 Welcome to Insight, produced in partnership with Lakeland Public Television, serving North Central Minnesota. Today, we are chatting with Bill Brockwell, Jr. of the American Indian Resource Center at Bemidji State University. Bill has generously agreed to share some of his experience with us. I'd like to thank you, Bill, for joining us today. Thank you for having me. So serving Indian Country, serving Native peoples in a particular region has certain real challenges and people really benefit from the service that you provide. Talk about the organization, talk about the challenges that people face, and talk about how you help the community to advance. Some of the work that we're doing is really in the supportive role for American Indian students. BSU has a really long and storied history of supporting American Indian students and a lot of people don't realize that because a lot of it was in the late 60s, early 70s, when it was happening. We put on our council of Indian students puts on a pow-wow each year, and we're on our 44th year upcoming. 44th year. 44th year, which means that the pow-wow started in 1972, and that was really a time where a lot of religious freedom act and things like that were just passing that made it legal for ceremonies and different cultural expressions to happen for Native people. So to think that at that time BSU was putting on a pow-wow is a pretty remarkable feat to be honest with you, and it's a very big tradition that we uphold very strongly. The Indian Studies program, is it focused on the peoples of this region, or is it more broadly- It was more focused at that time. In the past couple years, we've actually changed to an Indigenous Studies program, which is a little bit more of a focus on Indigenous people across the country and the world. And the reason for that is that there are a lot of amazing things that are going on in Central America, in South Africa, there's just all these amazing Indigenous tribes. And so many touch points- Correct. And things that we can learn and apply to our area here today as well. One of the tactics that has been used by cultures to destroy other cultures is to remove pride and create within the adversary culture a sense of belittling of different aspects of that culture, belittling of language, belittling of it goes so far as physical features, traditional crafts, technologies, knowledge, and so on and so forth. And if you can erase knowledge and sense of self, then you can replace it with something else that you impose. You see this often with religious proselytizing. You see this often with cultural conflicts. You certainly have seen this in the history of European interactions, European immigrant interactions with Native peoples. What you're basically doing is creating the next generation of leaders, the next generation of advocates, the next generation of powerful voices for the peoples of this region. We're really breaking it down to the simple aspects of what you need to do to be successful. And you're right on. I mean, through the boarding school process, within one to two generations, a lot of our culture, a lot of our language, a lot of our beliefs were stripped. Exactly. We were talking about that just before. Absolutely. And that was the intention. That was the intention. You hear a lot of talk about, wow, there's some theories about this. No, that was the intention. The intention was to remove those things. And one of the things, we have a lot of American Indian students who are first generation students, and they don't have that family to kind of call upon to say, hey, should I be feeling stressed out right now? Should I be doing this? I was just giving a talk in Winona recently to Winona State University, and I use the example of midterms, and all of a sudden all these care packages start showing up for people. Where's my care package? And I'm calling my mom, and I'm going, there's these boxes showing up. Why am I not getting a box? And she's like, what's inside the box? I don't know. And it was because she didn't go to college. I was a first generation student. She didn't know that that's a stressful time, and a lot of parents send care packages to their kids. You can bet that my son's going to get a care package when midterm hits for sure. But she didn't know that. So a lot of our students don't have that to call upon. And I think one of the unique things that the Resource Center offers is sort of that home away from home. We joke a lot, me and my staff, that we sort of take on the parental, anti-uncle roles sometimes with a lot of our students. But that's what's needed. They don't have that to draw upon, to call and say, it's finals week. Should I be feeling like I want to jump off a cliff right now? Yes, you should. And it's OK. You're not going to jump off that cliff. Here's how we're going to get you through, and oh, by the way, we're serving a meal tomorrow to make sure that you're being fed and that you're doing OK. And we do things like that quite a bit. And things like that really come from the cultural sense that I grew up in, in a small community up on the North Shore in Grand Portage, Minnesota, and that was a very communal way of living that we did. I remember my dad fishing, he was a commercial net fisherman, and part of my job was to take some of the fish to the elders who couldn't fish anymore. And so that sense of upbringing that I had really leads to some of the things that we do at the Resource Center, just to have it be more of a communal feel. And it's funny because from a higher education standpoint, sometimes saying, while our retention programings, we're going to have a lunch, well, wait a minute, but it gives me an opportunity to touch base with so many more students that I wouldn't be able to. I get to ask each of them if they're registered for classes or if they're having issues. My assistant has a notebook and writes down names if we don't, and we follow up with them. And it also gives us a chance to just say thank you for all the hard work you're doing. And you know what? We're really proud of you. What knowledge of your own family informed your own journey? My family was always for education. They always pushed education, but it was always a case of if you go to school. And we talk about this with our young students when they come on campus. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when and where. And we try and change that mindset in their head. And I talked a little bit before about how that boarding school in one to two generations took a lot of things away. I really firmly believe that in education in one to two generations, we can put those things back. Because my family talked about if, I talked to my sons about when. And the circumstances are different today. That skepticism in many respects protected culture in earlier eras because the culture was under attack. And so one understands the skepticism inherited today based on a past that was so destructive to culture. That means that you can't say that the skepticism has no basis in reality, in protection. You say, yes, absolutely, be skeptical and come in and see that today it's different. Today we're actually providing the education to our own community. And it's not destructive. It's actually creative and it's energizing. And that part of what you are talking about being able to meet people's needs is so critical to success. Absolutely. And I think one of the things that's really important, too, is that you're going to have people out there that still feel that way. And you're going to have people that say, well, wait a minute, I can be a leader in my community without a degree from higher education. And that's absolutely true. Absolutely true. And I look to my parents for that. I mean, my dad is one of our spiritual leaders in our community. He's a fluent Ojibwe speaker. Never went to college for more than, I think, he went a semester one time. So there's not to say that you can't do that. And that's one of the things I think that we try and really sort of meld together is how do we take that traditional knowledge from people like that, bring them in as speakers, bring them in as workshops and teach our students about it so that they're sort of combining it as well now. In terms of how BSU functions and these programs functions as a community strengthening organization, how does your funding work, how do your resources come together to assist all of these students and the community to be stronger? We're tapping into different sources. We're trying to do different things. And we're trying to be sort of unique in how we do it. The way that fundraising has been done in the past is for the traditional scholarship. And that's still very much needed. But that doesn't mean that we can't start a fund that has retention programming in mind. That doesn't mean that we can't start a fund that maybe one day leads to an immersion child care facility on campus that our youth can learn the language while being close to their parents who are in school or in the language. There is a tremendous need for students that isn't met specifically by the budget that I have from the college. Emergency things come up all the time. And we've actually gotten to the point with most of our students where we don't even talk about it in terms of if something comes up. We're almost trying to be ahead of the curve and prepare them and say it's going to be when something comes up. And here's how we're going to deal with it. Here's the resources we have. I'm the point person you can come talk to. And so I think that that's got a lot of traction as well because students feel like they're more prepared when these issues happen. And it happens every semester. Sometimes it happens multiple times to students. We had a student that had four deaths in his family last fall. I mean, that's a tremendous impact on a person. And all four deaths were in the metro area. So all of a sudden now all the money is being used for gas to go back and forth. It was very emotionally taxing. And we were able to get that student some services on campus. We were able to provide some emergency funding as well. And so that's a reason why the fundraising aspect has really increased as well. Your background as a fundraiser equips you as an advocate. You're actually asking for investment in the future. You're not asking for money. You're asking for an investment. The return on investment will be an educated student, somebody who's productive, somebody who's capable of being economically self-sufficient because of the knowledge that they gain through their education. And I always make a little joke. Like you don't all need to come to BSU. A few of you do. So I still have a job. But there's so many different variations of college now. You can come to a university. You can go to a technical college. You can go to a tribal college. You can go to a community college. I really challenge students that I have a hard time believing that they can't tell me that college isn't for them because there's so many different forms it takes on. You also talked about the importance of ritual of the person who has achieved making that walk to receive their diploma. A walk that they're not just making for themselves, they're making that walk for the community, for the family. They are basically making a statement not only of their achievement, but of how important that cultural connection is to the vitality of an entire community. Of peoples across this region and across the United States. Yeah, and that's one of the things that we still struggle with a little bit is there are a lot of students that make this remarkable journey. They finish it and they don't wanna celebrate it. And so we actually host an annual banquet for our students each year. And a lot of our students, because of the cultural component of it, we have the drum, we have a pipe ceremony, all these different things. A lot of them tell us, hey, even more so than commencement, we look forward to this. But the cool thing about the banquet is we give out our stoles to our students. So every student who self-identifies as American Indian receives a stole that they wear on graduation that signifies they are an American Indian. And that is so important. Being the example, the public example is so critical to others. That is allowing yourself to be the inspiration. It's so important. A lot of our students will say, I'm not sure if I'm gonna walk in commencement. And one of the things I always say at the banquet is that traditionally we have what's called a victory song. And that song came out of a need to celebrate something that happened, whether that be a neighboring tribe, a victory in a war, a big kill of, say, a moose that's gonna feed the community. There was this victory song aspect. And we don't take the time sometimes in this sort of technological hustle and bustle as fast as you can go age. And that's one of the things that we really encourage our students. And like you said, it's not just for them. A lot of students who say, I don't wanna walk in commencement, I'll say it's for your kids. It's for your nieces and nephews. And it's for everybody to see another stole walking across the stage that signify how many native students we have graduating. This year we had 34, last year we had 45, which is a two-year high for the university. 45 was the most we've ever graduated at one point in time. And so we're at a point now where we're starting to hit about a few years ago. We hit our 1,000th American Indian graduate in BSU's history. And we're about 300 into our second 1,000 now. And it's just an amazing thing when those students do that and those kids get to see it. One of the things that I really, really advocated for when I first came to the Resource Center was to be as kid-friendly as possible. I'm gonna have to miss class, I don't have daycare. No, no, no, bring your kids in. We'll watch them for you. We'll let them hang around with us while you're in class. And it's a two-pole thing. It's to support the students, but also it's so that those young kids grow up knowing that, hey, I used to go to BSU all the time. I feel super comfortable there. I know the cool things they do. I know the programming they have. I know that I always have these things that are designated for kids, and we want that. We want our community to grow up knowing that BSU's for them. Bill Blackwell, Jr., thank you so much for sharing your experience, your leadership at the American Indian Resource Center at BSU. And thank you so much for your insights.