Alanna
Nursing
Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI)

Alanna, a recent graduate from SIPI, has not had an easy life, but she has met life’s challenges with optimism, determination, and hard work. Alanna moved eight times before she was 12 years old. After achieving adulthood, she became a single mother, and juggled two jobs to pay the bills and life as a full-time college student to provide a better future for herself and her young son.>>More

Diana Canku
president
Sisseton Wahpeton College

Diana Canku (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate), president of Sisseton Wahpeton College and a 2009-10 academic year fellow in the American Indian College Fund’s Andrew W. Mellon Career Enhancement Program, has successfully defended her dissertation and completed her doctorate degree.>>More

For many tribal college students on American Indian reservations, choosing an education at a tribal college is often about being close to the community where they grew up. Tohono O’odham Community College (TOCC) student Sky Antone walks a few meters between home and his classes to carry the knowledge he has for and about the O’odham people.

Sky started his freshman year of college in Tempe, Arizona, many miles from the desolate, rural reservation of his home in Sells. Sky left the state university after that first year out of Barbaquari High School for reasons he describes as enduring a tough transiition from going to class in a place with lots of people gathering in an auditorium that you can’t identify with to returning home to take classes with a couple of students and enjoying a personal relationship with the instructor. >>More