American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In the 1960s an increasing number of Native Americans began to express the need for an Indian college or university. Three major developments of the decade inspired them. The first was the rise of Indian activism in the 1960s. Although Native people had always been politically assertive, their activism became more frequent and visible. In part, the larger societal protests and the civil rights movement molded Indian activism in the 1960s. Tribal people intensified their already existing grievances against the larger dominant society, and this included their opposition to the American government’s age-old assimilationist policies for Native Americans, including the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA) 1950s termination policy that dissolved various tribal governments and Indian reservations across the nation. Tribal people wanted cultural pluralism, and one way to express Indian cultural preservation was through an Indian college or university. The second major development was the socioeconomic reforms of the Great Society, inaugurated by President Lyndon Johnson beginning in 1964. Under the Great Society the federal government provided financial support to help economically disadvantaged people develop programs to improve their quality of life. It was in part Johnson’s larger domestic battle against the war on poverty. Native Americans, along with other racial minorities, became the recipients of the various programs and federal funds, especially the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). Indian activism and the Great Society—which were two unrelated entities that shared some common goals—thus encouraged increasing numbers of Indians to push for an Indian college or university in the 1960s.