UW makes millions from ancestral tribal lands. What does it owe Native American students?

Just outside the tiny Carbon County town of Mcfadden, a dirt road winds its way to an uneven grassy pasture. The herd from Sim’s Cattle Company stops here to graze for a week or two each year. In the north end of the pasture, a pumpjack drums up a steady flow of oil for Rock River Operating. Four miles to the east, 66 wind turbines pump out electricity for the behemoth electric utility PacifiCorp.

All three operations — the cattle herd, the petroleum pumpjack and the wind turbines — operate on state land. These parcels, and many others around the state, are held in a trust that benefits the University of Wyoming. Upwards of $1 million per year in lease payments are funneled through the Office of State Lands and Investments and into the school’s coffers. 

It’s a key revenue stream for the state’s only public four-year university, but it flows from a checkered history.

Between 1851 and 1868, the United States took ownership of large swaths of what is now Wyoming from eight tribes, including the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes of the Wind River Reservation.

“It was stolen in light of treaty obligations,” in the words of Northern Arapaho Director of Education Sergio Maldonado.

When Wyoming joined the Union in 1890, the federal government gave the new state nearly 3.5 million acres of this land to fund public schools. The vast majority went to a trust for K-12 education, but a smaller portion — 219,000 acres, an area slightly larger than New York City — was set aside for UW.

According to data obtained by Grist and shared with WyoFile, the U.S. paid tribes $682.84 for the UW state trust parcels, or around $20,000 in today’s dollars. In many cases, it paid nothing. Yet, 150 years later, the university is still profiting. Over the past five years, the trust has generated an average of $1.1 million per year from leases like the ones in Mcfadden.

This land is separate from the 90,000 acres that the federal government granted UW through the Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862, which provided start-up capital for the school. Recent interest in the Morrill Act, both in academic circles and in the news, has sparked conversation about the university’s ethical obligations to the state’s Native American residents. Meanwhile, the university is still benefiting from an even broader land gift.

The above map shows state trust lands that benefit the University of Wyoming, the location of the university and the location of the Wind River Reservation. Click on elements for more information. Map by Gabe Allen. Data provided by Grist’s Misplaced Trust investigation.

Tuition waivers

In recent years, the University of Wyoming has made some effort to give back to tribes. The school established the Native American Education, Research and Cultural Center in 2017 under then-President Laurie Nichols. The center provides Indigenous students with a place to gather and learn.

“A lot of our students have a culture shock when they go away from the reservation to school,” Eastern Shoshone Education Director Harmony Spoonhunter told WyoFile. “It’s really helping our students succeed and helping them have a comfort zone.” 

The same year that the center was established, the university also started the Native American Summer Institute. The program brings high school students from the Wind River Reservation to UW to experience campus life for six days each summer.

But the school has thus far stopped short of offering one fundamental benefit: a tuition waiver. The Northern Arapaho Business Council first asked for a waiver back in 2018. Since then, both tribes have lobbied the university’s leadership and board of trustees to consider covering costs for Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho students. 

Many other state schools, including the University of Montana and the University of Minnesota, now offer full tuition waivers for some Indigenous students. But, so far the conversation in Wyoming has only yielded vague commitments to further discussion. 

Last Thursday, tribes brought the conversation to the Wyoming Legislature’s Select Committee on Tribal Relations at its annual interim meeting. Sen. Affie Ellis (R-Cheyenne) acknowledged that the committee needs to respond to tribes’ requests, but warned against viewing a tuition waiver as a silver bullet.

“Native Americans are underrepresented in higher education, and tuition is one piece of that conversation,” Ellis, who is Navajo, told WyoFile. “There’s a lot of information we need to sort through as we continue this conversation about increasing the ability for Native students to attend college.”

Meanwhile, Indigenous attendance at the University of Wyoming remains low. This year, only 307 out of more than 8,250 undergraduate students, or less than 4%, identified as American Indian or Alaskan Native. 

Patchwork

Back in 2010, Victoria Capitan-Posey graduated from Wind River High School and received a grant from the Eastern Shoshone Education Department to attend Central Wyoming College. It was plenty to cover tuition, but she still had to work to make ends meet. Later that school year, Capitan-Posey got pregnant for the first time. It was no longer feasible to work and attend school at the same time. She moved home and focused on making enough money to support the baby on the way.

“The funding helped a lot. I got to live my college life, but I never got to finish,” she said.

Fourteen years later, Capitan-Posey helps oversee scholarships as Eastern Shoshone Education’s administrative assistant. She encourages students to stay in school and get a degree, something she still hopes to do. The department gives out $7,500 per semester to undergraduate students, but the agency doesn’t have enough to fund every applicant.

“We have to send denial letters out,” education coordinator Trish Hill said.

There are three main scholarship funds that benefit Native American students from the Wind River Reservation. The Chief Washakie Memorial Endowment funds Eastern Shoshone students, while the Northern Arapaho Endowment and Sky People Higher Education, were established by the Northern Arapaho Tribe for Northern Arapaho students. This year, around half of the students that applied for these scholarships received funding. According to independent research that University of Wyoming College of Law student Alyson White Eagle presented to the Select Committee on Tribal Relations this week, the scholarships only covered 43% of the recipient’s total need.

Following White Eagle’s presentation, UW assistant professor and High Plains American Indian Research Institute Director Tarissa Spoonhunter spoke briefly. She shared the stories of two highly motivated Indigenous students struggling to make ends meet at UW. One student, who received some funding from the Chief Washakie Memorial Endowment, is finishing up a degree in Kinesiology while working 40-hour weeks.

“She works all night at a nursing home, comes to classes, goes home and sleeps a little bit, and then goes back to work,” she said.

Financial hardship remains the biggest obstacle to a higher education for students from the Wind River Reservation, according to White Eagle’s research. Some students, of course, successfully piece together the money for college between scholarships, work and family support.

Back in the ‘70s, Maldonado earned a bachelor’s degree, completing half at Central Wyoming College and then finishing at Brigham Young University. As a star student, he received mentorship from older academically minded members of the Northern Arapaho tribe.

“They had housing set up and my tuition and books were covered,” he said. “People facilitated the creation of a safe environment that would be positive for me.”

Now, Maldonado holds a Master’s of Arts in education from Arizona State University and is finishing up a Ph.D. at the University of Wyoming. He has passed his work ethic and love for learning on to his kids as well. His youngest daughter received funding from the tribe to earn a bachelor’s at Idaho State and is now in a graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley. 

But Maldonado’s story is one of both exceptional academic motivation and an exceptional level of community and family support.

“How many students have that kind of relationship?,” Maldonado asked rhetorically, referring to his daughter. “How many have that role model from the time they’re in elementary all the way through high school.”

“As a native student myself, I can say it’s difficult to be here on my own,” White Eagle told the select committee on Thursday. “Oftentimes we’re first-generation students. Our parents and grandparents haven’t had a higher education, and they don’t know how to navigate the financial aid system and often cannot financially support us while we’re at school.”

Students on the Wind River Reservation face disproportionate obstacles to academic success long before they are old enough to apply to college. A 2023 report by the Wyoming Legislative Service Office found that K-12 students on the reservation experienced homelessness, foster care and poverty at much higher rates than the rest of the state. They also scored lower on state standardized tests and the ACT college admissions test.

The reasons behind these differences are hard to parse out, but many can be traced back in time. From the late 19th century on, tribal students in America, including those of the Wind River Reservation, were subjected to an education that displaced them from their homes and systematically stripped them of their cultural heritage. Though modern reforms have come a long way, the scars still remain. 

“You don’t have many people who trust American education,” Maldonado explained. “Arapaho people and tribal people remember what this country has done.”

Drawing lines

On Sept. 17, 1851, a consortium of tribal leaders and representatives from the U.S. government gathered on the banks of the North Platte River near Fort Laramie to sign the Horse Creek Treaty. The document divided present-day Wyoming into separate territories for white settlers and travelers, the Cheyenne and Arapaho, the Shoshone, the Blackfoot, the Crow, the Sioux and the “Utah Indians.” It was the first time that the tribes agreed to a document assigning land ownership. Under the treaty, most of Wyoming’s present-day state trust lands were designated as tribal territory.

One of the parties who witnessed the Horse Creek Treaty negotiations was Chief Washakie, the storied late-19th century leader of the Eastern Shoshone tribe. Today, sculptures, statues and plaques of the chief guard many buildings around Fort Washakie, the seat of the Eastern Shoshone tribal government. During an interview with WyoFile, Harmony Spoonhunter referenced a quote.

“Chief Washakie of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe once said, ‘I fought to keep our land, our water and our hunting grounds. Today, education is the weapon my people will need to protect them,’” Spoonhunter recited. 

Seventeen years later, in 1868, the Eastern Shoshone’s territory was overrun by ranchers, gold miners and immigrants moving westward. That year, Chief Washakie signed the Fort Bridger treaty, which ceded most of the tribe’s land to the United States in exchange for the first, much larger, iteration of the Wind River Reservation. In the treaty, he included a provision that funded a school for Shoshone girls. The institution was ahead of its time — it included traditional practices and native language in its curriculum.

The 1868 treaty also signed away ownership of lands that would go on to fund Wyoming’s public education system. So, in a sense, Washakie’s decision created two educational legacies: one that directly benefited his tribe and one that benefited all Wyomingites.

“People have to remember that all students receive a healthy financial piece of those trust land monies,” Maldonado said. “It’s not about ethnicity, it’s not about race, it’s not about tribal or non-tribal.”

It’s true that the revenue generated by state trust lands is distributed relatively equitably between K-12 institutions around the state, including those serving Indigenous students. Yet, at the university level, tribes are not receiving the same benefit — for the simple reason that they aren’t enrolled in the same proportions.

To Capitan-Posey, the answer is clear. A tuition waiver would encourage students to enroll and free up tribal funds to support students in other ways — food, housing and transportation. 

“It’s hard, as a parent, seeing your child wanting more, but they can’t reach it because they have to worry about getting the money just to survive in college,” she said.

Looking forward

Though the University of Wyoming does not offer a Native-student-specific tuition waiver, some college attendees, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, do get a state-funded full ride. In 2005, the state established the Hathaway scholarship. Like the University’s state trust lands, the scholarship also depends on Wyoming’s natural resources — it relies on a trust fund that generates revenue from taxes on oil and gas operations. 

“States that have this offer of free tuition, I don’t think they have comparable scholarship programs offered to all of their high school students, let alone Native students,” Ellis said. “The bigger question to me is how many of our Indigenous students in Wyoming are qualifying for certain levels of the Hathaway Scholarship?”

To qualify for the maximum amount, students must demonstrate need through a FAFSA application, score a 25 or above on the ACT and complete a curriculum of advanced prerequisites in high school. These requirements are a barrier to entry for many Indigenous college students — only 33% of Indigenous students at UW qualified last year. Both tribes of the Wind River Reservation and the school districts that serve them are working to bring that number up, but it’s a slow process.

“It’s a work in progress and we’ve got a long way to go,” Northern Arapaho Business Council member Lee Spoonhunter testified Thursday. “What we’ve heard from the legislative body for years now is that if there’s no tuition waiver, you guys still have the Hathaway scholarship. A lot of our students don’t qualify for that.”

Tribes have now lobbied three separate decision-making bodies on the idea of a tuition waiver, but it’s still unclear which one is in charge. University leadership and the UW Board of Trustees have repeatedly stated that the Legislature has the power to decide the issue, including in response to interview requests for this article. Yet, on Thursday, members of the select committee seemed surprised by this assertion.

“If that’s the ask — for the Legislature to take this on — then we need to know that. And, I don’t know that I’ve ever received that message,” Ellis said.

At the end of the morning session, the committee passed a unanimous motion to send its co-chairs to a UW Board of Trustees meeting in the hopes of reaching clarity on this point. Committee members stopped short of endorsing a tuition waiver, but some did speculate about how it might be funded. 

“If we were to take our colleagues a bill that said we are creating a new endowment, I just want to be very clear that that is a difficult thing to do,” Ellis said.

Both Ellis and Rep. Ken Chestek (D-Laramie) speculated that one path forward might be for the state to offer matching funds toward a UW endowment.

Tribes still don’t have a clear answer to their request for a tuition waiver, but Thursday’s meeting represented the clearest movement on the issue in years. While the state and the university figure out who is in charge, Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone leaders will continue advocating for their students. One day, they hope to see a return-on-investment from the cession of some of their ancestral lands.

During his testimony, Lee Spoonhunter spoke about his aspiration to provide future generations with the opportunity to succeed.

“When I’m long gone and we’re all long gone, the University of Wyoming can be the greatest avenue for Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone students,” he said. “We can’t do that until we are committed to provide a quality education and the best opportunities for tribal members that, at one time, lived on the land where the University of Wyoming sits.”

Clarification: The University of Wyoming trust lands cited in this story include both subsurface and surface property rights, which are leased out separately. Some surface and subsurface rights overlap each other or occupy the same physical area. —Ed.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct information about the Chief Washakie Memorial Endowment. —Ed.