Nic Adds Program On Indian Culture

North Idaho College will offer an American Indian studies program starting next fall.

“This culminates a nine-year effort,” NIC instructor Tom Flint said Tuesday.

It also fulfills one of nine goals included in a 1997 agreement between the Coeur d’Alene Tribe and the two-year state school.

NIC’s lakeside location is a traditional gathering place of the Coeur d’Alenes, who are eager for an increased awareness of their culture at the college and improved opportunities for their students.

NIC Vice President for Instruction Jerry Gee will report on the new program at this evening’s board of trustees meeting.

“This program provides our students and the community an opportunity to develop an appreciation for the history of the native people of this region,” said Gee.

Four new courses have been developed: Introduction to American Studies, Race and Ethnic Relations, American Indian History, and American Indian Literature. A fifth course in comparative government is being developed.

Also beginning next fall, NIC will offer three courses on Salish, the Coeur d’Alene language. Courses on the language are currently offered by Lewis Clark State College.

In addition, Native American topics will be infused into a wide variety of core courses, said Flint, who led the effort to develop the studies program.

“Only about 20 colleges in the entire country offer two- or four-year degrees with that as a major,” he said.

“There are very, very few, when you consider the African American studies, Latino American studies, Asian studies and Oceanic studies programs around the country. As is typically the case with Indian people, they sort of drop off the edge of the world.”

While refining the course descriptions, Flint worked closely with Dianne Allen and Cliff SiJohn of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe. He visited the Spokane and Colville Indian reservations, and spoke with officials of the Nez Perce Tribe.

He consulted with Peter Campbell, who counsels Indian students at Eastern Washington University. EWU has an excellent minor in Indian studies, Flint said, but it is so tightly structured that NIC students won’t initially be able to transfer there.

“It’s an important goal for the future to dovetail with Eastern’s program,” Flint said.

Lewis Clark State College, Idaho State University and Washington State University also offer minors in Native American studies.

NIC instructors are available to teach Indian literature and the more broad-based class in race and ethnic relations, Flint said. Instructors have yet to be found for the other two courses.

“We are eventually hoping to have a full-time Indian studies instructor and program coordinator,” he said.

The roots of the new program go back to 1990, he said, when the social science division that Flint chaired was identifying its goals. “We realized we didn’t know anything about Indian students at NIC. … We set about to find out who they were, how many we had and how they were doing.”

There weren’t many, and they weren’t doing well, he said.

“For reservation Indians especially, the European educational model runs against the model of their traditional learning,” Flint said. “Often they just disappear. They don’t bother to formally drop out.”