MINNEAPOLIS — Red Lake Nation College-Minneapolis is welcoming students to its Minneapolis campus for its first fall semester.
Classes started last week, but U.S. Senator Tina Smith stopped by Tuesday afternoon to get a tour of the new facility and speak with students. College leaders said Smith was one of the biggest supporters of this college.
This is the college’s second location. The first is in Northern Minnesota on the Red Lake Reservation.
Executive Director at the Minneapolis location, Nadine Bill, said the college has been looking to expand its options.
“There’s a large population of Native students in the Minneapolis/Twin Cities area that represent the Red Lake Nation and many other tribes across the country. And Minneapolis is one of the largest urban Indian populations and what was missing we felt was a tribal college experience for those students,” she said.
She said their Minneapolis site is one of the first tribal colleges and universities in a major city. Through their distance learning program, Bill said students from across the country are attending classes virtually.
“Tribal colleges are a reflection of the tribal communities. Tribal colleges are about educational sovereignty, which is about preserving the culture, language, and history of the people in those areas, so Tribal Colleges are vitally important,” Bill said.
She said over 370 students are enrolled for fall classes. Bill said the college offers students an opportunity to earn an associate’s degree. She many of them go on to attend four-year universities or jump into the workforce.
“It’s vitally important that students see themselves in higher education,” she said.
Keely Smith had no interest in going to college until she visited Red Lake Nation College.
“I struggled through my high school, adolescent years. I came in support of a family member, and I ended up loving and signed up for classes,” she said. “I think that as Indigenous people when we’re in other schools, we’re very limited in numbers so sometimes we don’t feel support, or we don’t have any friends, or any allies, so in school you just struggle, or you just want to hide in the shadows.”
Smith is entering her third semester, working toward her associate’s degree.
“I want every Native American to experience this to have this opportunity because I think if I were to go to a regular college or anything like that, I don’t think I would be able to succeed,” Smith said.
She said Red Lake gives her the support she needs to be successful while also empowering her.
“I absolutely love it. It was probably one of the best decisions I’ve made,” she said. “It’s a sense of community, it’s a sense of education.”
Will Hanson said he was attracted to their program because it allowed him to “learn about my culture but still be working toward a bigger goal at the same time for education.”
He said randomly showed up one day, and really like the curriculum. Now, it’s the reason he gets out of bed.
“I’m very proud. It gets me up in the morning to come here, it gets me out of bed, it gets me excited to learn and to actually do the work and knowing that I can use this knowledge to both better myself and my community,” he said.
Hanson said he didn’t learn much about his culture in high school and learned what he could on his own.
“I had to push to learn about my culture and like do like an independent study to learn about it,” he said.
He’s happy to be a part of a school that celebrates his culture and is excited about his future.