On February 5, 2019, delegations of tribal college students and staff fanned out on Capitol Hill to meet with their representatives and senators. It was National Tribal College Week and as always the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) had identified key funding requests for Congress. One of their top needs was the inclusion of tribal colleges in the Schools and Libraries Program of the Universal Services Fund, also known as the E-Rate program, which provides discounts to help schools and libraries improve internet access and bandwidth.

The packets that AIHEC carefully prepared highlighted that tribal colleges collectively have the slowest internet speeds of all institutions of higher education in the United States. And sometimes they are the only places for miles with internet service. They pointed out that in 2018, the Federal Communications Commission found that 35% of people living on tribal lands did not have broadband service, compared to 8% of Americans overall. On top of it all, AIHEC stressed, tribal colleges have the most expensive service even though they serve some of the poorest regions in the country, with costs ranging between $40,000 and $250,000 per year for simple internet access.

Exclusion from the E-Rate program is just one in a slew of inequities that tribal colleges have faced over the past half century. In fact, since the passage of the Tribally Controlled Colleges Act of 1978, they have never been fully funded, lagging far behind other colleges and universities. And so it was no big surprise that Congress balked at including tribal colleges in the E-Rate program in 2019.

But AIHEC persisted and again made it a top priority for 2020. Just as the first reports of the novel coronavirus trickled in from Washington state, tribal college delegations handed their congressional members another round of packets on the importance of including their institutions in the E-Rate program. “We really need to pay attention to addressing the digital divide in our country,” stated Carrie Billy, AIHEC’s president and CEO. “It’s really shameful it still exists. We’re not seeing . . . a real policy indication that Congress understands that.”

When the World Health Organization proclaimed COVID-19 a pandemic and America declared a national emergency, tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) collectively faced the most acute disadvantage of any institutions of higher education in the United States. As community and intellectual hubs, TCUs serve rural and remote communities. Their students are often first-generation college students from financially disadvantaged households. Many are single parents juggling school with caring for their families. In all, they confront far greater challenges than other American college students.

As COVID-19 alters daily life, instills uncertainty, and creates a mountain of troubles unknown in our lifetime, TCUs are struggling. Yet they are wrestling with this new reality and drawing from a shared historical experience that has forged a bond of resilience endemic to Native peoples. They are formulating plans and implementing changes to continue the best possible instruction they can offer while safeguarding the communities they serve.

On March 7, 2020, COVID-19 hit the Navajo Nation. Within a week, Navajo President Jonathan Nez declared a state of emergency and on March 20 the reservation, covering an area the size of West Virginia, went on lockdown. The source of the initial outbreak was a small community called Chilchinbeto, situated in the middle of the reservation that can only be accessed via a dirt road. The virus ripped through the hamlet as health officials struggled to contain the outbreak and move the afflicted to the nearest hospital in Kayenta, some 26 miles away. Soon, the virus had spread to all corners of Navajoland.

“I’m very worried, Mr. President,” New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan-Grisham told President Trump on March 30. “We’re seeing a much higher hospital rate, a much younger hospital rate, a much quicker go-right-to-the-vent rate for this population. And we’re seeing doubling in every day-and-a-half.” The virus was stealthily moving to other reservations as well, creating “incredible spikes” at Zuni, San Felipe, and Zia Pueblos. In exasperation, Governor Lujan-Grisham begged the president for the Department of Defense to establish an emergency hospital, asserting the virus “could wipe out those tribal nations.”

Throughout Indian Country, Governor Lujan-Grisham’s words struck a nerve. Many Native peoples, especially elders, are all too familiar with stories and oral traditions about contagions that wreaked havoc and nearly did “wipe out” their people. Eurasian diseases such as smallpox, typhus, cholera, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and even influenza devastated entire communities into the twentieth century. The statistics are horrifying. Some scholars have estimated that since contact in 1492, these pathogens were responsible for the steepest population decline in world history, with up to 90% of Indigenous peoples in the Americas being eradicated in what can most accurately be described as a holocaust.

Exact figures of the total number of disease-related casualties are difficult to establish, as estimates range between 10 and 75 million. But what facts, figures, data, and graphs fail to convey is human suffering. For many Native people, the loss and grief from this historical trauma have been passed down through the generations, contributing in large part to the incredible health and economic disparities that plague tribal communities.

Like COVID-19, Ebola, SARS, or swine flu, most of these Eurasian diseases that proved so catastrophic were zoonotic in origin, that is they were viruses, bacteria, or parasites that began in animals, mutated, and then infected humans. Some of these contagions afflicted the Eastern hemisphere for millennia before populations built up immunities. For example, medical scientists can trace smallpox back 3,000 years to ancient Egypt. Others are more recent in origin. But most are associated with animal domestication and the living conditions of both the animals and the humans who raised them. In medieval Europe, for instance, peasant pastoralists often lived under the same roof as their horses, cattle, or sheep with a mere stone wall standing between animal pens and sleeping or cooking spaces.

Pre-contact peoples of the Americas largely avoided risks from zoonotic diseases, as they did not practice intensive pastoralism and because the animals they did domesticate were limited to llamas, turkeys, and dogs. The novelty of such pathogens also meant they had no immunities, amplifying exponentially the devastation. Epidemiologists have traced COVID-19 to a poorly regulated wild food market in Wuhan, China, where the virus mutated and jumped species, infecting humans and leading to our current pandemic. And because of its novelty, no one is immune.

Mirroring the Navajo Nation, tribal governments around Indian Country quickly responded to the COVID-19 emergency and often were the first to issue stay-at-home orders, even when there were no reported cases in the state. The Northern Cheyenne Tribe in eastern Montana, which charters Chief Dull Knife College, mandated a curfew and posted signs on all four entrances to the reservation, limiting traffic to essential deliveries only. In many ways, the sovereign status of federally recognized tribes empowers them to tailor their respective responses to COVID-19 and combat its spread more efficiently and effectively. Still, worries persist. “Living on the reservation doesn’t automatically make us immune,” observes Dr. Richard Littlebear, president of Chief Dull Knife College.

Locking down and sheltering-in-place are crucial first steps, but providing essential services can prove more challenging, especially for economically strapped tribes. And for tribal colleges, which have always faced funding shortfalls and are crippled by limited broadband, the hurdles are even higher. How, for example, do you connect with 170 students, a large yet unknown number of whom don’t have internet access or even a computer?

In 2017, AIHEC launched the TCU Cyberinfrastructure Initiative, a two-year project that examined tribal colleges’ broadband and IT capacity with the ultimate goal of providing data and guidance to implement a campus cyberinfrastructure plan. “Our plan for the CI was to do a site visit for all the colleges—each gets a review of their physical structure as well as their online capabilities,” says Al Kuslikis, AIHEC’s senior associate for strategic initiatives. “Each college gets a set of recommendations. Maybe a server needs updated, the network architecture needs updated—some are easy fixes, others are more expensive.”

It was also this study that brought into focus TCUs’ lagging connectivity, slow internet speeds, and high broadband costs—key points in AIHEC’s repeated efforts to have tribal colleges included in the federal E-Rate program. But the CI project also illuminated other shortcomings. Tribal colleges as a whole are unable to replace network equipment. For core devices, firewalls, main switches, routers, and even desktop computers, the average upgrade is every 8.29 years, as much as double the industry standard of three to five years. This has contributed to serious information security issues. Last July, for example, Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, Washington, was hit with ransomware. The cyberattack corrupted many of the college’s internal files, including backups and legacy data.

For some TCUs, however, focusing on cybersecurity or hardware upgrades is like putting the cart before the horse. Ten of the 37 AIHEC-affiliated tribal colleges had no sort of online, hybrid, or distance learning before the pandemic. Chief Dull Knife College, for example, has never offered online courses, complicating the transition to virtual classrooms. Indeed, some courses, including night classes taught by adjuncts, have been cancelled. President Littlebear notes that all students have email, a telephone number, and that the mathematics lab has 30 computers, but with the Northern Cheyenne reservation on lockdown and the college closed, students are completing assignments as they are able, submitting them through a physical drop box at the library. “We’re trying to really gear it to make sure students get their lessons [but] there will be a drop off in attendance,” Littlebear says. “We’re going to have to start doing things that are not in our regular routine. I think we’ll make it through—I hate to say this—but with a depleted student body.”

The remoteness and rurality of most tribal colleges and the students they serve further exacerbates attrition rates. Littlebear notes that at his college, students often commute or hitchhike up to 44 miles a day. Such distances are commonplace throughout Indian Country. Sitting Bull College (SBC) on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, serves an area covering 3,572 square miles and since the campus closed in mid-March, some students seem to have just vanished. “I requested that faculty provide a list of students who they haven’t been able to contact,” says Dr. Shawn Holz, SBC’s dean of academics. “We try to contact students to find out why they haven’t communicated. We’re reaching out to students—I’m making calls myself.”

Holz says student services staff has been largely successful in connecting with most students, but the massive digital divide that separates Indian Country from the rest of the nation persists. And although SBC has offered some online and distance courses over the years, migrating all courses to virtual classrooms has been challenging. “We had just started spring break when all this began,” he explains. “So we had some time for faculty to transition to online classes.” The college has made wi-fi available in the parking lots at the Fort Yates campus and is now distributing laptops to those students in need. Still, Holz notes some students are trying to access classes with their phones, which has proven difficult as cellular connections on Standing Rock are spotty at best. Like instructors at Chief Dull Knife, SBC faculty are posting and mailing homework packets. “If it requires going old school we go back to correspondence, that’s what we do,” Holz says.

Internet providers are working with local communities like Standing Rock to expand access, but in Indian Country the starting line is far behind the rest of the country. Moreover, there’s little to no profit motive for improving connectivity on reservations that are situated in some of the poorest counties in the nation. “Maybe this is a bit of a wakeup call,” Holz observes. “There’s an awareness for needed access, but now people are becoming hyper-aware. There needs to be change if we want tribal students to thrive in this new 21st century environment.”

Even with improved broadband there are some programs that require face-to-face learning and simply cannot be moved online. TCUs around the country have specialized in job training, workforce development, and vocational programs like CDL, welding, hospitality services, and electrical trades to name a few. But how do you teach a student to reverse park a 26,000-pound, Class-A double tractor-trailer via Zoom? Holz says SBC has been experimenting with a variety of approaches, most notably reducing class sizes to three or four students plus the instructor. “You have to be creative,” he says. “We’re making adjustments where we can to ensure our students can graduate and get into the workforce. . . As long as they can meet expected course and program outcomes, they should be okay.”

On March 27, tribal colleges received help in addressing many of these challenges with the passage of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The largest economic stimulus bill in American history, the $2 trillion package accounted for 10% of the United States’ gross domestic product. The act came together chaotically, but AIHEC’s advocacy efforts paid off with tribal colleges receiving monies through a variety of mechanisms. The Higher Education Emergency Relief portion of the act allocated $50.5 million to TCUs through the Minority Serving Institution Fund, with another $13.5 million through direct grants. Tribal colleges will receive further monies as part of the Education Stabilization Fund and from the Bureau of Indian Education. Although the final figures have not been clarified, estimates hover around $70 million.

The CARES Act also provides certain waivers for Pell Grant recipients and funding for student emergency aid. In all, monies must be spent on mitigating the economic effects of COVID-19, but they can be used for critical cyberinfrastructure needs such as broadband, connectivity, hardware upgrades, student laptops, and even cell phones. And with future relief bills in the works, there is light on the horizon. Still, caution remains essential. There are many unknown turns in the road ahead.

In the late summer of 1918, Americans took a collective sigh of relief as the number new Spanish Influenza cases declined. A particularly virulent and contagious strain of the flu known as H1N1, the last major pandemic arrived in North America in March when it raged through an army training camp, claiming 47 lives. Initially, the outbreak received little publicity, as attention was focused on the final stages of World War I and the ensuing peace negotiations. But all of that was about to change.

Through the warm summer months, the H1N1 virus mutated into a much deadlier contagion—and then it struck. In October 1918, more deaths were reported than in any other month in American history. In Philadelphia alone, 2,600 people died in the second week of October. The following week fatalities rocketed to over 5,000. By the end of month, more than 200,000 Americans died of flu-related causes.

Indian Country was not spared. The influenza reached border towns like Billings, Montana; Bemidji, Minnesota; Bismarck, North Dakota; and Rapid City, South Dakota. From there it was carried onto reservations, afflicting even the most remote tribal communities. In Navajoland, the virus hit Winslow, Arizona and Gallup, New Mexico concurrently and then spread like lightning to Fort Defiance, Tuba City, Leupp, Marsh Pass, Black Mountain, Kayenta, and many other communities in the heart of the Navajo Nation. By the end of 1918, some 2,500 Navajos had died of the Spanish Influenza, roughly 9% of the population living on the reservation at the time.

While it is impossible to know for certain the prognosis of the COVID-19 pandemic, we do know that waves of the virus are hitting different communities at different times, creating divergent peaks and curves. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has said stay-at-home orders violate personal freedoms, maintaining that her state “is not New York City.” Yet days after her pronouncement, the number of cases in South Dakota soared as the virus raged through a meat processing plant and infected nearly 300 people—a painful lesson that grasping to an unfounded belief that rurality offers protection and ignoring the social distancing protocols of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can prove catastrophic.

Fortunately, many tribal colleges are taking the lead, following directives rooted in medical science, and preparing for the long term. “We are being deliberate and intentional,” says Manoj Patil, interim president at Little Priest Tribal College in Winnebago, Nebraska. “I’ve been having meetings [on COVID-19] since the first week of February. Some said I was freaking out, but I wanted to be prepared.” He stresses that preparedness is critical and that his college is taking a long-term approach to the crisis. “This will come in waves,” he says. “There will be amplitude to the wave throughout 2020 and 2021, but I would say the next academic year will be affected. Things may start to pick up in FY 2022, but I’m expecting a one to a one-and-a-half-year disruption.”

At the same time, Patil recognizes that disruption doesn’t necessarily mean declining enrollment. He cites Little Priest’s surge in enrollment in 2011 when widespread flooding along the Missouri River forced the closure of the Winnebago tribe’s casino, upending the local economy. “There’s always been an opposite relation between enrollment and the economy,” Patil observes.

Statistics from the economic crisis that began in 2008 confirm his assessment. During the recession, college enrollment jumped by 2.5 million nationally—a 16% increase from 2007. Although there was an 18-month lag period between the onset of the crisis and the spike in enrollment, as well as a 19% rise in tuition rates, the data bears out the axiom that people go back to college when the economy slumps.

However, according to one recent study, large universities with well-established online programs may be the main beneficiaries of increased college enrollment, especially if COVID-19 remains endemic in the short run. President Patil recognizes the challenge facing small tribal colleges like Little Priest. “We have an LMS, Canvas, but many [students] do not have a laptop or internet—or if they do have internet, they don’t have the bandwidth,” he says.

Fortunately, the passage of the CARES Act enables tribal colleges to commit resources to improving cyberinfrastructure, upgrading outdated hardware, and developing online curricula. Al Kuslikis says that although AIHEC has moved its CI project online, there is a “menu of services” for TCUs and that he is currently facilitating webinars, holding Zoom meetings with IT personnel, and planning ahead for onsite visits when they are feasible. AIHEC also hopes to extend the project for another year.

“Tribal colleges need to commit resources to build and sustain capacity [and] to build programs online,” Kuslikis says. “It’s important for the tribal colleges to do some solid planning on how they’re going to implement improvements.” From expanding fiber cable to reconfiguring wi-fi systems, there are myriad challenges, but an optimistic Kuslikis sees silver linings among the dark clouds.

With COVID-19, the predicament facing chronically underfunded tribal colleges is far more complex than at mainstream institutions. But Native people have been there before, and resilience is a defining trait of tribal communities. “This is truly an invisible enemy,” states President Littlebear. “But we’ve survived measles, smallpox, and scarlet fever—and we’ll survive this one too.”

Bradley Shreve, PhD, is the editor of Tribal College Journal.

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