Navajo Nation reps. to visit Dartmouth, other Ivies

Ear­lier this month, Rex Lee Jim, the vice pres­i­dent of Navajo Na­tion — a Na­tive Amer­i­can ter­ri­tory lo­cated on the bor­der be­tween Ari­zona, Utah and New Mex­ico — met with Ray Halbrit­ter, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Oneida In­dian Na­tion and CEO of re­tail man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pany Na­tion En­ter­prises, to dis­cuss press­ing so­cial and gov­ern­ment-re­lated is­sues, the Net­work re­ported. The meet­ing marked the first be­tween two Na­tive Amer­i­can na­tions and re­sulted in a mu­tual promise to con­tinue in­ter-na­tion ef­forts to pro­mote im­proved health care, ed­u­ca­tion and eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment.

The meet­ing and the tour are part of a wider ef­fort led by the Navajo Na­tion to take ini­tia­tive on so­cial is­sues af­fect­ing in­dige­nous peo­ples, ac­cord­ing to the Net­work.

“What we’re at­tempt­ing to do is tap into their re­sources,” Jim said, ac­cord­ing to the Net­work ar­ti­cle. “So we’re try­ing to test them out and say, ‘You need to help and part­ner with in­dige­nous na­tions.”

Dart­mouth, which was orig­i­nally founded with the in­tent of pro­vid­ing “ed­u­ca­tion and in­struc­tion of Youth of the In­dian Trives in the Land in read­ing, writ­ing and all parts of Learn­ing which shall ap­pear nec­es­sary and ex­pe­di­ent…” only ed­u­cated 28 In­di­ans be­tween 1865 and 1965, ac­cord­ing to the ar­ti­cle. In 1970, for­mer Col­lege Pres­i­dent John Ke­meny re­asserted Dart­mouth’s com­mit­ment to the ed­u­ca­tion of Na­tive Amer­i­cans and de­vel­oped one of the most sig­nif­i­cant Na­tive Amer­i­can pro­grams in the coun­try.