Tuition Waivers, Indigenous Cultures, and Education among Native American Students at Fort Lewis College.

There are about three thousand higher education institutions awarding four-year level degrees in the United States. Only two provide a tuition waiver to Native American students. The University of Minnesota, Morris Campus and here, at Fort Lewis College. This waiver provides numerous benefits that related to Fort Lewis Native American student culture. Perhaps the strongest is the meetings of Indigenous Peoples. Fort Lewis has 3,500 students, of which, about 1,100 are Native American, about 30% of the student body, and come from 167 American Indian Nations. This provides Native American students to share issues related to their nations that other nations may have already seen.

However, Fort Lewis College does have some lingering issues related to how Indigenous Peoples are perceived by non-Indigenous students on campus. Many students presume the tuition waiver is provided by the federal government to any college. Others assume it means a complete free ride, where Native Americans still have many other fees, such as housing to contend with. Students will say things along the lines of “I wish I were Native.” Often saying this without realizing the still all to recent horrors Indigenous Peoples experienced, the most recent relocation of Native Americans was in 1979.