Majoring in Native American studies gives students a chance to learn or increase their knowledge of the history and current experiences of Indigenous peoples in the U.S. The emergence of this academic discipline began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, stemming from the civil rights movement and student activism on college campuses, experts say. “It started out as a need to locate within the academy a place where scholars, often from various disciplines, could focus on both the past and present of American Indian and Alaska Native existence in the United States,” says Daniel Wildcat, a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation and professor of Indigenous and American Indian Studies at Haskell Indian Nations University, a tribal university in Kansas. “There was a clear recognition that there was really no place in the academy for that focus.” With its Department of American Indian Studies approved in 1969, the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities claims to have the oldest program in the country with “autonomous departmental status,” according to its website. Since then, Native American studies programs have evolved and spread across colleges nationwide.
Statistics from the Wyoming Department of Corrections show a disproportionate number of Native American people have been sentenced to prison annually in Fremont County over the past 10 years. In 2021, for example, 41 percent of the 168 people sentenced to prison in Fremont County were Native American, the WDOC said – but that same year, people identifying as American Indian and Alaska Native made up 24 percent of the Fremont County population of 39,434, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Those are your headlines at this hour. I’m Colette Keith in the KIPI Newscenter.
