Bevin Rainwater’s qualitative study examines how Indigenous students maintain identity, agency, and community while navigating historically White Institutions. Through interviews with students from diverse tribal nations, five themes emerged: cultural identity strengthening, community and space building, advocacy and resistance, critique of dominant systems, and education as a pathway to community sovereignty.
Findings illustrate survivance—an active assertion of Indigenous presence, refusal, and self-determination—as a collective and relational process rather than an individual act, emphasizing the importance of Indigenous knowledge systems, kinship structures, and institutional transformation. The study calls for higher education to move beyond symbolic inclusion and toward decolonization and the centering of Indigenous epistemologies.
See the attached flyer for the Teams link for the presentation on Monday, Dec. 22 at 10:30 a.m.