A reappraisal in the College of Humanities and Social and Behavioral Sciences has caused a restructuring of several programs, including what used to be the American Indian studies minor.

As of the 2014-2015 school year, the American Indian studies minor has been changed to a certification along with several other programs in the college.

CHSBS Dean Pamela Gates said every time the college programs are looked at, they must be ordered and grouped into categories one through five. Programs in category one are considered the healthiest and generally will receive additional funding. Those in category five are considered to have the least enrollment, and face either deletion or alteration.

"A couple of years ago, the whole university went through academic prioritization," Gates said. "As the largest college, we had 103 programs to review deeply and to assess where their strengths were," Gates said. "The very lowest ones were programs that were not addressing the needs of students and not meeting the objectives of the programs."

Up to this point, the American Indian studies minor had been a part of the cultural and global studies program. The program was found to be inadequate in meeting students needs, and Gates said they were lucky to have as many as four students enrolled at one time.

To address the issue, the American Indian studies minor, along with several others, was altered into a certification that could go along with virtually any major. Several new certifications were also created so that the cultural and global studies program had a variety of culture-centered certificates for its students, including east asian studies, european studies, middle east and islamic studies.

"We were not doing the program justice," Gates said. "When it was designed it was great, but it had outgrown what the intent was. We've actually taken the energy of really important studies and programs and grown them."

A few classes had to be cut from the American Indian studies minor to make it into a certification, which is generally only between 16 and 18 credits. Gates said those who started in the American Indian studies minor before this change will be able to complete it as designed.

Professor Jeffrey Fortney, who teaches HST 323, History of Native Americans, said it is important to keep courses like his available because they are helpful not only to students but also to members of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe looking for information outside their local tribe.

"What many of my Native students know is the local experience, and that's definitely important, and I'm definitely still teaching that," Fortney said. "However, many of them come in with certain stereotypes themselves based on their own experience and the assumption that it extends to all of Indian history."

Fortney said interest in a more diverse education is what his Native students bring to the classroom, while his non-Native students bring traditional assumptions about native culture that his class helps to dispel. He said he makes his class a safe environment to ask questions that might go unasked in regular society.

"For some of my non-native students, they have questions and a lot of them feel like they're trapped in potential political correctness," Fortney said. "They're so afraid that what they say is going to be offensive, and many times for good reason, that they'd rather not ask the question and they'd rather live on assumptions."

For Fortney, keeping courses in Native American studies around is vital for continuing conversations about controversial topics that hit close to home at Central Michigan University, such as the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School.

"Questions come out where otherwise they wouldn't," Fortney said. "Especially being at Central and looking at what our nickname is, and current mascot controversies, I'm getting many, many papers about that."

Jerome Pigeon is a senior and member of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe. While he took a few courses within the American Indian studies minor, he took most of his classes at the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College as they transferred easily.

Pigeon said he would like to see Ojibwe language classes made available to students who want t apply it to a bachelor of arts degree.

"That would be really awesome if I could study Ojibwe language as it's not really a foreign language but kind of is a foreign language," he said. "But right now you can't take Ojibwe and apply it to your Bachelor of Arts."

Pigeon recounted living in Holland, where his classmates would be surprised at his Native American heritage, and voice assumptions that Native Americans were no longer among them. He said keeping courses focused on Native American history and culture is important for overcoming these assumptions.

"It's not that way today in most communities, but as things change, a lot of those changes happened because people were teaching classes like this," Pigeon said. "I think it's important that they maintain classes that focus on Native American culture, the history the current issues and all of those things."