenous scholars come and feel a sense of community in a racist and non-welcoming campus climate, challenging the processes of settler colonialism in institutional environments.
Another study explored first-generation college students of color integrating into the institutional culture, and their results concluded that “reliance on race-based affinity groups and designated cultural, race, and ethnic affinity spaces to provide them [students of color] a sense of belonging, inclusivity...” (Adams and McBrayer 2020: 752). This case study suggests that students feel safe in a group where they create friendships. In these kinds of surroundings, being with co-existing students who share similar backgrounds, there is a good chance of building an Indigenous-based relationship, whether it is intentional or not. These social bonds are ever so important in these changing contexts throughout time. Based on Margaret K. Nelson’s work on the discourse of fictive kin and voluntary kin, this kind of exploration of friendship would be a product of “organizational kin,” a subcategory of what she calls “fictive kin.”
Furthermore, she describes the “brotherhood” of fellow black men who attend white college campuses (Nelson 2013: 268). This ideology of “brotherhood” is attractive because this notion is another expression of a sense of belonging that connects to the context presented here.
Belonging is an emotional bond to the self and the environment around the individual. These change throughout time as personal histories change. The lived experience in how an individual views the world will also change. I contend that it is immensely plausible that peer-to-peer relationships would descend between Indigenous students and students of color in a comprehensive perception. This mode of thinking allows one to move forward in a persistent and critical action. This perseverance could mediate the thinking that enlightens those who occupy these roles as Native scholars to pursue change in institutional structure. Nelson's words of “brotherhood” extend across many realms of kinship, but here I use it as a form of unity against colonial pressures that target indigeneity. People of color have a keen sense of belonging when their identity is expressed and encouraged in safe spaces “to promote the persistence and success of Native American students'', that “Native students are an important component of increasing Native students’ sense of belonging '' (Oxendine 2020: 277).
As I have illustrated, the two-world lived, embodied, expressed paradigm is deeply intersectional. It encompasses the intersectionality of being an Indigenous person of color in colonial arenas governed by the standards of institutions. The lived experience of these potential modes of creating kinship extends across higher education. This one should be explored more deeply as an embodied paradigm in an Indigenous worldview. I have highlighted a unique way of focusing on relationships and intern kinship. A personal sense of belonging mediates these realities. The way peer-to-peer connection creates kinship between Native students is not deeply explored in broader research. To better grasp these intersectionalities and modes of establishing kinship, I suggest focusing on the two-world lived phenomena inherent in senses of belonging and the holistic ideology of Indigenous peoples. If a sense of belonging in the institutional setting is developed by the interpersonal relationships between the environment around the individual, exploring the friendships made within these set boundaries could be a valuable model to understand better these social, cultural, and institutional factors of embodied belonging in relation to creating kinship among diverse tribal identities at the university level.
Because of the hard work and dedication of the Native Student Alliance at the University of Denver, I can write about what my Indigenous peers across higher education have accomplished and the action of striving toward a sense of community in predominantly white institutions. It is because of the actions of our Indigenous community that I can write about our friendships that have created kinship.
Works Cited
Adams, Talisha Lawson, and Juliann Sergi McBrayer. “The Lived Experiences of First-Generation College Students of Color Integrating into the Institutional Culture of a Predominantly White Institution.” The Qualitative Report, vol. 25, no. 3, The Qualitative Report, Mar. 2020, pp. 733–56.
Brayboy, Bryan McKinley Jones. “Toward a Tribal Critical Race Theory in Education.” The Urban Review, vol. 37, no. 5, Dec. 2005, pp. 425–46. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-005-0018-y.
Cech, Erin A., et al. “Cultural Processes of Ethnoracial Disadvantage among Native American College Students.” Social Forces, vol. 98, no. 1, Sept. 2019, pp. 355–80. Silverchair, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soy103.
Nelson, Margaret K. “Fictive Kin, Families We Choose, and Voluntary Kin: What Does the Discourse Tell Us?: Fictive Kin, Families We Choose, and Voluntary Kin.” Journal of family theory & review 5.4 (2013): 259–281. Web.
Oxendine, Symphony D., et al. “Factors Related to Native American Students’ Perceptions of Campus Culture.” Journal of College Student Development, vol. 61, no. 3, Johns Hopkins University Press, June 2020, pp. 267–80. ProQuest, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/csd.2020.0027.
Tachine, Amanda R., et al. “Home Away From Home: Native American Students’ Sense of Belonging During Their First Year in College.” Journal of Higher Education, vol. 88, no. 5, Taylor & Francis Ltd, Sept. 2017, pp. 785–807. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2016.1257322.
TallBear, Kim. Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. University of Minnesota Press, 2013, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt46npt0.