Group of Pueblo Indians earn Ph.D.s together at ASU commencement

Soon after the maroon-and-gold balloons rained down, the 10 newly minted Ph.D.s shuffled out of Arizona State University's big graduate-student commencement ceremony on Monday and headed for a more intimate gathering.

They had just joined higher education's most elite class of scholars after years of research and study. But even among the doctoral graduates, they were special. And they needed to mark the occasion together.

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As they gathered on the Tempe campus, they adjusted their ceremonial garb for a photo, some tweaking caps, gowns and hoods and others checking on their moccasins, turquoise jewelry and the feathers attached to their tassels. Surrounding them were dozens of family members and friends who had traveled from small pueblos in New Mexico for the occasion.

The cohort, a group of 10 Pueblo Indians, received doctorates in Justice Studies and Social Inquiry, and leaders of the program said the 10 may represent the largest group of Native Americans ever to earn doctorates in the same place at the same time.

PHOTOS OF GRADUATES

"It's really emotional. I don't have words to describe it," said Carnell Chosa, one of the graduates. "It feels like a blessing and it feels, in a sense, like a miracle."

They were among more than 4,000 graduate and 8,300 undergraduate students to earn degrees from the university this week.

Now that the 10 Pueblos have graduated, all plan to return to New Mexico and begin a lifetime of work to uplift their people through tribal governance, social work, youth outreach and more.

They are the first class to graduate from the new Pueblo Indian doctoral-training project, a joint endeavor between ASU's School of Social Transformation and Santa Fe Indian School's Leadership Institute. The goal of the program is to identify and create researchers and scholars within communities who will become leaders in policy making, taking the place of outsiders and improving Pueblo representation.

Before one of the graduate's guests blessed the food at their reception, program co-director Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy put the group's success in perspective. Of 100 Alaskan or Native Americans who start ninth grade, 48 will graduate from high school, he said. Twenty will go on to postsecondary education, and only one will finish a bachelor's degree within six years of starting. One in 2,500 Natives earns a master's degree, and one in 7,000 earns a Ph.D., he said.

"So they represent, for me, the dreams and aspirations of about 70,000 of our young people," Brayboy said. All 10 of the program's accepted students graduated in the planned three years.

A total of 126 American Indians or Alaskan Natives earned doctorates out of 52,760 total doctorates awarded in 2013, making them 0.2 percent of recipients, according to the National Science Foundation.

"It's a tremendous accomplishment because it's not only about statistical issues," said the program's other co-director, Elizabeth Sumida Huaman. "It's really also about the type of work they're doing. These are extremely conscientious researchers. Their work is extremely ethical, and their work is about moving their communities forward through self-determination.

"When you talk about social change or social transformation, this is it."

The students come from some of the 19 pueblos in New Mexico and did much of their study at home through eight back-to-back semesters of videoconferencing and online and in-person coursework, the latter of which was completed when ASU faculty would visit Santa Fe to teach intensive, weeklong classes. They also traveled as a group to Norway, Canada and New Zealand to meet with indigenous people and make academic connections.

The model was designed to honor Native Americans' traditionally strong emphasis on family and community, Sumida Huaman said.

ASU GRADUATION

It allowed them to continue doing the cultural work and research they have been embedded in for years.

The students each came to the program with an average of 15 years of experience in their fields, Chosa said. He co-founded the Leadership Institute and was one of many who conceived the program.

Another graduate served as governor of his pueblo while earning his doctorate, and others worked in health education and tribal development.

Graduates are leaving debt-free — the W.K. Kellogg Foundation provided the bulk of the $600,000 it took to educate the 10 students for three years, Brayboy said. Funding is the program's biggest challenge, he said, and they are currently waiting to see if the foundation will renew its grant and create a second cohort this fall.

Corrine Sanchez said she never would have pursued a doctorate if it weren't for this program. She was a commuter student while earning her master's, a process she said was so difficult and taxing that, once she finished, she vowed never to return. Instead, she spent 15 years creating programs to fight violence against women in her community in San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico.

"I feel that our dissertations bring a lot of that heart and soul from our community into a space that hasn't always been friendly, so it's also breaking new ground and building on the footsteps of others who have come pushed the same way we have," she said.

"I feel it validates everything that we have already known, like that we have come from this lineage of scientists and philosophers and teachers," Sanchez said. "There is power to letters, there is power to names, and I think that reflection from the outside really affirms our place at the table, that we have always belonged here."