The secret... revealed

Much has been said and many efforts have been made over the years to increase the representation of ethnic minorities in academic, research and applied areas of psychology. One recent and especially promising effort is the project headed by Bertha Holliday in the Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs of the APA Public Interest Directorate to attract talented ethnic-minority undergraduates into psychology careers.

This project is supported by a three-year, $800,000 grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences?one of several tangible achievements of the Commission on Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention and Training in Psychology (CEMRRAT) chaired by APA President-elect Dick Suinn.

I serve as a consultant to the project and attended the initial planning meeting in Washington, D.C., in early 1997. Participants from five national regions?the Eastern Region, the Southeastern Region, the Midwest Region, the Rocky Mountain Region and the Western Region?gathered for three days to plan for the implementation of the project and learn about the unique challenges facing the institutions in the different regions.

The secret

It was during this planning meeting that I had my first direct exposure to some of the unique problems faced by Native Americans within psychology. I will confess at the outset that this is an ethnic-minority group with which I had virtually no previous direct experience. That weekend, though, I found myself drawn to the participants from the University of South Dakota, Vermillion; Sinte Gleska College in Mission, S.D.; and Dull Knife Memorial College in Lame Deer, Mont.

I can?t tell you what exactly caught my attention except to say that it appeared to me that each of the participants from the Rocky Mountain Region knew a secret that I didn?t know. I did my best to find out more about the secret that weekend, but there is only so much one can accomplish in the span of a brief meeting, and I was already assigned as a consultant to the Southeastern Region.

As luck would have it, I was asked to be a substitute consultant to the Rocky Mountain Region late in 1997. Now fast-forward to March 1998 when I traveled to Dull Knife Memorial College (DKMC) with Bertha Holliday and Dorothy Tucker to attend a planning meeting of the three institutions constituting the Rocky Mountain Region. To reveal my complete ignorance of Big Sky Country, I worried for several weeks if I would freeze to death in Montana in the winter, if I would be stuck there for two or three months until the spring thaw and, most importantly, if I would be of any use as a consultant in a region where my knowledge was close to zero. Well, the short answer to all of this is that the weather was warmer in Lame Deer than in Washington, I had no difficulties with travel and I was enriched immeasurably by my experiences and the people I met.

The secret revealed

I had never been to a tribal college. I now know enough to appreciate how vital DKMC is to the people of the Northern Cheyenne reservation as well as to many other tribes in the region. I have also been exposed to some of the history of the Northern Cheyenne people by my friend, Art McDonald, who was president of DKMC for many years and is now with the Morning Star Memorial Foundation.

Chief Dull Knife was known among the Cheyenne people as Morning Star. More than 100 years ago, he led his people from Oklahoma and the breakout of the barracks at Fort Robinson, Neb., back to their home in Montana. I now appreciate that the spirit of Morning Star is infused into every aspect of DKMC.

I only scratched the surface of the richness and depth of Native American culture during that brief meeting. I now appreciate Art?s suggestion to me that Native American culture cannot be described, that it must be experienced. Also, with the help of Burdette Clifford from Sinte Gleska College, Beth Todd-Basemore from the University of South Dakota and many others from the three institutions, I now have a better understanding of the secret I sensed at that initial planning meeting. I started out in my well-meaning way with the assumption that the tribal colleges have so much to learn from me. The secret is that I have much more to learn from them.