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Link to audio story: https://www.scpr.org/news/2019/11/15/90527/native-american-students-feel-invisible-a-new-soca/ By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez Afton Johnson is a member of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians. She enrolled in a business class at California Indian Nations College. (book) Education advocates in California say one of the biggest problems facing Native American college students is that they feel invisible. Savana Saubel is one of those students. A member of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians from Palm Springs, she found her experience at College of the Desert isolating. "What was missing was just that camaraderie, having someone you know" and who knows Native culture, she said. With a few [...]

By Risa Johnson Sewa Contreras, a student of California Indian Nations College prepare to take a class at UC Riverside Palm Desert Campus on September 9, 2019.  (Photo: Omar Ornelas/ USA Today Network) The California Indian Nations College is celebrating its one-year anniversary on Saturday with "Gathering Under the Stars." The event, which will be free and open to the public, promises Native American arts and crafts, performers, artists, authors, and free food. There will be opportunities to meet founders of the college, partners, students and staff. The event will take place from 4 to 7 p.m. at the college, located on the UC Riverside Palm [...]

Sewa Contreras, a student of the California Indian Nations College, prepares to take a class at the UC Riverside Palm Desert campus on September 9, 2019. (Photo: Omar Ornelas/ USA Today Network) By Risa Johnson Enrollment at California Indian Nations College in Palm Desert has nearly doubled to about 70 students in its second year of operation, administrators say. The plan is to keep growing, with a goal of doubling enrollment each year for the next five years, college founder Theresa Mike said. Mike noted that Native Americans attend and graduate from college at low rates. The college enrollment rate in 2017 for [...]

By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez A class at California Indian Nations College in Palm Desert. (Courtesy California Indian Nations College) The numbers scream at you: in the 1997-1998 academic year, there were about 26,000 Native American students enrolled in California's community college system. Twenty years later, that number was down to about 10,000. "It's pretty shocking to see this giant decline in numbers," said Robert Przeklasa, vice president at California Indian Nations College in Palm Desert. Community college administrators offer a few explanations, including a general decline in the student population and a federally mandated counting change instituted about a decade ago. Native American higher [...]