A long, long time ago, when Pa’ash was like our people, they used to gather the boys together when a sufficient number had reached the precipice of adulthood, of manhood, when their voices started to crack and change. Depending upon where you lived, they would be gathered to drink the powerful Nuktamush, or Toloache medicine, prepared especially by an esteemed elder and medicine person, in order to meet their ancestors and spirit-twins, and to have no fear of death or in life. They would drink this specially administered medicine by the elder-medicine person, who would lead them in special songs and then to dance until they passed out around the sacred kish or enclosure prepared for the ceremony. When they awoke, they would describe what happened, sit in front of a sandpainting which represented the universe, and be told of its meaning. They would also be told of proper behavior, core values, and rules from which to guide the rest of their lives. When all was done, the sandpainting would be wiped away, but it embedded in their memory for life. This is a story from the Payomkawichum Nation.
Such was the nature of traditional Indigenous education throughout Anowara’kowa, or the Great Turtle island. Yet colonizers sought to change and transform the land and its peoples. In the land of the setting sun, what came to be called, California by the Spanish, colonizers began making an impact as early as the 1536, when Hernán Cortés set foot in Baja California, searching for gold and pearls. Cortés brought with him many maladies and illnesses. Some were carried in his ships, some in his crew’s bodies, some in their words, language, and ways. And some, they carried deep in their hearts.
In 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo arrived on the coast of Alta (Upper) California, where he met a diverse plethora of peoples formerly unknown and unheard of to he and his crew. Yet, these peoples had already heard of Cabrillo and his kind. They had heard of the horrible things the outsiders had brought and were going to bring upon the people. Yet, in many cases when Cabrillo’s crew touched land, they shared gifts, they traded, they made love. But like any bad house guest, Cabrillo did not leave when he was supposed to; his men stole food and water and people, and they became unwelcomed. This is what caused his likely death at the hands of the S’amala (Čʰumaš/Chumash), who put an end to the colonization of California for at least the next 200 years.
Prior to this encroachment, the Native nations of California combined had a population of roughly 300,000 people; they were the sole inhabitants of the region for 20,000 or more years. However, “California” itself is an imperial invention, and only has meaning in this context as what the Onkwehonwe, or Indigenous nations, called their homelands and the land as a whole. For them, this land was known by many other names such as Tamayawat (Payomkawichum), Kodo (Maiduk), [ʔ]ám:a čáhṱimúyčo (Pʰo:mo:) and hundreds of others. Thus, 99% of all the history of this land is under the sole influence of nations that carefully protected, consecrated, interned, entombed, pruned, groomed, burned, fished, trapped, farmed, gardened, and hunted their sacred homelands.
The most recent 1% of history has been extremely eventful, tragic, and traumatizing. Yet the people have persisted, demonstrating that this land survives because of and for them. This is Čʰumaš land. This is Payomkawichum land. This is Natinixwe land. This is Olekwo’l land. This is Chochenyo land. This is Nomlaki land. This is Patwin land. This is Waashiw land. This is ‘Aha Makhav land. This is Yaha land. And this land is still loved by the people—every blade of grass, every obsidian stone, every valley and volcano, every spring, river, lake, and its great ocean. Every creature is sacred, special, needed, and honored. The people are still here.
Jack D. Forbes and His Idea of a Tribal College in California
When one discusses the creation of Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl (D-Q) University, one must begin at the origins of Indigenous “higher” or “advanced” educational forms and methods. Insight from the historical works of Steven Crum, Jack Forbes, and others provides some clues to the longstanding notion that American Indian universities are nothing new on the back of the Great Turtle, Anowara’kowa. Every institution, custom, or way of a people is to create, nurture, and safeguard themselves, the territories that nurture them, the languages and stories of their being, their ceremonies and economies of survival. These and much more are bound together in a series of concentric rings of relationships, bound to all living things through universal laws of interdependence and local laws of autonomy and governance.
Where “education” happens is simple: everywhere. But where do people take advantage of, and create opportunities for focused learning and specific transmission for copying and practice, for testing and assessment, for application and adherence, for specialization and mastery, for wisdom? Many people create special locations or utilize windows for engaging the youth with adults and elders. This all begins, however, with mothers. We are born from First Mother, the primary teacher, and it is her voice which speaks to the young, first and foremost, while in the womb. This of course, is in mimicry of our Anowara’kowa, Tamayawat, Pachamama—the Land as Mother.
The story of D-Q University is rooted firmly in the land and peoples of California, but also in other Native nations and nationals who have recently relocated. There are many versions of where and how D-Q began. Some state that the university was the genius of Marie Potts, a Yamanim Maiduk (Mountain Maidu) from Nakam Koyo (Big Meadow). Potts was the legendary editor of Smoke Signal from 1947-1977, the newsletter of the Federated Indians of California where she was a leader. Potts was also a major figure in the founding and early years of the California Indian Education Association, she was active in the Inter-Tribal Council of California, and was a founder and leader of the American Indian Press Association. Her organizing work in Sacramento and beyond was well known and respected, and her cultural knowledge was equally impressive and often requested. Potts deserves credit for being one of the paramount movers and shakers of all Native California. D-Q benefited from her leadership and voice, her humor and humility, and her steadfast resistance and resilience. However, there is little evidence to corroborate this version of the story. The bulk of the evidence shows that D-Q University was the brainchild of Jack D. Forbes.
Forbes claimed to be a Renape/Lenape man, although census records suggest he was White, as were his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents (Census 1930; Census 1940; Census 1950; Census 1960). Of course, non-Native people did not exist prior to the invasion of Anowara’kowa, and Forbes recognized all of his ancestors in a kind of “revolutionary genealogy,” as he often coined it. This included his Saponi, German, Swiss, Hungarian, Scottish, Irish, and Alsatian, as well as Renape and Lenape, ancestors. In his own words, Forbes stated,
Being a mixed-blood myself, and also a mixture of many tribes, I had long been aware of the significance of being a “half-breed.” Back on the East Coast, however, I became increasingly aware that those of us who looked European and Indian had a hell of an advantage over people who looked Indian and African. I thought that that differential treatment was so much White racist bullsh*t, and I still do (Forbes, 1987, pp. 120-121).
Forbes was born in Los Alamitos, California, and raised on a half acre in El Monte del Sur, east of Los Angeles, during the Great Depression. His community was “a rural Mexicano-Okie-poor White area” one, and he readily believed that Mexicans were Indians (Forbes, 1987, p. 113). This was a formative period for him, and one which unsurprisingly forged his early conception of peoplehood, Indigeniety, and which would contribute to the founding of D-Q University.
The Forbes family moved to Eagle Rock, a predominantly White and conservative area west of Los Angeles in the 1940s, where young Jack, as he described, “would have
psychologically perished had it not been for a range of hills that came up to our backyard. . . . where I could dream” (Forbes, 1987, p. 115). He met his lifelong brother Richard “Dick” Livingston there at Eagle Rock High School, and together formed a rebellious group called the Pathfinders that utilized Jack’s top of the hill canyon, which led up to the sacred Eagle Rock and the coarse chaparral surrounding it. Jack would wage war with the developers in those hills, losing the battle, but gaining courage and insight from his stint as a saboteur. It was also during this time that he became involved in politics, social justice, and his lifelong cause of decolonization.
Forbes attended Glendale College from 1950-1952, then transferred to the University of Southern California on a scholarship, earning a BA in history in 1955, an MA in history in 1956, and a PhD in anthropology in 1959. His dissertation was published the following year under the title, Navaho, Apache, and Spaniard; it has been in print ever since. It was during this time that Forbes met Carl and Mary Gorman. Carl was born and raised in Chinle in the Navajo Nation, and had been an elder member of those Diné recruited to be code talkers during World War II. After he was discharged from the military, he moved around, settling in southern California where he was a leader in the local Navajo Club and attended Occidental Arts College. Carl and Mary were the parents of famed artist R.C. Gorman.
In later years, Forbes explained that a common misconception was that it was he and David Risling Jr. who had originated the idea of D-Q University. Forbes, however, maintained that it was his dream as a young person that took form when he met Carl and Mary Gorman, who helped flesh the idea out, give it courage, and put it to paper (Forbes, 1994, p. 124; Forbes & Escamilla, 2001; Forbes, 2005). In his book, Native American Higher Education (1985), Forbes details the origin of D-Q, describing the hundreds of letters, meetings, and expressions of the idea as it took shape and faded in and out of his advocacy work throughout the 1960s.
The Gormans and young Jack, who had graduated from USC at the age of 25, formed the American Indian College Committee in July of 1961 to explore the possibility of establishing an American Indian university. Forbes formed another group, the Native American Movement (Movimiento Nativo Americano) also at this time, which was comprised of urban Indians, Mexicanos, and others of mixed descent. An early communique from this group declared:
The Native American Movement represents the reawakening of the Native American people and the revival of Americanist principles. It is the spiritual descendent of the earlier movements for unity organized by Tec*mseh, Cuauhtemoc, Tupac Amaru, Po-pe, Cajeme, Wovoka and other great leaders. The movement seeks to realize justice for Native Americans and all other peoples who suffer from discrimination. It does not draw any color line or exclude anyone. All persons who seek to advance the cause of true Americanism and of American unity are welcome. . . . All who struggle for justice and freedom are brothers! . . . Every person in the United States and in the Americas who has a drop of Native American ancestry is a member of the Movement if he stands for freedom and justice (Forbes, 1964, p. 73).
During this time, Forbes wrote of the “Mexican Heritage of Aztlan,” and is known as one of the primary modern progenitors of the term “Aztlan,” one of the Nahuatl names for their original homeland. Forbes used the term at least seven years before Alurista and other members of the growing Chicano Movement, as epitomized in 1969 with El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan (Ontiveros, 2014, p. 96; Forbes, 1973). Forbes articulated early on that Mexicans and other Latinos were in large part—genetically and culturally—Indians. In 1960, while a new assistant professor at San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University Northridge), he submitted a proposal for a major in American Indian studies, the first of its kind, which was quietly rejected.
On November 21 of that year, Forbes sent a letter to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson proposing junior colleges “in Indian areas.” The following month, he suggested to incoming Secretary of the Interior, Steward Udall, a junior college to serve Indian communities and even an American Indian university (Forbes, 1985). Foremost, however, Forbes sent letters to hundreds of tribal leaders, educators, and scholars, including Dillon Platero (Navajo), D’Arcy McNickle (Flathead), Mel Thom (Paiute), Robert K. Thomas (Cherokee), Sol Tax, Thomas Banyacya (Hopi), and many others. At the time, Forbes seemed focused on the more “popular” and larger Native nations of the West rather than smaller tribal communities in California that did not have major land bases or resources.
Under the leadership of the Gormans and Forbes, the American Indian College Committee produced an inviting informational piece they published in the Navajo Times and the San Manuel Miner under the aegis of an American Indian university. From its inception, this concept was imagined as an “inter-tribal native controlled university,” as Forbes described in later treatises such as “American Tribal Higher Education” and “Proposal for an American Indian University” (Forbes, 1800-2000, D-046, B. 228). Reflecting upon D-Q’s history, and in light of the U.S. Department of Education and federal investigations of the school in 1985, Forbes maintained that “although I drafted the proposal, it reflected a great deal of discussion with other people” beyond the Gormans. His frequent revisions and solicitation of the idea caused him to invent many names for the future educational institution, including “Indo-American University” (circa 1961), named after his initial proposal.
Further, Forbes’s idea was not limited to only American Indians; he suggested elsewhere an “Aztec-American University” (Forbes 1973, p. 229), a “Mexican-American University,” and a “United Nations University” (Forbes Collection, D-046, B. 108). His view of Indigeneity was based on the fact that Native nations were highly interactive and interdependent during the long durée, the 99% of history in Anowara’kowa, and no recently invented imperial borders could detract from this primal Americanism, Indianism.
These original proposals were largely ignored, but Forbes kept the idea alive until others became receptive. As his colleague Steve Crum has pointed out elsewhere, the All-Indian Pueblo Council suggested in the late 1950s and early 1960s that it wanted a higher education institute for Pueblo community members. Although Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute has fulfilled this request, the institute is a federally controlled school that more appropriately is modeled upon the seven military installations and colleges in the U.S. (Khachadoorian, 2008).
The Founding of D-Q University
Forbes left San Fernando Valley State College in 1964 to become the director of the Center for Western North American Studies (CWNAS) at the University of Nevada, Reno where he remained until 1967. As director of CWNAS, and as an associate professor, Forbes worked with the Inter-tribal Council of Nevada, and had attempted unsuccessfully to implement an intertribal university utilizing Stead Air Force Base. In 1967, Forbes moved from Reno to the Bay Area, working out of the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley with the Far West Educational Research Laboratory, or the “Far Out Lab” (Shreve, 2009, p. 164; Talbot, 1994).
It was during this time that he became acquainted with David Risling Jr. who invited Forbes to the initial meetings of the ad-hoc committee on California Indian Education. These meetings would result in the founding of the California Indian Education Association (CIEA) after a conference for Indian teachers held at California State University Stanislaus, March 19-21, 1967. Together, with a cohort of roughly 200 Indian participants, the CIEA held its first statewide conference on October 20-22, 1967, in North Fork, California, where Risling was elected chairman. By 1969, when the tide of Red Power was whittling away at the sandy shores of empire, Forbes had introduced his intertribal, Native-controlled university idea to a whole new cadre of educators. Meanwhile, the CIEA was quick to demand the state provide a central Indian Studies program, as well as an Indian university (Risling, 1969-1991, The CIEA: A Case History of Trailblazing, D-334, B. 78).
While still at the Far West Lab, Forbes was considered the radical grassroots guy surrounded by neckties. During the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) strikes at San Francisco State University and at the University of California, Berkeley campus, Forbes was pro-active in helping found and support a new organization, United Native Americans, along with Lee Brightman, LaNada Means, and others. During the strikes, LaNada Means and other students suggested that Forbes be nominated as chair of a new ethnic studies department, as part of their demands for ethnic studies programs on campus, including Native American Studies. Forbes considered it but instead gave a lengthy declination speech from which he made clear that the CIEA supported instead a center for Indian studies to be established at the University of California at Davis.
In the summer of 1969, Forbes summarily went to Davis to initiate the Native American Studies Department as its first professor. Forbes was at Davis when students and activists under the name “Indians of All Tribes” occupied Alcatraz Island on November 20, 1969. Forbes supported the group, suggesting that their proposals for an education center and college were necessary, and that perhaps the island’s few usable buildings that were abandoned by the federal government could serve the 20,000 Indians who lived in the Bay Area at the time (Forbes, 1970, p. 5). However, Forbes (1983) shared that his vision demanded more than an abandoned rocky island prison:
Many of the people who had been seeking to create an Indian university since 1961-1962, for example, did not agree that Alcatraz Island was a good site for a college. They believed that adjacent agricultural land was needed and that the site must be more accessible for part-time and evening students. In 1969 this group began looking at a 650-acre federal surplus site near Davis, California, and in 1970 a formal application for the site was made (Forbes, 1983, p. 25).
Forbes was able to get funding for an “American Indian University Pilot Project” in 1969, which followed him to Davis. With this seed money and support, Forbes, Risling, and Kenneth Martin incorporated D-Q University in July of 1970 (Forbes, 1985, p. 19). Risling, meanwhile, followed Forbes to Davis, leaving a tenured position in the Department of Agriculture at Modesto Junior College. At UC Davis, Risling became the Native American Studies Program coordinator and a lecturer while still helming the CIEA. Carl Gorman was invited during the summer of 1970 to teach at UCD and hence was also present for the founding of D-Q, where he volunteered as an instructor.
Forbes surrounded himself with his major collaborators from the start. Everyone from the Native American Studies Program at UC Davis also had a hand in D-Q in the beginning, volunteering their time and energy two-fold to get both sites up and running, funded, and in a space of speedy development. The dream was reaching new heights after Risling came to the Davis campus, where he helped in developing proposals for a library, a research institute, and a college of Native American studies. In later years, Forbes noted that “I possess in my files copies of the proposals, in which the name ‘Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl’ is used for both the college and the library,” showing that he was one of the primary persons involved in naming the university (Forbes, 1985, p. 20). Outside of the story of Marie Potts, this is the first and only reference to the university’s name. Forbes noted that neither of these educational sites would have gotten off the ground if it were not for a few prerequisites that were undertaken by the founders and local community supporters. “The foremost prerequisite is to cast off the ‘colonial mentality,’” stated Forbes, adding, “which currently leads Indian people to passively allowing non-Indians to dominate their education and the ‘inferiority complex’ which leads many Indians to avoid launching new activities” (Forbes, 1985, p. 66).
Further, he explains that by the 1960s, and the Indian Claims Commission’s verdict for California Indians, the fate of local Native nations was officially settled and the current territorial boundaries were re-codified. The founding of D-Q was the first time that Native and Chicano people were given land away from a reservation. Not until the late 1970s, with the Kanienkehaka community of Ganienkeh, was this feat of land recovery reduplicated.
D-Q University was officially incorporated in July 1970 by Forbes, Risling, and Kenneth Martin. In part, this was due to the decade of advocacy for such a university that Forbes and his compatriots envisioned. By 1970, various organizations, movements, and policy initiatives coalesced, including the formation of the CIEA in 1967, United Native Americans and the American Indian Movement in 1968, the Third World Liberation Front alliance which demanded ethnic studies at San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley in 1968 and 1969, the occupation of Alcatraz Island in November of 1969, President Richard Nixon’s lip-service to “self-determination,” and the identification of a possible site outside Davis, California, for a Native American college campus—the 655.15 acre Army Telecommunications Center recently deemed surplus by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).
Forbes (1983) explains that after locating the site and meeting with the core incorporating group, they submitted a complete application as a nonprofit to gain legal fee simple title to the site in October of 1970. However, UC Davis had submitted a competing application that was quickly accepted by the GSA prior to the closing date for applications, which was October 30. In addressing how things progressed quickly during 1970, Forbes noted, “The trustees of the Indian college (incorporated as D-Q University) started legal action while local U.C. Davis Indian students initiated an occupation of the site. Later they were joined by other Indians, including, for a brief time, a few who had been on Alcatraz” (Forbes, 1983, p. 25).
The site was occupied and held until January 14, 1971, when a temporary permit was issued to D-Q. Although Art Apodaca, a Chicano-Comanche student at UC Davis, claims he was the first person to hop the fence, Carolyn Forbes (Yuchi), Jack’s second wife, was among the original occupiers (L.V. Marquez, 2010, p. 269). Occupiers applied substantial physical pressure to attain the site while UC Davis found itself in a legal quagmire, which resulted in the removal of their application. Part of UC Davis’s problem was that its thick bureaucracy had not approved the application and thus, from an internal legal standpoint, it was merely a draft and incomplete.
In the end, U.S. Senator George McGovern spilled the beans about prematurely awarding the site to UC Davis, from which legal action was taken by California Indian Legal Services, another organization co-founded by Forbes and Risling among others. Precipitating legal recourse, UC Davis withdrew its application leaving only D-Q’s (Forbes, 1985).
The D-Q Mission and Its Philosophical Underpinnings
Forbes would argue that “DQU is the only Native college openly dedicated to pan-Indian liberation” (Forbes, 1980, p. 78). But what does this mean? Are other tribal colleges and universities disinterested in “liberation” or “pan-Indianism”? Most tribal colleges and universities are chartered by a single tribe, such as Diné College, chartered by the Navajo Nation. Reservation and urban communities have often blurred the boundaries of peoplehood by becoming cohesive, inter-mixed groups, and in these cases, some tribal colleges serve intertribal, international, or pan-Indian populations. Yet what about liberation? Why was this a goal of D-Q and not, say, Diné College or Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute? Forbes insisted that at its heart, the struggle to establish D-Q was not only about education or preventing assimilation, but also to serve and maintain resistance to European and U.S. imperialism.
Another key arena of contention and distinctiveness about D-Q was its balancing act of Chicano-Indian relations, academics, and community. No other institution attempted to educate these populations simultaneously in a focused way, if at all. Forbes saw Chicanos and the “masses” of mestizos, metis, etc. throughout the Americas as Indian peoples despite suffering from detribalization and envelopment within empire.
There were a number of issues that D-Q faced as an integrated organization of Chicanos and Indians within the U.S., California, and local Yolotoy political arenas. First and foremost, the site of D-Q is in Patwin Wintu territory that had never been ceded by any means—legal, extra-legal, or otherwise. Alta California and Baja California were united until 1804, and then became clearly demarked as separate provinces of the Republic of Mexico in 1824, reunited in 1836, and then separated again in 1846. Prior to the missionization of California’s coast in 1769, it previously existed solely in the Spanish imperial epoch of the reconquista as an island of dark-skinned, warrior pagans ruled by their supreme leader, Calafia, first portrayed in the novel of Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Las Serges del Esplandían (1510). Hernán Cortés brought these stories with him in his initial voyage to search for pearls and gold in 1535, from which the Sea of Cortez was so named by explorer Francisco de Ulloa in 1539.
Forbes sought out support from many places, including Chicano organizations, Mexican-American newspapers such as Mundo Hispano, and elsewhere beyond the American Indian community. This was unlike many of his contemporaries who shied away from seemingly non-recognized U.S. Indians who either spoke Spanish or an Indigenous language south of the U.S. border. The conception of Indigeneity was a fluid discourse in Mexico, whereas in the U.S. it was centered upon “treaty Indians.” California didn’t have any “treaty Indians” so to speak, as the 18 treaties signed in the state between 1851-52 were never ratified. Those who were originally from outside the state, moving there because of their military participation, relocation, boarding schools, or other diasporic conditions, were equally newcomers to California. For example, Russell Means’ family had relocated from the Pine Ridge reservation and were a part of the first occupation of Alcatraz in March of 1964. They cited the articles of the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868, which promised the signatories would have first option to attain federal surplus sites.
It is unclear who came up with the name Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl University, although Forbes’ influence is definitely felt throughout the incorporation period and after, as he served on the Board of Trustees in 1972-1973. The name Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl embodies a unification of two struggles, that of the Red Power and the Chicano movements. But was it a unity of people? This is unclear.
Deganawidah, who is known more informally as Skennenrawi, or the Peacemaker, was a prophetic Huron who according to some stories was born from a virgin birth, had visions as a young child, and took the faithful voyage in a stone canoe to bring a message of peace to the many warring nations, including the Onondowaga, Nonyoteka, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Kanien’keha:ka, Wyandot, Wenro, Erie and other nations of the region. He was joined by Aiionwatha/Hiawatha, an Onondaga or Mohawk leader, who in some stories was once an ongwe’ias or people-eater as many had become at that time, such as the evil Atotarho/Tadodaho. Yet after the death of his family, he created the wampum peace tradition. They were later joined by Jigonsaseh, the Lynx, the Mother of Nations. Together, they helped form the Kanonsonnionwe or Rotinonshonni confederacy from five warring nations through the binding of these peoples in every way to a great law of peace, strength, and righteousness. This great law was forged through a maternal matrix of relations and has withstood the test of time, invasion, and imperialism.
The feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl, as known to the Mexica—or Gucamatz/Kukulkan to Mayan peoples—was a creator spirit or teotl, and was related to the wind, the arts, learning, and knowledge. The spirit was the patron of the priesthood and invoked as the knowledge tradition behind the Mexica higher education system, the calmecac. Quetzalcoatl was also associated with Venus, farming, and fertility, and is still revered in many Nahua communities today. There is a prophecy, originally from the Amazon and now incorporated within the Chicano movement, that speaks of a unification of the eagle and the condor—the eagle representing North America, and the condor South America. There are a number of other prophecies that deal with a unity of peoples and a great struggle—the Hopi’tuwa, the Kanonsonnionwe, and others. At Standing Rock, Chicano and Mexican supporters bore banners with Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl, and this prophecy has continued to be nurtured beyond the boundaries of Chicanismo.
Soon after the university became incorporated under this name, it was visited by the North American Travelling College and the White Roots of Peace caravan, which included representatives from Akwesasne and other Rotinonshonni communities. They apparently told D-Q that it was sacrilegious to use the Peacemaker’s name outside of the appropriate ceremonial context and therefore they should refrain from using it. This was brought up immediately to the new board of trustees and new names were suggested such as Delihuatayo, a local Wintu village name, but in the end, they chose to acronymize the name to D-Q to avoid the repetitive usage of a sacred name. Indeed, there is no one from the Iroquois Confederacy, for example, who is named after the Peacemaker, unlike the frequent usage of Quetzalcoatl. However, there are many confederacy members who stand on both sides of the issue, some saying that to not use the name when appropriate might be equally sacrilegious. The wampum and recitations of the great law does not mention this as a rule for the confederacy.
Nevertheless, a university was Forbes’ original dream. He envisioned the full breath of advanced higher education from the training of doctors and medicine people to teachers, lawyers, historians, and beyond for every conceivable Indigenous profession or knowledge tradition. Such needs would be met, nurtured, and developed. Forbes (1980) argued that the goal also was to create a “Native American intelligentsia”—scholar-leaders who would return to their communities and organize for the future.
Although many perceived D-Q to be an experiment, Risling challenged this notion, arguing that instead the school was based upon thousands of years of tried and true learning and wisdom traditions (Forbes, 1800-2000, D-Q Catalog 1972-73, D-046, B. 259). For Forbes “a resistance movement which lacks an intelligentsia (or which lacks information for careful decision-making and long-range planning) will usually degenerate into a mere rebellion, or uprising. Uprisings are ordinarily put-down by the colonial power” (Forbes, 1980, p. 76). But what about a people’s institution? D-Q was not originally sanctioned by a single local California Native nation until after it was formed. However, the university had a wide support base across the U.S. and beyond, and from individuals within the CIEA, the American Indian Movement, and El Movimiento Chicano.
As originally articulated, the mission was to establish an educational institution that was based upon Chicano-Indian forms of education. Forbes, for example, pointed out that it was not going to be like White institutions:
Above all, as we create DQU, we must set aside white notions including not only white
establishment-bureaucratic notions but also white hippie, white radical, and white “kiddie power” notions. Traditional lndo-Mexican education was not the same as the University of California but it was also not the same as the “Flower Power Commune” or the “Free University of Berkeley.” lndo-Mexican education has always required a degree of devotion, dedication, and seriousness, as well as freedom, not found in any white institution in this country (Forbes, 1985, p. 124).
The founders, and especially Forbes, reiterated these ideas in a pamphlet entitled, “Why D-QU?”, posing the question, “who can be the midwife” for Chicano-Indian people? He answers the question this way:
Every Indian or Chicano who attends a white college has to fight to retain his Indianism, his Chicanismo. Nothing in the college prepares him for or helps him return to his people. He is being siphoned off, and unless he resists, he will become truly “a man without a country”—an Anglo in values and Brown man by race. Our concern must be, not so much the “success” of the individual, but rather the destiny of our entire people. Our education programs must be developed so as to meet the needs of our communities as well as to meet the needs of individuals. We cannot separate the two. D-QU will allow the individual to learn and still retain his peoplehood! (Risling, 1969-1991, D-334, B. 63).
D-Q’s articles of incorporation, which were based on the “brief proposal” of June and August 1970, state that one of the university’s primary goals was “to develop, sponsor, and operate a university-level program of higher education and instruction, and to award appropriate certificates and degrees to students who benefit from said instruction.” Originally, the university was to have four integrated colleges: Tiburcio Vasquez College, which would offer vocational training and house a two-year junior college program; Carlos Montezuma College, which would be a medical school; Deganawidah College (renamed Hehaka Sapa College), which would focus on Northern Native American studies; and Quetzalcoatl College, which would focus on Southern Native American and Chicano studies. By 1975, the goal was to have the school fully operational from pre-college to doctoral-level programming and courses, to be fully accredited, and to be fully funded. These goals were made part of the deed for the land agreement with the GSA and would meet many of the agreements of the deed.
D-Q’s Early Years
The site for D-Q University was originally 655.15 acres nestled in the Yololotoy Wintu homelands. By the time the quitclaim deed was signed over to the nonprofit, and after Yolo County was given 4.85 acres for a highway project, the tract was recorded to be 643.05 fee acres and 3.65 easem*nt acres. Under skeptical and questionable circ*mstances, the deed came with an escrow agreement that had a variety of clauses and provisions. It was a unique agreement that no other tribal colleges had. The deed contained a provision that the federal government could retake the acreage, at least in part, as well as a stipulation that the federal government would retain fuel, oil, and mineral rights to the land.
After nearly 10 months of political, legal, and social agitation for the university, a victory day would be celebrated at the site of the new campus. Invited were government officials and local support organizations, but also there were many Native and Chicano leaders, scholars, and activists present, including Adam Fortunate Eagle, Carl Gorman, Su-Wohrom (David Risling Sr.), Benjamin Black Elk (son of Hehaka Sapa, Black Elk), Grace Thorpe (daughter of Jim Thorpe), Al Elgin of the Inter-Tribal Council of California, and educators Morgan Otis and Horace Spencer. Paul Ortega sang and played his guitar and Jose Montoya and Esteban Villa, two local Chicano artists and educators at Sacramento State University, exhibited their artwork.
Overall, there were 400-500 people present for the proceedings and celebration that day. The Chicano band Los Solitarios played a rousing honor song, while Su-Wohrom brought traditional dancers from Hupa to honor the momentous event. His son, David Risling Jr., who had been appointed as chairman of the board of trustees, gave a rousing speech and dutifully accepted the deed to the site, saying this is “the first step in rungs of a ladder that leads right up to the Creator.” Adding to the message he said boastfully, “We’re not going to fail. The ladder is strong and it’s not going to break. If anyone undermines a rung, we’ll build it up again.”
On July 6, 1971, D-Q University began offering classes. Grace Thorpe, who taught at the new tribal college, commented that “our getting this school will be a revival for us” and that “we need to instill confidence and pride in our people, to make them want to learn. So many feel that this isn’t their country, as if they were foreigners in their own land.” Other early instructors and workers at the college included Sun Bear (Vincent LaDuke), father of Winona LaDuke, activist Leham Brightman of United Native Americans, and Carl Gorman. The original board of trustees consisted of 16 Indians and 16 Chicanos, with Risling as chairman.
D-Q began without much funding, with classes held in previously abandoned buildings with hundreds of telephone/radio poles and equipment. The school was still an army telecommunications center in its physicality. But still, the students came from far and wide.
When D-Q opened its doors to summer classes in 1971, it had secured $100,000 from various private funders and a single grant from the Office of Economic Opportunity of $200,000 that would be used for planning and development. Prior to opening for its first year of fall classes in September of 1971, Executive Director Jose de la Isla explained to reporters of the Daily Democrat that “there are people throughout this nation who would work at half their present salaries for the opportunity of coming to D-QU” and who went to say,“our work right now is to find that half-salary to pay them” (McBride, 1971, p. 4). But funding was a constant issue for the university. Forbes (1985) explained that they applied consistently every year from 1971-1979 for Title III, or developing institution funds, yet they were consistently denied. Instead, Forbes (1985) found that these funds made their way to bigger and well-established schools.
During that first year, two support groups were established to aid in the university’s governance, development, and communication: the Council of Elders and the Friends of D-QU. Initially, the council included Benjamin Black Elk, David Risling Sr., Marie Potts, Thomas Banyacya, and other notable elders. The friends group included more distant scholars and leaders such as Vine Deloria Jr., D’arcy McNickle, Sol Tax among others.
From its initial inception, a sacred place for living, learning, and ceremony was created. When Benjamin Black Elk visited the site in March of 1972, he purposely helped consecrate the school with a public blessing and gave permission to use his father’s name for one of the interwoven colleges, Hehaka Sapa College. D-Q would in turn do more than simply bless the site. Various kinds of sweat lodges were erected and used, powwows were organized and performed, and eventually, births, deaths, weddings, and other important events were celebrated and found a safe haven there.
D-Q was not an ordinary university, as its mission statements, both written and spoken, made clear. The university sought to be a beacon and mechanism for transformation for an imperialized and imperiled society. Commencing with the first day of classes in the summer of 1971, was a statewide conference held on the D-Q campus June 16-18, which coincided with a protest at the state capitol in Sacremento headed by the militant Brown Berets. In September, the school held a celebration and powwow, marking the beginning of the school year. In December of its opening semester, it held a conference on “The Philosophy of the Third World,” which included the noted scholar Heydar Reghaby as a co-coordinator.
However, during this rocket-like startup, it also felt growing pains and dissension. During the second semester of classes, and just after the school was consecrated by Benjamin Black Elk, 39 students signed a petition, which offered a list of grievances, and delivered it to de la Isla and Risling. The executive committee had recently hashed out an organizational structure, which immediately rubbed the Alcatraz occupiers and other student groups the wrong way. Students also addressed concerns about housing, student services, the kitchen, library, and other issues related to de la Isla’s actions and inaction. Risling commented on the grievances before bringing them to the board two weeks later, stating passionately,
DQU is only beginning its fight for success. A lot of people want us to fail. We can destroy ourselves from within. We should work things out from within. We’ve come so far. We’re beginning a new era . . . Now, more than ever, we need to get together, solve problems from within. During the past three or four months, information from the outside has been trying to split Chicanos and Indians. Follow through where this information comes from. It tends to split us apart. When anyone talks against DQU, always ask yourself whether you did DQU right; follow the rumor to the source before it’s blown beyond what it really is. . . . There are institutions trying to destroy us because we’re new. You almost have to pledge, “I ‘m going to suffer for D-QU.” I’ve never in 25 years of teaching had the opportunity to work with students whose growth is so great as yours. . . It takes this gut-level education to make you solid men and women with goals. You won’t be floaters (Abramson, 1971, p. 8).
By this time, it is clear that Forbes, although a founder and primary developing agent of the university, had invested himself into UC Davis’s Native American studies department, and after the 1972-73 academic year, he did not serve on D-Q’s board of trustees again. D-Q was no longer under his wing; it was under the feathers of many others. Yet Forbes did maintain a strong relationship and love for the university.
The prime movers and shakers, the mainstays of the university, would be Risling and Sarah Hutchison, who would serve on the board for more than 20 years and who also was a lecturer at UC Davis. In fact, UC Davis and D-Q were indelibly intertwined, but for how long would this last? What issues would grow as part of this tenuous relationship? Would D-Q live up to its grand plans and visions with such a rocky start?
By 1972, there were six tribal colleges and numerous other Chicano colleges. With similar financial and academic concerns, the six tribal colleges required a united front to support policy, unity, accreditation, and political representation. The leaders of the six colleges, including Risling, David Gipp, Lionel Bordeaux, Perry Horse, Gerald One Feather, Helen Scheirbeck, and Pat Locke, along with other representatives from Navajo Community College, Hehaka Sapa College of D-Q University, Oglala Sioux Community College, Sinte Gleska College, Turtle Mountain Community College, and Standing Rock Community College would go on to found the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC).
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D-Q University began as a dream of Forbes before it could be named, before it could be shared. He found that many others had already traversed that path of advanced higher education, from the Mexica and Maya colleges to the Cherokee seminaries and schools. From the kiva and the longhouse, D-Q was imagined as a completely Indigenous institution, born from the land and peoples, in struggle. Forbes found many people with whom to collaborate, including the Gormans, the Rislings, and others, and as such had a 10-year incubation period of growth and development. Then, in 1970, it began with a forceful rite of passage, an occupation and legal challenge, which was founded upon incorporation as a nonprofit, resulting in the acquisition of a deed on April 2, 1971.
D-Q had amazing and grand visions. The unity of Chicano and Indian peoples’ movements and their education is still an unduplicated achievement. The creation of a tribal college that served California’s 110 reservation communities and the thousands to millions of Indians throughout the U.S. is still unparalleled. The return of 643 acres of prime farmland to a Native institution remains a unique achievement considering it has not been duplicated since. The founders concluded that “most of all, the founding of D-QU represents the throwing off of Anglo-American intellectual and cultural domination and the reassertion of the vitality and value of the Indian and Chicano heritages” (Forbes, Martin, & Risling 1972, p. 3). D-Q was a place that allowed Chicanos and Indians to talk freely, to critique, to experiment, to learn, and to grow together. But how long would this last? Would Chicanos and Indians stay united? Would the federal government support rather than hinder the new university? Would support be found in Indian and Chicano communities? Would D-Q University survive the 1970s?
Joshua Frank-Cárdenas, PhD, teaches American Indian studies at Palomar College.
References
Abramson, H. (1971, April 3). Indo-Chicano Leaders Hail D-QU Beginning. Daily Democrat: Davis Edition, p. 8.
Forbes, J.D. (1800-2000). Jack D. Forbes Collection (D-046). University of California Davis Special Collections, Davis, CA.
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Forbes, J.D. (1973). Aztecas del Norte: Los Chicanos de Aztlán. New York: Fawcett.
Forbes, J.D. (1980). The Development of a Native American Intelligentsia and the Creation of D-Q University. In H. Lutz (Ed.). D-QU: Native American Self-Determination in Higher Education (pp. 75-88). Davis, CA: Tec*mseh Center.
Forbes, J.D. (1983). Alcatraz: Symbol and Reality. California History, 62(1), 24-25.
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Forbes, J.D. (1987). Shouting Back at the Geese. In B. Swann & A. Krupat (Eds.) I Tell You Now: Autobiographical Essays by Native American Writers (pp. 111-126). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
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Forbes, J.D., Martin, K., & Risling Jr., D. (1972). The Establishment of D-Q University. Davis, CA: D-Q University Press.
Khachadoorian, A.A. (2010). Inside the Eagle’s Head: An American Indian College. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
McBride, M. (1971, July 31). “Teaching People” Is D-QU Goal, Leader Says. Daily Democrat, p. 1 & 4.
Marquez, L.V. (2010). Sacramento in El Movimiento: Chicano Politics in the Civil Rights Era (Doctoral Dissertation). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Retrieved from http://libproxy.unm.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.libproxy.unm.edu/docview/845244547?accountid=14613.
Ontiveros, R.J. (2014).In the Spirit of a New People: The Cultural Politics of the Chicano Movement. New York: New York University Press.
Risling Jr., D. (1969-1991). David Risling Papers (D-334). University of California Davis Special Collections, Shields Library, Davis, CA.
Shreve, B.G. (2011). Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Talbot, S. (1994) Indian Students and Reminiscences of Alcatraz. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 18(4), 93-102.
