A former Fort Lewis College Board of Trustees member is calling foul on the language used in the college’s updated Native American Tuition Waiver.

Dianne Van Voorhees, a family law attorney and former board member, says the college changed the language on the waiver so that only direct descendants or enrolled members of Native American tribes may receive the waiver.

She found this out after her son, Hudson, attempted to apply for the waiver and was rejected because the language had changed.

Because he was not enrolled as a tribal member, and she did not attend the college on the NATW, he was not allowed to attend on the waiver.

Van Voorhees is a descendant of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized tribe, but did not attend on the tuition waiver because she was not an enrolled member of the tribe and her parents did not attend college on the NATW.

Her mother, Margaret Pacheco, attended Fort Lewis College but did not utilize the waiver despite being a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and being raised on the reservation.

However, Van Voorhees said both her sister and her niece attended FLC on the waiver which presented confusion because they are from the same family.

The NATW covers the tuition costs for Native American undergraduate, graduate and non-degree-seeking students.

The United States Congress gave the Fort Lewis land to Colorado on the condition that Colorado would use the land for an educational institution and allow Native American students to attend FLC tuition-free, according to the 1910 Indian Appropriations Bill.

Van Voorhees says the college decided to redefine who qualifies for the Native American Tuition Waiver without any public comment, announcements, explanations or publication.

According to the college, the tuition waiver language was changed in the spring of 2022.

Her argument stems from the federal land grant, which provided the state with the land for Fort Lewis, but did not define the term “Indian.”

She argues that Colorado law uses the term “qualified Indian” in the statutory mandate for Fort Lewis College to provide free tuition to “qualified Indians/Native Americans/Native Alaskans,” but it does not define the terms “Indian,” “American Indian” or “Alaska Native.”

“When I asked them about where they got the legal authority to change the State's obligation to serve Native American Students by making a secret decision at an executive cabinet level, they could not provide it. But they told me that they felt their decision was justified,” Van Voorhees said in an email to The Durango Herald.

Van Voorhees shared two different forms of the NATW application.

A 2019 version of the application form when her niece applied says, “The term Native American shall include all persons of Native American descent who are members of any recognized Native American Tribe now under U.S. federal jurisdiction and all persons who are descendants of such members on June 1, 1934, residing within the present boundaries of any Native American reservation, and shall further include all persons of one-half or full Native American blood. Eskimos and other aboriginal people of Alaska shall be considered Native American.”

The 2019 version references language used in the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

A version from 2022 asks students to use the form only to demonstrate if they have a parent who is an enrolled member of a federally recognized American Indian Tribe or Alaska Native Village.

The document says, “If you (the student) are an enrolled member of an American Indian tribe or Alaska Native village that is recognized by the federal government of the United States, you do NOT need to use this form, simply provide your enrollment verification document (CIB, tribal enrollment card, etc.) to the enrollment office.

Van Voorhees questions Fort Lewis College’s ability to change the language of the labor from what was already decided in earlier precedent.

She says in 1971, FLC and the state tried to change the definition so that only Native Americans in Colorado with a financial need were eligible for the waiver.

Two students, Cornell Tahdooahnippah and Physillis Culbertson, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Denver against the State Board of Agriculture, Fort Lewis College and their respective presidents.

The issue was whether a contract existed between the state of Colorado and the United States upon that granting of the Hesperus site. The U.S. District Court agreed that a contract indeed existed and that all Indian students eligible be admitted tuition-free.

“The point is that there is a contractual mandate for FLC to provide tuition free education to Indians. The term Indians means Indians, not some Indians. The 10th Circuit already established in 1971, that FLC and Colorado do not have the authority to unilaterally change the terms of the contract. Therefore, it is really inappropriate for the school to think they can change the terms of the contract,” Van Voorhees said.

In an email to the admissions department, Van Voorhees inquired as to why the language had changed in the application. She asks why it had strayed from how the state and FLC had always used the definition of “qualified Indian” in U. S. C §25-14-479, referenced in the 2019 version of the application.

Van Voorhees’ concern is that the current tuition waiver leaves out “all persons who are descendants of such members who were, on June 1, 1934, residing within the present boundaries of any Indian reservation.” This is an aspect of the original tuition waiver application, which could’ve allowed her son and others to receive the waiver.

FLC Dean of Enrollment Jess Savage responded to Van Voorhees’ email telling her that her son did not meet the requirement for the Native American Tuition Waiver.

“When we changed the criteria for receiving the Native American Tuition Waiver, we provided an exception for students who either themselves previously received the waiver under the old criteria or were in a situation where an immediate family member, meaning a sibling or a parent, had received the waiver under the old criteria. Given the information you have shared about your family, Hudson does not qualify under this exception, as he does not have a parent or a sibling who attended Fort Lewis College on the Native American Tuition Waiver,” Savage said in the email.

Savage later said in the email that in order to meet the requirement, her son would have to be either an enrolled member of a U.S. Federally Recognized Tribal Nation himself, or demonstrate that he has a parent who is an enrolled member of a U.S. Federally Recognized Tribal Nation.

Without either of these options, he would not be able to receive the waiver from Fort Lewis College.

“Through our reconciliation work, campus leadership, in consultation with many stakeholders, made the determination that the outdated and offensive language of the Indian Reorganization Act was not what we wanted to represent regarding our institution and we began the careful work of developing criteria that would capture the spirit of the waiver, while also respecting Tribal Sovereignty. We aligned our language with more recent federal legislation and definitions of federally recognized tribes, and that honors the rights of Tribal Nations to determine who their tribal citizens are,” Savage said in the email to Van Voorhees.

“If you read it, it seems like anybody who lived on a reservation, who was born on a reservation could have received the tuition waiver,” said FLC spokeswoman Nardy Bickel in an interview on Wednesday.

With this language, she said it could be believed that the tuition waiver would cover any person who was born on the reservation, regardless of whether they are Native American or not.

FLC Vice Presdent of Diversity Affairs Heather Shotton echoed these sentiments, saying the college consulted with tribal leaders and the tribal advisory committee when rewriting the language.

Bickel and Shotton also said that the language from the 2019 application utilized outdated and offensive language such as “Eskimo” instead of “Alaska Native.”

Shotton also said the language used in the 2019 application referenced blood quantum, which is also considered outdated and offensive.

“We felt after conversations with the tribal Advisory Committee, tribal leaders, community members, and leadership consulting other tuition waiver criteria to other institutions, that it was more consistent to have the requirements to be an enrolled citizen of a federally recognized tribe is more consistent with more updated federal policy,” Shotton said.

Shotton also said that the FLC Native American Tuition Waiver is one of the most expansive in the United States.

She said the new language on the waiver does allow people who are not enrolled in tribes to attend FLC on the tuition waiver, but the prospective student must be an enrolled citizen of a Tribal Nation or have a parent who is an enrolled citizen of a Tribal Nation.

“The fact that our tuition waiver covers undergraduate graduate students, non-degree seeking students and doesn't have a residency requirement, continues to make it probably one of the more expansive tuition waivers in the country,” Shotton said.

However, Van Voorhees said in an email to Savage that she sent the school his waiver applications and his certificate from their tribe that shows his descendancy.

Van Voorhees said she doesn’t have a problem with respecting tribal sovereignty, but she feels that the college is trying to reinvent what it means to be Native American.

“It’s been eight months and no one else seems to know anything about this matter and the president is out there shaking hands and kissing babies and claiming that FLC is committed to reconciliation over its torrid history as a former ‘Indian school’ during the time when the federal policy was to kill the Indian to save the man,” Van Voorhees said.

Furthermore, Van Voorhees is taking the college to task by questioning whether FLC President Tom Stritikus has the authority to make such a change to the tuition waiver. She says that Stritikus reports directly to the Board of Trustees.

When Van Voorhees tried to look up whether the Board of Trustees had listed the minutes for this meeting at any point this year, but couldn’t find them.

Bickel said that the matter was never discussed during a Board of Trustees meeting and was delegated to Stritikus. She also said that the this was not a matter that the College had to present to the Board of Trustees in order to make a change.

tbrown@durangoherald.com