How UW-Madison's Aid for Native Students Addresses History

Frederica Freyberg:
You can watch our extended interview with Professor Barnes on our website.

UW-Madison sits on ancestral Ho-Chunk land. In recognition of that and to give back, the Wisconsin Tribal Education Promise offers full tuition, including housing costs and fees, to Native undergraduate students in Wisconsin. The promise also extends tuition waivers to Native law and medical students. “Here & Now” reporter Erica Ayisi looks at the program and the history behind it. This report is in collaboration with our partners at ICT, formerly Indian Country Today.

Riley Aguirre:
It means a lot to me and my people, my community, the Native community. We are still here. We’re still fighting for our rights to be here.

Erica Ayisi:
Riley Aguirre is a freshman at the University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus.

Riley Aguirre:
Education was used as assimilation to get rid of our culture, our language, our traditions but now it’s used as a way of teaching.

Erica Ayisi:
She’s an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation and attending the university at no cost to her or her family using the Wisconsin Tribal Education Promise program. How would your family have paid for college otherwise?

Riley Aguirre:
Other scholarships, definitely, applying for scholarships outside of the school to help me as well. And probably funding through the tribe as well.

Erica Ayisi:
The Wisconsin Tribal Education Promise program provides financial support for students who are enrolled in one of the state’s 11 federally recognized tribes. Carla Vigue, tribal relations director of UW-Madison, says the university wants to make the Madison campus more accessible to Native students.

Carla Vigue:
We worked with tribal leaders from across the state to create the program, and now we’re seeing the fruits of those labors. You know, we’re seeing our first class. We’ve got nearly 80 students in this first class. And we’re hoping it will grow from here.

Erica Ayisi:
Tuition, housing, books and all other school-related fees totaling about $30,000 are covered for undergraduate Native students through the promise program.

Carla Vigue:
It’s not a taxpayer-funded program, and, you know, we’re pretty proud that people want to support this program.

Erica Ayisi:
The program is funded through private donations. Vigue says the legal precedent surrounding federally recognized tribes is a specific eligibility requirement for the students applying to the program.

Carla Vigue:
Federally recognized tribes are sovereign nations who determine citizenship. And so that’s a political classification. It’s not a race or ethnicity.

Erica Ayisi:
Schools in nearly all 50 states offer some type of financial assistance for Native students. The program’s unique. It includes medical students and law students. Tell me more about that.

Carla Vigue:
We are hearing from people across the country, even in particular, about that law aspect. There’s a lot of excitement around the law school.

Erica Ayisi:
Josef Cornelius is Oneida. His father is a UW-Madison Law School graduate who was worried about school loans for his son.

Josef Cornelius:
Initially, we were thinking that some of it would probably have to come out of my pockets or his pockets, and the fact that it was like, no worries, you know? Now we’re just — now I just have to worry about school, get good grades, and then it’s all smooth sailing.

Erica Ayisi:
Undergraduate recipients of the Tribal Promise are reserved one wing of dorms inside the Smith Residence Hall. There’s also an Indigenous student center close by that hosts tribal student groups like Wunk Sheek.

Josef Cornelius:
I’d say the Wunk Sheek house and the Indigenous program have done a really good job at promoting the diversity here.

Erica Ayisi:
Vigue says the university wants to do what’s right for Wisconsin’s Native people considering the university is on Native land belonging to the Ho-Chunk, also known as the people of the Big Voice.

Carla Vigue:
This is Ho-Chunk ancestral land, and I think there’s now some sense of pride in that and wanting to share and celebrate that history but there’s also, you know, with this promise, a chance to give back too.

Erica Ayisi:
The University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus extends over 900 acres of land, including a four-mile stretch of shoreline along Lake Mendota. But this land is the ancestral home to the Ho-Chunk Nation, the Native people who were living here for over 10,000 years. Through a series of treaties, the Ho-Chunk were forced to cede or give up this land to the state of Wisconsin and the federal government.

Jon Greendeer:
The 1837 treaty wasn’t a revered treaty at all. These are forced agreements to cede our land, such as that particular treaty, move west of the Mississippi, and, you know, and relinquish our ownership of our historic homes.

Erica Ayisi:
Jon Greendeer, president of Ho-Chunk Nation, says the final treaty with the government was signed under duress.

Jon Greendeer:
We had eight months to vacate, but then we didn’t. And in the coldest parts of the winter, they shipped us in rail cars across to the neutral ground. And, you know, we suffered a lot for that.

Erica Ayisi:
Ho-Chunk were given one and a half million dollars for their land, but the government put most of it into interest-bearing trusts, leaving Ho-Chunk next to nothing.

Jon Greendeer:
I don’t think any representatives of authority could walk away from one of those agreements and say they were the beneficiary of something.

Erica Ayisi:
Most of the Wisconsin Native tribes were forcibly moved to reservations, but Ho-Chunk people are spread across the state with over 7,000 currently enrolled members. Greendeer says the treaties of the past are significant to their sovereignty of the present.

Jon Greendeer:
The treaties gave way to a lot and substantiated our abilities to negotiate not only with local governments, but also later on with these other little governments that were starting up with the education campuses with the UW.

Erica Ayisi:
Ho-Chunk had already surrendered this part of their land in an 1832 treaty, paving the way for UW-Madison to be built in 1848. Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act in 1862, selling 1.3 million acres of tribal land in Wisconsin and using the proceeds to create so-called “land grant universities.” And so today, the tuition promise extends to Native students across the state. A promise Greendeer calls late but fitting.

Jon Greendeer:
I think the Wisconsin promise is a very old promise that is finally getting kept, at least at the UW level, at least at the college level.

Erica Ayisi:
One hundred and eight years after the last treaty was signed, Robert Powless, an Oneida man, became the first Native to graduate from UW-Madison. Ada Deer, a Menominee Native, was the first woman. For Aguirre, a free university education on Native soil is personal.

Riley Aguirre:
Our education is not only for me, but for our community and for the resiliency of my ancestors. We fought so long through so many generations of trauma and abuse and neglect and being here is like resiliency.

Carla Vigue:
They were forcibly removed, and this university has spent some time coming to accept and share that story and part of the reason this promise exists is because, you know, there is some recognition that that all happened, but there’s also, you know, there’s also the need and want to do what’s right and good for Native people too.

Erica Ayisi:
A heritage marker was erected on UW-Madison’s campus to recognize the ancestral home of Ho-Chunk. It’s near Bascom Hill, which sits on top an effigy or burial mound built by Native people over a thousand years ago. A series of 12 Ho-Chunk circle clan sculptures are outside the Bakke recreation and Wellbeing Center.

Carla Vigue:
The promise is intended to be forever, right? I mean, Native American students have been around, you know, since the beginning of what is now the United States, been around since the inception of what is now this country. And I think the goal is to make sure that they’re taken care of forever.

Erica Ayisi:
Both students are looking to use their education to better their communities.

Josef Cornelius:
I kind of want to go into wealth management or some — maybe sustainability.

Erica Ayisi:
And amplify Native voices.

Riley Aguirre:
I do want to go into some field where I can be an advocate for possibly my tribe or other people, but definitely Native people as a whole and getting our voices out there to be heard.

Erica Ayisi:
Reporting from Madison Ho-Chunk lands, I’m Erica Ayisi for “Here & Now” and ICT.