Native students protest adviser

Native American students at Spokane Community College are accusing the school administration of racial insensitivity after it replaced their club’s longtime adviser with a faculty member.

About 15 students, mostly enrolled members of Spokane-area tribes, claim the Native American Student Organization at the college has been transformed into a club dominated by non-Native students who want to learn about Indians rather than an organization for Indians.

On Nov. 16, SCC officials prevented Native American student protesters from actively boycotting a NASO taco sale fundraiser at the school.

“We want our group back,” said student Lorena Swan, a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes and boycott organizer. “We feel we are being discriminated against.”

College officials say that by contract student organizations are supposed to be advised by faculty, and Native American students are welcome to join NASO or form a new group.

“We understand they are hurt,” said Terri McKenzie, vice president of student and instructional services. “They should have been told last year, and unfortunately, no one did. I do think we could have been more culturally sensitive.”

The Native students are petitioning for a new student group after the administration replaced the NASO adviser, Terri Anderson, a non-faculty SCC staff member with strong ties to local tribes.

“We are a community. You can’t just tear somebody out of the community,” said student Anah Tomeo, a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes.

Anderson, who declined to comment, is a program coordinator in SCC multicultural services. Though she is not Native American, she has worked as a tribal court advocate and as an Indian child welfare coordinator for the Coeur d’Alene Tribe.

Last summer, Anderson was advised that she would no longer be advising NASO, said McKenzie.

“She was replaced because advisers to clubs are faculty members,” said McKenzie. “Clubs are educational opportunities; they should be advised by faculty.”

Of SCC’s 33 student clubs, 10 of those clubs had a change in adviser this year. Three of the 10 clubs had been advised by staff members.

At the beginning of the school year Anderson was replaced by Nan Bulish, an instructor in arts and sciences. Bulish said she is of Native American and Latin American ancestry,

“I’ve always wanted to be the Native American adviser because I am Native American and very much in tune with people of color,” said Bulish, who said her great-grandmother was a member of the Chumash Tribe in California.

Bulish said she has long been an advocate of people who have been marginalized and discriminated against.

“Never has Nan Bulish come up to advocate for Native needs,” said Deb Abrahamson an enrolled member of the Spokane Tribe, Native rights activist and mother of a protesting student. “If she is an advocate, we never crossed paths.”

Abrahamson said college officials are glad to accept tribal money in the form of tuition and fees for enrolled tribal members attending SCC but not willing to offer them the support Indian students need to succeed.

For various socioeconomic reasons, Native American students traditionally have failed in education, she said. Those who succeeded have overcome many obstacles.

“The college should allow them this little piece, this island of support for one another,” Abrahamson said.

Bulish said that five of the nine current NASO members claim to be of Native American ancestry, including its student president, who is enrolled Lakota. Several of the members also are her students, who receive extra credit for participating in NASO as part of an academic service learning program.

She and her students said they had hoped that the protesting students would join NASO when four of them came to a Nov. 7 meeting on campus.

“The current students tried to reach out and were rebuffed,” McKenzie said. “The four of them (protesting students) came one time and then in an adversarial mode.”

Two NASO student officers present at the meeting concurred with McKenzie and Bulish that the protesting students came only to voice their disapproval.

Native American student leader Bernadette Agapith, a Colville tribal member, said she and three others came to the NASO meeting to observe and find out what NASO planned to do this month to observe Native American History Month.

“At one point, (Bulish) separated us Native American students from a Native American club,” Agapith said.