Native American and Indigenous students at San Jose State have been designated a space on campus.
The new Native American and Indigenous Student Success Center will be located in the Spartan Memorial Chapel and is expected to have its grand opening in Fall 2023.
SJSU will be the ninth California State University to have a space designated to Native American and Indigenous students on its campus.
“We’re glad that the center is here,” said Luis Aquino, who is Zapotec, also known as Ben ‘Zaa, and a Native American Student Organization member.
“It’s gonna be a new home for our Native students here and it’s gonna welcome a new generation of Native and Indigenous students on our campus . . . it's been a long time coming,” Aquino said.
Carmina Bosmenier, who is Yaqui and a member of the Native American Student Organization, said she wished they had more institutional support in opening a center.
“There’s already so much on our plates and then to be like, ‘Oh you guys have to fight for your own identity space if you want resources or to feel seen,’ ” Bosmenier said. “I think that’s a big responsibility that we all kind of took on because we’re like, ‘Okay well no one else is doing it.’ ”
SJSU’s Native American Student Organization is a group for Native American and Indigenous students to gather, support each other and build community, according to its website.
Aquino said this is one of the organizations they have been able to count on throughout their struggle to get a center opened on campus.
“We’re very grateful to have GAIN and NASO because they have been, like, our main motivators in the times that we have lost motivation ourselves,” Aquino said. “They have been the ones that always lift back our spirits.”
Aquino said Gathering of Academic Indigenous and Native Americans, and Students for Quality Education are other campus organizations that have contributed to the effort of opening a center.
Elisa Aquino, who is Ben ‘Zaa and the program director for the Native American and Indigenous Student Success Center, said she hopes the new center will create much-needed visibility at SJSU for Native American and Indigenous students.
Less than a quarter of 18-24 year old Native American and Indigenous students are enrolled in college in comparison to 41% of the overall U.S. population, according to a report from the Postsecondary National Policy Institute.
With the Native American population making up only 1% of the students in the University of California and California State University systems, Native American and Indigenous people are disproportionately missing from higher education, according to an Aug. 5, 2021 CalMatters article.
Kihabet Alcorta-Hernandez, who is Mixteca and an advocate for the Native and Indigenous Student Success Center, said SJSU lacks engagement with Native American and Indigenous people.
“[People] still talk about us in the past tense. It’s like, ‘I’m here. I'm alive . . . my family is very much alive, not a thing of the past,” Alcorta-Hernandez said.
Bosmenier said she hopes the center will encourage younger Native American and Indigenous people to pursue higher education.
“Maybe this will be like a reassurance, like, ‘Oh, I do wanna be here because my people are here,’ ” she said. “To [say] to students, ‘Hey you have a space here where you're gonna be heard and we’re gonna do our best to find resources for you.’ ”
Elisa Aquino said in addition to creating visibility, some of the goals for the center are to build a stronger relationship with the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, help Native American and Indigenous students access resources and connect students to other Indigenous faculty and staff.
SJSU is located on “Thámien Ohlone-speaking tribal ethnohistoric territory, which . . . includes the unceded ancestral lands of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area,” according to the university’s land acknowledgement webpage.
Quetzalli Sanchez, who is Purepecha and a member of Native American and Indigenous Student Organization, said SJSU has done the bare minimum to build its relationship with the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.
“How are you gonna include a population of people who, rightfully so, had this land and just use their name without any kind of interaction with them?” Sanchez said.
Sanchez said the opening of the center is a good start, but there is still more work to be done.
“The center is really only a small step in the right direction,” Luis Aquino said. “There are a lot of systemic issues that need to be dealt with as well in order for our students to see themselves represented at our institution. To see themselves and be able to say ‘This person is doing this, I can do this too.’ ”
Luis Aquino said Native American and Indigenous students need a number of things from the university, including increased hiring of Indigenous faculty and administration, longevity for the center, initiatives from the university to educate people on indigeneity, waived tuition for native students and “intentional and continuous engagement” with Native American and Indigenous communities.
“It’s like we're the minority within the minority. Our numbers already show that there’s not a lot of success within higher ed and it’s like why? Because these things lack,” Sanchez said. “If we bring this forth to the table, can you imagine how much good it would do?”
