Renewed Vision
by Rebecca Brant, The Scene, Summer Edition 2007, Willamette University
When the Lilly Project came to Willamette in 2001, the campus was abuzz about how
many students could find their true calling in life. But no one had yet foreseen how the
program would allow the University to reflect upon its own calling.
“How has our original vocation — as a Methodist mission school focused on educating
Native Americans — been transformed and changed by our renewed relationship with the
original inhabitants of the land?”
On Founders Day 2005, the University invited members of tribes in the Pacific Northwest
to campus for a Ceremony of Renewal to acknowledge the complex legacy of
Willamette’s history as an Indian mission school and to affirm a common future. The
ceremony aimed to create a space for dialogue and to affirm a contemporary partnership
between the University, regional and national tribes, and international indigenous
communities such as the Maori of New Zealand.
At the ceremony, representatives from Chemawa Indian School approached President
Lee Pelton and Anthropology Professor Rebecca Dobkins to propose a collaboration
between the two institutions as Chemawa began a transition to a college preparatory
curriculum. “The responsibility we had to meet this request and nurture this relationship
can be understood as a ‘calling’ on the part of the University,” Dobkins says, “one that
directly resulted from and embodied the spirit of the Ceremony of Renewal itself.”
Thus began a partnership whose focus is a student-to-student tutoring program. Every
weeknight, five to seven WU students go to Chemawa to tutor students as they take on a
rigorous new curriculum. “Most of the students here weren’t able to succeed in their
schools at home,” says Linda Lazo ’05, a former member of WU’s Native American
Enlightenment Association hired with Lilly funds as a part-time program coordinator.
“But it’s really changed the past couple of years with the tutoring program.”
The Chemawa Indian School, one of the oldest educational institutions in Oregon and the
oldest continuously operating Indian boarding school in North America, enrolls
approximately 300 students from 60 tribes across the U.S. With additional grant money
from the 21st Century Fund, the school has been able to hire an occupational
therapist/grant coordinator, provide educational field trips, and hire 10 Chemawa peer
tutors to augment the program. “It’s more than just tutoring and academics,” says School
Superintendent Jon Claymore. “It’s about social interaction, and it’s really put a sparkle
in some of our kids’ eyes to say ‘I can do this, I can take it to the next level.’”
And it’s as much about what Willamette students learn as it is what they teach. “The
students at Chemawa have taught me a lot more about life than I have taught them about
geometry or science,” says Kimi Sato ’07, a fourth-generation Japanese American.
“Hearing their stories and being able to share our unique cultural backgrounds has been
the most rewarding experience.”
“The program advances conversation about vocation on several levels,” says Karen
Wood, associate chaplain and Lilly Project director. “It allows tutors to explore their gifts
and passion for teaching and service. And on an institutional level, the tutoring program
and other collaborative programs with Native peoples of the Willamette Valley provide
opportunities for the University to explore its own institutional vocation. How has our
original vocation — as a Methodist mission school focused on educating Native
Americans — been transformed and changed by our renewed relationship with the
original inhabitants of this land? What new theological, ethical and spiritual
understandings of our own vocation as a university might result from this renewed
relationship and these common efforts?”
With 25 devoted tutors already signed up for fall semester, the program has a promising
future. “The Willamette-Chemawa partnership is the integral link between the two
institutions,” says Mara Engle ’09. “Our history is so deeply intertwined, it is essential
that we continue working together.”
http://willamette.edu/scene/2007/summer/26b/