It means a lot to me
and my people,
my community, the Native community.
We are still here, we're
still fighting for
our right to be here.
Riley Aguirre is a freshman at
the University of Wisconsin's
Madison campus.
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.
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?
Other scholarships definitely,
applying for scholarships
outside of the school to help me
as well and probably funding
through the tribe as well.
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 Viju, Tribal Relations
Director of UW-Madison,
says the university wants to make
the Madison campus more accessible
to native.
Students.
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.
Housing, books, and
all other school-related fees
totaling about $30,000
are covered for undergraduate
Native students through the PROMISE
program.
It's not a taxpayer-funded program,
and we're pretty proud
that people want to support this
program.
The program is funded through
private donations.
Biju says the legal precedent
surrounding federally recognized
tribes is a specific
eligibility requirement for the
students applying.
To the program.
Federally recognized tribes are
sovereign nations who determine
citizenship, and so that's
a political classification.
It's not a race or ethnicity.
Schools in nearly all 50 states
offer some type of financial
assistance for Native students.
The program is unique.
It includes medical students
and law students.
Tell me more about that.
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.
Joseph Cornelius is Oneida.
His father is a UW Madison
Law School graduate who was worried
about school loans for his son.
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. Now I just
have to worry about school, get good
grades, and then it's all smooth
sailing.
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 One
Sheep.
I'd say the Wunks Chic House and the
Indigenous program have done a
really good job of promoting the
diversity here.
Viju 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 Pea-
of the big voice.
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.
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.
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 relinquish our
ownership of our historic...
John Green-Deer, president of
Ho-Chunk Nation, says the final
treaty with the government was
signed under duress.
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 we suffered
a lot for that.
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.
I don't think any representatives
of authority could
walk away from one of those
grievance and say they were the
beneficiary of something.
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.
Green Deer says the treaties of the
past are significant to their
sovereignty of the present.
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.
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 Green Deer calls late,
but fitting.
I think the Wisconsin Promise is
a very old promise that
is finally getting kept,
at least at the UW level, at least
that the college.
108 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.
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.
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 there
is some recognition that
that all happened, but there's
also the need and want to
do what's right and good for Native
people, too.
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.
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, but they've
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.
Both students are looking to use
their education to better their
communities.
I kind of want to go into wealth
management or some maybe
sustainability.
And amplify Native
voices.
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.
Reporting from Madison, Ho-Chunk
Lands, I'm Erika Aisi for
Here and Now and ICT.