TLCEE. Ucla Tribal Learning Community & Educational Exchange Newsletter NEWSLETTER

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1 Ucla Tribal Learning Community & Educational Exchange Newsletter NEWSLETTER TLCEE The Tribal Learning Community & Educational Exchange (TLCEE) program was created in 2003 through an endowment from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. Officially opening in 2004, TLCEE introduced programs that are interdisciplinary in scope, emphasizing both legal and general education that includes Native peoples perspectives, knowledge, priorities, and visions for the future within higher education. Our mission is to serve our Native American Community through our Native peoples perspectives, that are both tribally and culturally respectful, and will allow the pursuit of a greater future for all, through our educational exchange. TLCEE's goals can be summarized as follows Development of relevant courses for delivery to the Native community and students interested in professional development and working in tribal communities; Collaboration with Native community members and traditional knowledge bearers; A focus on enhancing Native governance and nation building; and The creation of pipeline programs that encourage and support Native Students to pursue and enroll in university level courses at UCLA. It has been a very exciting two years at TLCEE as our programs are successfully moving forward and outreaching more of our Native Communities within the Southland and across the nation. During the academic year, 136 students were enrolled in online courses offered to the Native and general community. Five students worked as interns and participated in projects in Tribal Economic Development, Cultural Resource Protection, and Environmental protection. Forty (40) UCLA students enrolled in the Working in Tribal Communities courses and the Contemporary Indigenous Nations (one student from Claremont Graduate School enrolled in a WTC course through Extension at UCLA during Winter Quarter). Already, for we are looking to exceed these results with new initiatives and courses being offered. Initiatives were started in 2014, by the TLCEE, aimed at preparing our Native Youth towards higher education. This initiative included 14 students enrolling in our online classes as a hybrid oriented course in the Winter Quarter This pilot program and subsequent courses have been greatly successful and today we are fulfilling our agreement with San Manual. Our Leaders program has been met with support from San Manual and they are pleased with our work within this area. We are also reminded that this pipeline program is the first in the Nation to accomplish this type of initiative with Native Youth and we are seeing great success, as our first round of Native students are being accepted to many universities! 1

2 UCLA TLCEE Leaders Project: TLCEE has developed a core set of online classes offered to non-matriculated students that is used towards Professional development. Using these existing online courses, our Native Students are given the opportunity to earn university credit by taking these courses in a hybrid format. We developed groups of participants in online pods/cohorts (in locations in their community, to meet weekly and are assisted by mentors) Coordinators were assigned to each pod to assist with instruction of class concepts. (a pseudo instructor aide) Students met once or twice per week within these pods. Beyond the meetings students were required to read on their own. Students meet with at the middle and the end of each quarter in one forum to give presentations Projected - Spring 2015 Continuing to work in our Native Communities, we have been meeting with potential pod (cohort) locations for Spring 2015, Economic Development and Nations Building in Native America course. If each locations has 6 students (minimum) we estimate that we will have 42 students starting our third course. We would like to see 75% completion within this course, and with our efforts, we feel that we could reach this. Normally, online attrition is between 50-55% at the college level. Note: Sherman will return in Fall through Winter of as their semester and UCLA quarter system are not aligned Results from Pilot and First Session Our Pilot and our First session of our program utilized our online course of: Introduction to Tribal Legal Studies. Where our students received 4.5 units of UC transferable credit. The following are some of our results from these courses and our student motivation. Pilot Course Winter 14: Applications to Higher Ed. From Pilot Group: 14 students / all successfully completing the course Initial Pilot had Presentations at End of Course. Presentations based on: Ex Parte Crow Dog 1 to UCLA/Stanford 3 to SDSU 2 University of Redlands/Cal Poly First Session Course Fall 14: College Network: (Partnered with 7 Southern CA Universities) 17 students First session: Moot Court with Judges from Tribes and NALA. Arguments based on CA v. Cabazon UCLA / Cal Poly Pomona / UCR / UCI University of Redlands / SDSU University of San Diego One of our goals was to give our students a push point for their efforts. We are proud to say it worked as one of our students had a second look in applying to the UC system. In any case we wish him the best! 2

3 Winter Session Course, 2015 (Jan. 21- March): TRIBAL CULTURAL RESOURCE PROTECTION IN CALIFORNIA THEORY AND PRACTICE COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course explores the topic of tribal cultural resource protection and management with emphasis on the challenges faced by tribal peoples from the lands now known as California. Indigenous people in the United States have been struggling to protect resources and places with tribal cultural value from exploitation and destruction since the launch of western expansion into this continent. The course examines the significance, importance, and protection of tangible cultural resources, including sacred places. It will explore the resources in connection with indigenous life ways and identity as well as from the perspective of other interested and invested parties, including western perspectives on resource treatment and management. The course will include a survey of the archaeological, political, environmental and legal institutions and systems that address and influence tribal cultural resources. It will explore the practical and academic methods available to protect and manage the resources with an emphasis on understanding culturally appropriate methods of treatment. Course Instructors: Wendy Teeter Ph.D. Anthropology / Laura Miranda JD (UCLA Law) WTC - Not One Fit, Not one Answer In developing the Leaders Project we have been visiting many of our Tribal Communities from Bishop and Tule River to Sycuan and Viejas. As we have consistently discussed in our Working in Tribal Communities courses, each of our Tribal communities differ and our approach is to listen and develop solutions with our partnered Tribes and Native Urban communities. With each community it is important to communicate and work with each, to develop our relationship and (if they desire) we can work with them to develop some means to assist the Tribal entity. In the case of our Leaders project, we are accomplishing this effectively but with this, there is always a learning curve. Within our Leaders Project we realize that this is a new (never been done on such a scale) project and we may stumble but we will always learn from what has gone wrong and right. That is why we are consistently going out to our communities, meeting and discussing what has gone right and what we can do to improve our project. This is our way in developing trust within these communities. With this in mind, our travel and work in communicating with our Tribal communities is laying the ground work for future projects that our universities can participate within these communities. 3

4 TLCEE network of groups working within the Leaders Project: TLCEE Projects are extensive that include organizing many efforts for the success and the promotion of Indian Country. The adjacent picture speaks to our efforts. UCLA Extension, Undergraduate Admission, and the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies are working with our TLCEE program to ensure that we are successful in our efforts. Sustainability: We cannot sustain our efforts without the support of outside community partners. Here, 4 non-profit organizations are contributing employee and monies to ensure the success of our project. We can estimate that this amount exceeds $75 thousand (inkind) in contributing efforts. Our main efforts are to support our Tribal Communities. Working with 6 Tribal Communities, they are working with us to coordinate our efforts on their reservations through site coordination, in-kind use of location based rooms for our cohorts and selection of applicants. Finally, a network of universities are working with us (in a collaborative effort) to support these students within these communities. Spring Session Course, 2015 (April 15 June 12): Economic Development and Nation Building in Native America COURSE DESCRIPTION: Within each pod we will provide a class mentor (this differs from the site coordinator) who will work with the students within the given time and Economic development is a critical challenge across Native America. On many reservations, employment opportunities are scarce, reliance on public assistance is high, and the local economy is weak. Yet on other reservations, tribes have established thriving Indian-owned ventures and built economies that generate employment and income even beyond the borders of their reservations. While some of the variation in economic performance can be explained by underlying levels of natural resources, human capital, and other internal factors, research has shown that tribes with strong and capable institutions of self-government, a long-term vision for their economies, and a purposeful regard for matching business initiatives to their tribal culture enjoy significantly improved chances of economic success. This course examines several real-world case studies of economic development strategies and projects from across Indian country and evaluates the factors that contribute to their success and failure. Instruction advocates a nation-building approach to economic development--a view which acknowledges that developing a vibrant economy is as much a political, cultural, and social challenge as it is an economic one. Given the heterogeneity of Native cultures and the circumstances in which they are located, no one solution will work in all settings. Instead, this course seeks to equip current and future leaders with the skills to think analytically about economic development strategies in their respective cultural contexts. Course Instructors: Joe Graham Ph.D. Resource Sciences 4

5 Vision for Projects: With the success of our Leaders Project, we can look at the potential within our overall programs at UCLA: With our community outreach there is greater potential to place our WTC students in internships with our Native Communities. We can outreach more effectively to increase overall enrollment in our online community based courses. All UCLA Native programs will have greater exposure to our developed community contacts leading into greater interest in our community based lectures, events, and potentially within enrollment. Additional projects are being formed with our community partners (Tribes, Native Organizations, collaborating universities) where their interests in developing a Native Component within teacher Credentialing in CA. We will not be a lead on this but this does represents our work in collaborating and pulling many groups together to work on this project based initiative. In the end, we can assist in developing some means of content should the overall initiative succeed. These are just some of the potential that we have since our success with this project. Summary: We have completed our Pilot and our first session of the Leaders Project with a total of 33 participants ranging from 10 th to 12 th grades. The majority of our Leaders Seniors are applying to institutions of higher education and the remainder are continuing with our classes to gain their certification. From our initial pilot, we have drastically improved our Introduction to Tribal Legal Studies course and implemented a moot court involving greater presentation skills and understanding of the topic. To help judge our moot court attorneys from the Native American Lawyers Association, the Law Firm Procopio, and Dept. Chair from University of San Diego Ethnic Studies participated. Again, this adds to the ideal that our collaboration and work in the community is pulling so many together. We have partnered with 14 organizations which is a combination of universities, Law Firms, and Native Organizations throughout the Southern California region. Future plans are developing with our partnership with the American Indian Chamber of Commerce where we are developing a Spring and Summer business competition. Finally, we will be working with GSEIS to assist in evaluating our Leaders project. We feel it is important to critique/evaluate our project and to see if we are producing desired outcomes. All of this is a tremendous undertaking and many are assisting in making this successful. We thank all those who have participated and supported this project. Thank you! 5