The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 42, No. 2 - 98

Verna J. Kirkness * Ray Barnhardt

* In 1986, only 25% of the First Nations
population in Canada completed high
school compared to half of the non-Indian
population, and of those, only 23% went
on to the university, compared to 33% of the
rest of the population. Of those First Nations
students who commenced university studies,
25% earned a degree, compared to 55% of
non-Indians (Armstrong, Kennedy & Oberle,
1990).
* In 1986, only seven four-year institutions
in the U.S. had 500 or more American
Indian students enrolled, and most of these
were tribally-controlled colleges located on
reservations (Tierney, 1991).
It is clear that despite the many efforts to
improve First Nations' participation in higher
education, U.S. and Canadian universities, byand-large, do not yet provide a hospitable environment that attracts and holds First Nations
students at a satisfactory rate. University policies and programs aimed at decreasing First
Nations student attrition are typically oriented
toward helping the students make the transition from their home culture to the culture of
the university (Beaty & Chiste, 1986; Pottinger,
1989). In a study of the college experiences of
American Indian students in the U.S., Tierney
(1991) identiﬁed ﬁve implicit "axioms" or assumptions held by universities, that serve as
the basis for most of their efforts to integrate
the students into the ways of the institution:
* Post-secondary institutions are ritualized
situations that symbolize movement from
one stage of life to another.
* The movement from one stage of life to
another necessitates leaving a previous state
and moving into another.
* Success in post-secondary education
demands that the individual becomes

successfully integrated into the new society's
mores.
* A post-secondary institution serves to
synthesize, reproduce, and integrate its
members toward similar goals.
* A post-secondary institution must develop
effective and efﬁcient policies to insure that
the initiates will become academically and
socially integrated.
However, from the perspective of the American Indian students Tierney interviewed, who
had their own distinctive reasons for "going
to the university," social integration into the
culture of the university was not what they had
in mind, at least not if it was going to be at the
expense of the culture they brought with them.
He quotes one student who had dropped out
in his ﬁrst attempt at college after two semesters, and then returned to the local community
college ten years later with a different cultural
perspective:
I think White people think education is good,
but Indian people often have a different view. I
know what you're going to say - that education
provides jobs and skills. It's true. That's why I'm
here. But a lot of these kids, their parents, they
see education as something that draws students
away from who they are. . . . I would like to
tell them (at the university) that education
shouldn't try and make me into something
I'm not. That's what I learned when I wasn't
here - who I am. And when I learned that,
then I could come back here. I sort of walked
away for a while and then came back. It's one
of the best gifts I've ever had. But a lot of us
just walk away.
In these comments, we see the university from a perspective in which what it has
to offer is useful only to the extent that it respects and builds upon the cultural integrity

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 42, No. 2

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