Santa Fe, NM — Nancy Strickland was named the American Indian Higher Education Consortium 2004 Outstanding Student of the Year from IAIA. Every year a student from each of the thirty-three tribal colleges is selected through its own process. This year Nancy’s Student of the Year scholarship is coming from the Castle Rock Foundation.

“I really didn’t think I’d receive the honor,” Nancy says. “I’m always looking for a way to fund my college studies. I live off campus and have a daughter and family.”

Nancy is Lumbee from North Carolina. She is in the museum studies two-year program and will graduate this May, and then will continue on for a bachelor of fine arts degree in museum studies this fall. Nancy also has aspirations of going on to law school at the University of New Mexico and combining that with an education degree.

“As Indian college students and graduates, we must regard our education as both a tool and a weapon,” Nancy says.

She has a standing job offer to work for the Smithsonian Museum of the Native American when she graduates with a bachelor of fine arts degree. The Smithsonian is encouraging her to receive an advanced degree.

Museums as Tools for Education

Nancy would like to work in a tribal museum and educate the public about who Indian people are. Tribal museums are finally afforded the voice to tell their own stories, she says. She wants to convey how Indian people live today and not in a past time. She likes the idea of young, educated Native artists incorporating modern technology into museums to show a more recent history.

“The Cherokee museum has a hologram of an Indian that comes out to greet you. I feel this puts us in a more modern context and takes us out of the mounted, stoic warrior and that Indian maiden with hair blowing in the wind,” she says.

Nancy believes the museum field today has a captive audience and now has the opportunity to define Native history as it really is. She also sees the museums as tools for education that will combat racism, stereotypes, and instill a sense of confidence and pride in Indian people, especially the children. This can be done through distant education to make an interactive community who will thrive in the future, Strickland says.

Nancy is taking 21 credits this semester and says it is a “small sacrifice to the bigger picture of things for the future.” Strickland hopes to go for an abbreviated summer internship at The National Museum of the American Indian. The museum opens to the public in September 2004. The IAIA Museum Club, of which she is a member, will be participating as volunteers for this national event.

“As Indian college students and graduates, we must regard our education as both a tool and a weapon”

— Nancy Strickland

Copyright © IAIA CHRONICLE 2004