Illustration by Jaime Hebel

“It’s shocking how little representation there is at WashU. I’ve looked through [WashU’s courses], and I’ve looked at other schools — other schools definitely have more options. That’s embarrassing for WashU,” Kane Goggans, a Native junior studying Biology and Psychology, said in an interview with us. 

The Native American representation at Washington University is not falling; it’s a failure. As of the Spring 2024 semester, the percentage of undergraduate students identifying as “American Indian” is an astounding 0.1 percent. Not only does WashU have a substantially low Native student population, it has no Native Studies Department. No Native Student Center. No Native student affinity group. And while WashU claims to have Native support, the Buder Center for American Indian Studies is only accessible to graduate students in Social Work. To us, two Native American students at WashU, the message is clear: WashU does not want to support us. 

“I thought that WashU would definitely be more of an enlightening experience and somewhere that had Indigenous representation,” Goggans said. “I was quite shocked to figure out that there really wasn’t any. And I even reached out to the Buder Center and never got a response. I wanted to get involved in that and never heard anything from them.”

If the administration truly wanted an “inclusive” environment, they would address these issues head-on. To retain enrolled Native students like us, attract Native students, and promote our Native perspectives in the academy, the University must attend to three objectives: WashU must implement a cluster hire for Indigenous professors and faculty; it must create a Native American and Indigenous Studies Department with a major; and it must fund support systems for Native American Student Centers. It’s time for WashU to step up. 

As our University continues its implementation of the Here and Next initiative, which aims to “build an inclusive, equitable, respectful, ethically principled environment,” our campus is failing to invite and retain our community who has been on this land well before this institution was founded.

“A lot of the contributions that Native Studies can make are already there in the strategic plans as goals of the University,” Paige McGinley, Associate Professor of Performing Arts and Director of the Program in American Culture Studies, said. “The University wants to be in and for St. Louis — what better way to be in and for St. Louis, than to attend to the deep history of this region?”

Hiring Indigneous experts across disciplines is the best way to ensure immediate and effective representation of our community. A cluster hire would introduce currently absent Native perspectives into different fields, and offer mentorship for us and other Native students. Without a cluster hire, a department, and increased representation of Native students and staff, WashU deliberately and intentionally sends a message that they do not care about us. 

“I feel like I would hold more value to what a professor was teaching me if I was learning from an Indigenous professor about Indigenous things,” Goggans said. “Simply having representation of any culture is extremely important when we talk about creating a diverse and inclusive environment.” 

Across the nation, peer institutions such as UChicago and NYU have announced the creation of Native American Indigenous Studies (NAIS) departments. Last October, Duke University’s student government passed a bill urging the creation of a Native Studies Department. The implementation of an NAIS program would therefore follow a nationwide pattern from peer universities that prioritize Native representation. The failure to implement an NAIS department not only shows WashU’s neglect of its Native students but also perpetuates its failure to meet the standards set by peer institutions.

“The other reason why cluster hires and departments are important is because they’re a demonstration of the University’s priorities. It’s a big investment. And it’s a way of saying ‘This matters to us.’ And that’s important,” McGinley said.

The reality of being a Native student on WashU’s campus is a daily confrontation with erasure and invisibility. With minimal classes, minimal resources, and minimal community, we feel stuck and unprioritized. These conditions are painfully surprising for a university so prideful in its supposed commitment to diversity and inclusion. 

“[Not having Indigenous classes or professors] is a removal from culture. The impact that it has on non-Native students really heightens the stakes. While not being represented, non-Native people are just continuing to live in the myth of the Native forgotten,” Goggans said. 

The University has a proven track record of responding to similar academic expansions, such as its Race & Ethnicity cluster hire that broadened scholarship across multiple disciplines. We urge the University to undertake a comparable initiative to recruit Indigenous scholars. 

As students, we believe our demands can result in actual change. WashU has established new departments and programs in direct response to student advocacy, with notable ones being the African and African-American Studies Department, created in response to student protest in 1968, and, more recently, the Asian American Studies minor. 

“[The Asian American Studies] position was created because of the student-led kind of demand to create this,” Dr. Sabnam Ghosh, Lecturer in Asian American Studies said. “The fact that there are no [Native] hires in these departments also demonstrates a lack of commitment towards these issues, towards these disciplines.”

Native American representation at WashU must urgently be addressed. If the University does not change, the percentage will fall even lower, and we will continue to feel unseen, unheard, and forgotten. But we are here to make our presence known and demand action. 

“This region removed, relocated, and killed so many Native people who were here. It feels like there’s a special obligation to attend to that. It’s my hope that the University can play a role in that,” McGinley said. 

Native students like us deserve to be here. We deserve Native and Indigenous professors to teach and mentor us. We deserve a department to study critical Native Studies topics. We deserve a space to learn and grow and gather. We are here, we are WashU, and we deserve to be seen.