If Oklahoma is Native America, it stands to reason that OU should be Native U.

And enrollment statistics agree. OU has one of the largest native populations in the nation, but a lack of involvement irks many culturally active American Indians at OU.

The students say too many are claiming tribal heritage for scholarship money without participating in the community that provides it.

But students often come to OU unfamiliar with American Indian culture. They face pressure to complete school while working or supporting a family. At the same time, a comparatively low percentage of American Indians are completing college degrees.

“The enrollment card isn’t meant to be used as a discount card,” said Lindy Waters, assistant director for American Indian Student Services.

He said he has been visited by students looking for a hand out.

“They don’t want to identify. They want to know where the money is,” he said.

In fall 2005, 1,646 students on the Norman campus identified themselves as American Indians, making them the largest non-white ethnic group at OU, according to the Office of Institutional Research and Reporting.

But only 60 to 75 students participate in the American Indian Student Association each year, according to Toni Tsa-Toke, AISA cultural affairs chairperson and educational leadership and policy studies graduate student.

Compare that to the second largest minority on campus, blacks, with 1,231 students. Black Student Association events pull in at least 200 students and as many as 700 for bigger events, according to Destiny Poole, BSA press secretary.

Admissions officer Sarah Tointigh said OU became one of the first schools to adopt an American Indian verification policy in 1995.

Before that year, the university relied only on self-reporting by students with American Indian heritage. The new rules require proof of tribal citizenship before students can be eligible for specific scholarships.

Tointigh said the policy is intended to make sure scholarships go only to those who deserve them.

But Waters said not all students who are involved in the American Indian community get verification.

“A lot of our native students that are culturally native don’t feel like they have to justify who they are,” he said.

Cheryl Jorgensen, director of Institutional Research and Reporting, stated in an e-mail that 1,043 of the 1,646 American Indian students on campus had verified their tribal membership.

Every tribe has its own requirements for membership, and some are more strict than others.

“We don’t decide that. The university doesn’t decide that. The tribes decide that,” said Barbara Hobson, assistant director of the Native American studies department. “That’s sovereignty.”

Some tribes only require that one ancestor can be found on the tribal rolls, such as the Western Cherokee tribe which has citizens with only 1/4096 Indian ancestry.

Others, such as the Miccosukee tribe of Florida, require citizens to have a mother who was Miccosukee.

The variations among tribes can create complex situations for students who value their American Indian identity.

Marcus Briggs, Native American studies senior, said that although his father is a full-blood Miccosukee, he could not enroll in the tribe because his mother is not.

But he said culture is more important to him than political rights.

“It would be easy for me to get jealous of people with a drop of Indian blood,” Briggs said. “But as somebody who is trying to maintain our culture, that’s irrelevant to me.”

Students involved in the AISA said participation in the community matters more than appearance or ancestry.

“It’s not a bad thing for people who don’t look American Indian to identify themselves as American Indian,” Tsa-Toke said.

She said that she hopes students will see the community as a source of support.

“The glue that holds us together, they’re not a part of that,” she said. “If they got a glimpse of what it is, they’d hold it as valuable as we do.”

Some students with tribal citizenship are not involved with, or do not know anything about their tribal community.

Circe Sturm, anthropology professor, said many American Indian students do not learn about their heritage until coming to OU. She teaches a class on native peoples of North America and said it was “surprising how many students are members of tribes and learning stuff for the first time.”

Love said there were many things about her tribal background that she did not learn until she entered the Miss Indian OU pageant.

“I wasn’t raised up really traditionally,” she said. “It’s a step you have to take for yourself.”

Sturm said that while she respects the desire to promote American Indian culture, some students may feel nervous about joining an unfamiliar community.

“They are over-extended and getting this money and being asked by faculty and other students to give back,” she said. But they may be intimidated by the new setting or may have “social awkwardness in their lives in general.”

Hobson, who has been working with American Indian students for 32 years, said today there are more students working full or part-time jobs who don’t have time to participate in campus organizations.

She said that when she was in school she had a full ride from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but today there are less resources to go around. Both Indian and non-Indian students have to rely more on student loans.

Many American Indians are not even completing college degrees.

Although college enrollment by American Indians has more than doubled in the past 25 years, they continue to lag behind all other groups except Hispanics, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

In 2003, only 9 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives had completed a bachelor's degree, compared to 20 percent of whites, 12 percent of blacks and 31 percent of Asians.

Graduate degrees show a similar divide. Hobson said American Indians make up less than 1 percent of  Ph.D.s attained each year.

As the current Miss Indian OU, Socia Love wants to encourage American Indian children to attend college.

“It’s a big problem,” the Cherokee microbiology junior said. “There’s not a lot of people in their families who have gone to college before them, and they are scared to take the first step.”

Love wants to become a doctor, but she said she has been turned down twice for the American Indian Health Care Scholarship.

“My desire is to help Native Americans in the health field,” she said. “It frustrates me that they would give it to somebody who doesn’t really care about Native Americans.”

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