‘Build a Better Rez’

By Nora Mabie and Cindy Graf, Lee Enterprises

PABLO — On a bright, crisp October morning, seven students from Salish Kootenai College headed to class for their final exam. It wouldn’t take place in a classroom, but rather a nondescript parking lot outfitted with a movable trailer. The students showed their skills through the high-pitched, grating sound of the angle grinder, so ear-splitting it nearly drowned out the whir of traffic on Highway 93, the main road through the southernmost part of the Flathead Indian Reservation. 

If they passed, they would obtain a welding certificate, opening the door to stable, high-paying jobs that are not easy to come by for most people in their community. 

“These guys all could go to work as soon as they get out of this class,” says Vic Desautel, the instructor. He says he gets calls every day about open jobs for the soon-to-be-grads, opportunities ranging from big stadium projects to nuclear power plants, prefabricated builds, pipefitting and more.

American Indians have the lowest college enrollment rate of any racial group in the country, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Federal data shows higher rates of unemployment among Native communities compared to the national average. 

Most jobs on reservations pay meager wages and lack opportunities for career growth. Even though the Flathead Reservation is an outlier, home to a larger population of non-Native residents and offering more economic opportunity than its peers, people still struggle to find work that catapults them to greater earnings. On reservations, if not working for the tribes or schools, a gas station clerk or a grocery store cashier might be the only option. Leaving the community could be possible, but that likely means putting potentially hundreds of miles between family members. 

Completion of the SKC’s welding course gives graduates a near-guarantee of earning more than $20 an hour in an industry with a seemingly endless demand for workers. They can work for themselves or join a union and hop on jobs all over the country. 

Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) such as SKC provide essential workforce development for their communities, often creating direct pathways to jobs that benefit the reservation. They also create a more sustainable workforce because Native graduates are more likely to stay in their own communities than someone from the outside. TCUs themselves even benefit, as students complete projects that the campus needs to get done in the name of work experience. SKC welders, for example, gain experience repairing heavy machinery parts and the college doesn’t have to pay for the labor. 

Central to the tribal college mission is equipping future generations with skills to bolster the local economy and the tribe’s capacity, and to provide a more effective learning environment for Native students compared with their Montana University System counterparts.  

Wayne Stein, a TCU expert who led the Native American Studies department at Montana State University in Bozeman, says tribal colleges are the best thing that has happened to Indian Country in a century. 

“There are many (benefits) and they're pretty visible,” he said. “The upside of having a tribal college in your community is huge, and we know that in Montana because we have seven of them.”

Education brings opportunity

Reservations have lower median household incomes and higher shares of the population below the poverty line. TCUs offer the chance to get training that directly translates into job opportunity. A 2024 report from the Montana Department of Labor and Industry concludes that a greater share of people on all but one of the reservations have achieved a two-year associate degree as compared with the statewide average, which it attributes largely to the offerings at TCUs.

It’s not enough to simply create vocational programs. TCU students are more likely to come from situations of poverty or be parents and caretakers themselves, so tribal colleges work to make their pre-professional programs accessible to students facing additional barriers. 

All of Montana’s TCUs offer child care, food assistance and scholarships for things like textbooks. Faculty is more flexible to account for challenges like family deaths to suicide — which occur at higher rates for Native people — so students can still obtain their degree. Some will provide housing or gas stipends. 

When Shawncee Brave Rock first heard about the SKC course, the idea of becoming a welder had never crossed his mind. He fought fire for nine years all around the Mountain West, but now has a 6-month-old son. That brings a whole new kind of love — and a lot more bills. 

After eight weeks of the class, Brave Rock’s vision for his future has completely changed. He wants to operate his own mobile welding business to fix fences and help with car repairs around the reservation. 

“I never touched a welder before and I really like it,” he said. “I think I’d enjoy doing this full time.”

Welding students get a $125 daily stipend to pay for their time, much of which is spent in the mobile trailer that often reaches triple-digit temperatures. It’s unglamorous. They’re usually covered in grease and dressed head-to-toe in thick, stiff workwear in the beating sun. But they return home every night, a boon for Brave Rock and others who have families of their own. 

“The more time on the hood, the better,” says Chris Brown, 20, dad to a little girl and an avid learner of new welding skills. He spearheaded the class art project — a dreamcatcher made of scrap metal, the feathers initialed by each student. 

It’s a far cry from when Desautel earned his welding credentials. Growing up on an Indian reservation in Washington, Desautel said his only options were jail or learning a trade. The way to learn a trade was to get off the reservation. He enrolled in a course in Chicago for Native Americans, but only about half made it through the program. Some stumbled without their support systems; others had to return home for family obligations. 

“You can bring it to the reservations,” Desautel said of the traveling welding course he now teaches. “They are able to learn but they don’t have to leave home right away.”

Tribal colleges allow Native learners to acquire new skills while staying tied to their culture and community — and at a far lower price tag. The average price of in-state tuition at a public college for the 2021-2022 school year was $10,388. By comparison, the American Indian Higher Education Consortium calculated the average cost of tuition and fees during that same year at a tribal college to be $3,744. 

No matter the origin, this synergistic relationship is partly why TCU students are more likely to view their investment in higher education as worthwhile. A 2022 survey of TCU graduates by Gallup found 67% of respondents said their education at a tribal college was worth the cost, relative to 38% nationally. 

“We are providing a service that the state university system is not doing,” said state Sen. Susan Webber, D-Browning. 

Grow your own workforce

Each of Montana’s seven tribal colleges has made job training a primary focus. It entices enrollees and bolsters local economies. Working in harmony, TCUs respond to the needs of the surrounding communities and invest in making those opportunities accessible for prospective students. 

“As a community college, we have adaptability to assess and see what our local workforce needs and adapt our programs to opportunities,” said Craig Smith, the president of Fort Peck Community College. 

Stone Child College offers carpentry classes. Fort Peck Community College is piloting a program in tribal governance and administration. Chief Dull Knife College has courses in American Indian education and early childhood education to prepare new teachers to work on the reservation. 

Developing a workforce of people from the community who hope to stay close to home is critical to filling gaps on reservations, where everyone from public schools and health care facilities struggle to recruit and retain skilled workers. Some of these institutions try to attract outside professionals with financial incentives or other advancement opportunities, but the result is often a rotating cast of characters.

Trust, already fragile due to decades of systemic violence against American Indian communities, is hard to build when the teacher changes halfway through the school year or a primary care provider leaves town. 

Around 74% of TCU graduates nationally end up employed on or near the reservation, according to the Gallup poll. They offer the possibility of a more sustainable solution to persistent workforce challenges. 

Gwynne White Quills is one of those students. Mom to seven kids, she graduated from Blackfeet Community College with her registered nursing license in May 2024. While studying, she continued to work as a nursing assistant at the Indian Health Service facility in Browning. It was normal for her to steal just a couple hours of shuteye as she juggled coursework, hospital night shifts and parenting. 

During the two-year program, White Quills relied on her husband for help with the kids and leaned on her teachers to make sure she absorbed the material and stayed on track. At BCC, she felt like more than just a student, and that allowed her to believe she could do it all. 

“I don’t think that I would have ever gotten my nursing degree if it was anywhere else other than here,” she said. 

White Quills passed the nursing boards shortly after graduating, officially making her a registered nurse. The BCC program is not yet accredited — though it aims to be by 2026 — so it took a bit longer for her to get hired as a nurse at the local Indian Health Service facility. 

Once she did, though, it marked the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for the 38-year-old. Although she had worked in skilled nursing facilities and as a nursing assistant on the reservation for years, she always thought this next step would be unattainable. Too many responsibilities. Too many mouths to feed. Not enough hours in the day. 

“I am really looking forward to finally being able to do what I wanted to do,” White Quills said. “When I look at where I’m at, where I work, I’m like, ‘Man, this place is the reason I want to be a nurse.’ Working here, working on this unit for my people, with my people, this is the reason why I wanted to be a nurse.” 

Residents of the Blackfeet Reservation face significant barriers to quality health care even as their community endures disproportionately high rates of chronic illness and premature death. 

The latest Community Health Assessment found that 26% of Blackfeet Reservation residents go to the emergency room rather than scheduling an appointment with a primary care provider, often due to long wait times. Another report from the American Medical Association found that American Indians account for just 0.3% of all physicians nationally despite a growing body of research which shows that patients with medical providers from the same background see improved trust and better outcomes. 

Now White Quills gets to play a role in helping address such vast inequities as a highly trained nurse in a health care setting that struggles to recruit qualified practitioners. She’ll also understand the sensitivities of Native patients entering a mainstream medical system, knowing to ask permission before combing the hair of seniors, for example, or to inform patients about their options for traditional ceremony such as smudging or using sage in the hospital. 

“Right now, I'm still kind of shocked and in awe that I actually did it,” White Quills said. “That was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.” 

There are countless stories of TCUs empowering Native people to progress their own careers, improve their earnings and boost self-confidence. All have ripple effects on their family and community more broadly. When Indian Country does better, the surrounding economies do, too. One report suggests that Montana’s tribal communities contribute $1 billion annually to the state’s economy. 

“(Tribal colleges have) lifted the spirit of people,” Stein said. “For the first time, you have students who feel welcome in schools. … While tribal colleges aren’t huge — they have between 100 and 300 students — 400 students, they do that year after year after year, and it starts to add up.”

‘Let’s build a better rez’ 

Renata Underwood experienced that transformation of spirit firsthand. Her story starts as a high schooler in Lodge Grass on the Crow Reservation with parents who were largely absent due to chronic struggles with substance use disorders. Simply getting herself up and off to school each morning on the 20-minute bus ride from the house in Crow Agency was a daunting task for the teen.  

It started with a few absences before snowballing into a pattern of missing school. Instead, Underwood would hang out with friends. Alcohol was pervasive. Eventually, she dropped out, and her dreams of being a lawyer were eclipsed by the basic needs of survival.  

Almost 20 years and four kids later, Underwood had moved to Hardin, a border town between the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations. She tried four different times to obtain her HiSET — the test equivalent of a high school diploma — through the local library and a community center in Billings, but failed every time. Underwood recalls feeling lost in the classes and confused about how to improve. 

Then, in 2023, her oldest daughter was set to graduate from high school. 

“I thought, 'My baby is not going to graduate before me!'” Underwood said.  

A friend told her about the HiSET program at Little Big Horn College in Crow Agency. She could attend for free, and the HiSET adviser gave Underwood $40 to cover gas costs for the round-trip drive every time she visited campus for the course. After every practice exam, Underwood would receive private tutoring to identify how to up her scores. 

When she got her results, Underwood was driving in the car back from the grocery store. Her phone pinged, and Underwood’s heart started to race with the thought that it could signal the arrival of her HiSET score. She had barely gotten through the first few sentences when she burst into tears. Even more than a year later, Underwood beams when she recounts this moment.  

“I was crying like a big ol’ baby,” she said. “I couldn’t believe I actually did something.”   

But Underwood didn’t stop there. So enamored with the LBHC experience and the power of education, she went on to obtain her certified nursing assistant license in a one-year program. She encourages her kids and neighbors to pursue education. 

“I got a taste and feel of LBHC, and I really like it,” she said. “I didn’t realize that I wasn’t utilizing something that is such a great opportunity.”

Next, Underwood plans to indulge the dreams of her teenage self by signing up for an American Indian policy class. Maybe one day she’ll become a lawyer, after all. 

Underwood isn’t pollyanna-ish about how hard life can be for her fellow Native people. But she does believe that if more people take steps toward an education or a new career path at LBHC, or another of the state’s tribal colleges, they could create change for their community. 

“Let’s build a better rez,” she said.

This story was created with the support of the Higher Education Media Fellowship at the Institute for Citizens & Scholars. The Fellowship supports new reporting into issues related to postsecondary career and technical education.

This series, available across Lee Montana newspapers, is running without a paywall.