Harvard's Indians Are Getting Ahead To Help Their People

Jim Sam

When you look at Jim Sam, you don't know he is an American Indian. But he knows it, and he never forgets it.

"When I was here for the first time, in 1967, I was the only Indian student," he says. "The next year, I think they got an Eskimo. But you have no one you feel comfortable associating with, no one you have anything in common with."

He speaks softly, almost apologetically, raising his wide, arching eyebrows. But in his quiet way, he is forceful and deliberate. He knows what he wants to say and he knows where he wants to go.

He got to Harvard by something of a fluke. A Yale-sponsored program called the Transitional Year, designed to channel minority students into Ivy League schools, contacted him when he was in high school. Sam has never been able to figure out how they got his name, but since they did--and, he jokes, since his high school principal advised him against it--he decided to make the big trip to the alien East, while most of his friends went off to find jobs or fight in Vietnam.

After spending a year in New Haven and discovering he didn't like it, he decided to try Cambridge. But he found it wasn't much better here, and in 1970 he went back home to his tribe, the Choctaw in Oklahoma.

"Frankly, I was fed up with this place," he says, half-smiling. "I had lost interest in going back to school--I didn't see what it was doing for me. And there were a lot of things going on back home at that time--the new law had been passed giving us the right to have tribal elections. I felt cut off from all that, so I went back home."

For four years he worked in the Oklahoma Indian community, a loosely organized group of about 23,000 spread over ten counties in the southeastern part of the state, which has no Indian reservations. Then, last January, he returned to Harvard, having acquired a wife, Emma, a hyperactive four-year-old daughter, Angie, and a specific goal--law school.

Sam knows what lies ahead of him, what kinds of things he's going to work for. "First you have to do two things," he says, counting them out on two of his fingers. "One, you have to solve the problem of who has the power on the reservation, the Indian or the white man--and it seems to me to be the white man. And two, you have to stabilize the land base, the reservations."

Sam also knows what has to be done for Indians at Harvard. First, you have to bring more of them here--there are still only 11 undergraduates--and you have to make sure they're the right kind of Indian. Most Indian students who manage to get here come from urban areas rather than reservations. Because they are used to "straddling the fence," as Sam puts its, they have little or no trouble adjusting to Harvard, but--for the same reason--they are less likely to make a direct contribution to Indian society once they get out of here.

"The type of people that are coming here, you can't rely on as leaders for the Indian people," Sam says. "They don't come from the reservation, so they don't have that experience factor to draw on." The reservation, he says, gives Indians a sense of identity, "something you can point to and say, if you destroy this, you destroy us--something to rally behind, to show to other people."

American Indians at Harvard, the group that Sam chairs, has taken up as its main project a recruitment program aimed at Indian students on reservations. The four five active members of AIH have been flying around the country, their fares paid by the admissions offices, speaking to entire school bodies and to small groups, trying to get people to consider applying to a place as unfamiliar as Harvard.

It isn't easy. Indian students who consider college at all are more likely to think of state schools, where there are special programs for them. Sam says that, being realistic, he doesn't expect a very high proportion of the students AIH has contacted actually to apply "because of the distance from home, the strangeness of the place."

He adds: "Indian people tend to believe that unless someone they know has been to a place, they shouldn't go there."

But is Harvard really a good place for Indians to go to? "Well, I think it's potentially a good place for them," Sam says quickly. "You can get a good education here, you can make contacts, you get a lot more exposure to things than you would back home."

Sam believes that the very fact that there are so few Indians here now gives Harvard the chance to develop a really good Indian program eventually. "You can start from scratch," he says. "People are more open to ideas here. Back home, you've got a lot of rednecks who think they already know everything about Indians."

What Harvard has to learn, as Sam sees it, is that "you can't treat an application from an Indian simply as any other application, or even as any other minority application. The same goals simply don't apply. For instance, all this business of a professional career as the end of your existence--you know, you make a lot of money and you have a sweet life--Indians don't see that as the ultimate good. Their ideal is to make a contribution to the community. Of course, that's not true in every case--you have some people who are just looking out for themselves--but I think you do find a sense of purpose by and large, a desire to do something in the future."

"Everything here is oriented towards whites," he says. "Or if it's not oriented towards whites, it's not oriented towards blacks. So where does that leave Indians?"

Clark Morres

Clark Morres says he is "exactly one half" Indian. On the dresser in his room there is a collection of photographs of his relatives, half of them Indian, half of them white. On one wall, he has tacked up posters of nature scenes and Elton John; on the opposite wall there is a drawing of a grim-faced Indian, with the inscription, "All we ask is to be allowed to live in peace--Dull Knife, Northern Cheyenne."

Morres readily admits that he "went to a middle-class school in a middle-class community." But, he adds quickly, "I know what I want to do. I want to go to medical school and work as a doctor on a reservation."

Morres has not been active in AIH because, he says, he hasn't "gotten around to it." Later he volunteers more of an explanation, a trifle defensively. "Now that I'm here, it would be a waste of time for me to spend time working with AIH, because I have to prepare for what I'm going to do later on. It's an individual thing. I'm not the kind of person who can speak to large groups of people. I feel better about working on an individual basis, and investing in myself. But I have no desire for wealth or money."

He doesn't feel out of touch with things that are going on back home--something that Jim Sam sees as a problem for Indian students--because his father, a Paiute Indian and the executive director of the Nevada Indian Affairs Commission, keeps him well informed. "He's given me a million books to read," Morres says.

There have been occasional conflicts between his white mother and his Indian father, Morres says, but nothing very serious. "Indians are very magnanimous, and Dad's always inviting people over," he offers as an example. "Sometimes that's a little hard on my mother. Also, Indians are as a rule very clannish."

Morres came to Harvard after taking a year off, during which he "bought a bus pass and traveled 30,000 miles in two months, visited 30 different schools, worked in New York City for a month, stayed here at Harvard for two months, and worked as a page in the Nevada State Legislature." Once he got here, he found that, in some ways, it was easier to adjust to Harvard than to high school.

"In school, I felt I couldn't have my white friends at the same time as my Indian friends, but here I don't feel that. Back home, everyone knew where everyone else came from. But not here--it doesn't make any difference," he says.

Although he seems to have slipped easily into an all-white milieu, Morres feels he still retains his identity as an Indian. "Nowadays it's more than a matter of blood to be an Indian--you have to think like an Indian." And Morres thinks he thinks like an Indian. For instance, he says, Indians are more used to "listening rather than talking--and I think that's one reason I don't jump into the discussion in my Gov 30 section."

And as for the future, Morres is not likely to forget that he is an Indian. "The reservation is not a lovely place to live," he says. "I wouldn't pick it. But that's where the need is right now, and that's where I'm going to go."

Sue Williams

Ten years ago, the Navajo reservation in Arizona where Sue Williams lives had no lights and no paved streets, and people got around by horse and wagon. Now, she says, things are a lot better--nearly everyone has a pick-up truck and some new houses have been built.

But in terms of education, the Navajo reservation is still one of the most backward in the country. "Ours is the first generation to have over 50 per cent with an eighth grade education," she says, emphasizing the figures, pausing to let their meaning sink in. "Ninety per cent of the students in my high school barely had a sixth grade reading level. Maybe 4 per cent went to college."

A major problem for Indian students on the "res," as Williams refers to her home, is learning English as a second language. Her own father didn't learn English until he was 14. On the reservation, she says, "there is no question that the language persists, the religion persists, the culture persists."

The only disadvantage of coming here, for her, was the lack of any Indian community. "I have a sense of being cut off from the politics at home," she says. "There's no forum here for Indian ideas."

While she is here, she is devoting much of her time to building an Indian community through the AIH recruiting program, but she admits that it is hard to convince people from her reservation to come so far away to a place where there are so few Indians.

"There has been no organized effort at recruitment by the University--it was only by the efforts of the four of us (AIH members) that the groundwork was laid," she points out with a note of bitterness. "There are some concerned people in the administration who have encouraged us. But there are some people who feel, give them a little and they'll be satisfied."

Williams seems to have had little trouble making the transition from the reservation to the University, and when she goes back home to recruit she goes as living proof that an Indian can make it here--or rather, that at least some Indians can. Her family is more affluent than most on the reservation, and her parents--who are both public health workers for the government, a job usually held by whites--have been able to provide her with opportunities other Indians have not had. But she is confident that her case has not been unusual. "I know there are people back home who should be here," she says. And, she believes, if Harvard is willing to change its ways, they will get here.

Kyle Patterson

Kyle Patterson grew up on a Tuscarora Indian reservation near Niagara Falls, N.Y. But she has also been an exchange student in Brazil, has gone on a cross-country trip with her mother and her brother, and has lived in Germany with her parents.

"I think I've been fairly exposed to various types of life," she says, explaining why she hasn't had much trouble adjusting to Harvard. "I guess my parents wanted me to have any experience that would be educational, and they felt travel would be an educational experience."

She always knew in high school that she would end up-going to a "semi-decent college," she says, because her mother, who is supervisor of Indian Affairs for New York State, had gone to Cornell. Many Indians on the reservation are critical of the state's treatment of Indians, and Patterson says she is in sort of a "precarious position" because of her mother's job. "But," she adds, "I think people are beginning to realize that she's not just a token for the state."

Patterson looks Indian, with strong features and large almond-shaped eyes hidden behind thick black lashes that point down instead of up. But she has a sophistication and worldliness that you don't expect in someone from an Indian reservation.

Ask her what her father does, and she pauses before saying, with a hint of sarcasm, "He's a log-cutter. And a grape-grower." Then she seems to wait for you to laugh.

Ask her what is taught at the reservation school, and she says that they teach the Indian language. Then she adds, with a slightly embarassed giggle, "And they have night classes in beadwork, and...intermediate beadwork, and advanced beadwork."

She says that she has had no trouble making white friends here, but that she has encountered a lot of ignorance. "I get annoyed if people ask ignorant questions," she says. "Sometimes I can be cynical--I tell them I live in a heated teepee and my father provides meat for the year." Then she adds quickly, "Of course, that's not true."

Patterson is an active member of AIH and has gone back home to recruit for them. The members of the group have "a mutual base by virtue of our being Indian," she says, "but we live our own lives." Eventually, she would like to work "in the health field" on a reservation, whether her own or another she hasn't decided.

"The way I view things will always be different because I grew up on a reservation," she says. "There are things behind me, in my childhood. For instance, I've gone hunting and spear-fishing with my father, and I've held partridges for him--"She looks up and smiles. "How many Radcliffe women can say they've held a partridge?"

The Indians who have made it to Harvard seem to have little trouble making it once they are here. They come, in general, from an Indian elite--three of the four interviewed have parents holding government jobs usually held by Anglos. And even though they may dance at pow-wows or their relatives may make lacrosse sticks, they have not been sheltered from the white world.

Adjusting to Harvard is no more difficult for them than it is for most other students--except when someone asks them if they wear feathers at home and live in a teepee. But the greatest problem they face is not prejudice but ignorance, and ignorance can be cured by a little curiosity on one side and a little patience on the other.

Their greatest concern right now, aside from getting into medical school or law school, is bringing more Indians to Harvard. And their greatest fear is that Harvard will accept the wrong kind of Indian--the mixed-blood or the urban Indian who claims his Indian heritage only when it's to his own advantage and does not, like themselves, plan to live on a reservation. But if they do succeed in bringing the "right kind" of Indian here--those from the reservations who have not had the advantages they themselves have had--they may find themselves confronted by a new problem: how to soften the culture shock an Indian who has never "straddled the fence" will probably experience here.