Digital Scholarship and Initiatives

The article features Rachel Blue, a Lumbee who chose to go to UNC-Chapel Hill rather than the more familiar and closer to home UNC-Pembroke. She is very conscious of being a minority at UNC-Chapel Hill, since there are only 140 Native American students (less than 1% of enrollment). Through the Carolina Indian Circle, a student organization, she is participating in efforts to replace Anthony Locklear, a Native American assistant dean in the student counseling office who, while he was in the position, befriended Native American students. The group also hopes the university will develop an American Indian Studies curriculum. Blue describes questions Native American students are asked by non-Native students that would seem discriminatory or offensive if they weren't clearly based on ignorance.