40 Years of Native American Studies at Dartmouth

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Dartmouth is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Native American Studies (NAS) program during the 2012-13 academic year. When Dartmouth was founded on December 13, 1769, its charter created a college “for the education and instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land … and also of English Youth and any others.” But this central tenet of the College’s charter went largely unfilled for 200 years, as Dartmouth counted only 20 Native American students among its graduates prior to 1970.

Dartmouth’s 13th President John G. Kemeny vowed to rededicate the institution to this mission when he assumed the presidency in 1970. Native American students were actively recruited by the Admissions Office, and in 1972 the Native American Studies program was created by unanimous approval of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Dartmouth now boasts one of the most highly regarded undergraduate Native American Studies programs in the nation. In 2012, a total of 172 Native American students were enrolled across the institution. There are slightly more than 900 Native American alumni of Dartmouth College (956 total, including the graduate schools), which is more than the combined number of Native American alumni from the seven other Ivy League institutions.

Dartmouth’s Rauner Special Collections Library has a number of photos in its collection that illustrate the past 40 years of the NAS program, and a few of them are included here.

Read more about the history of the Native American Studies program at: http://now.dartmouth.edu/2013/04/40-years-of-native-american-studies-at-dartmouth/

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