Fellowships for work with Indigenous communities

When the Indigenous Communities Fellowship was established through the Haas Center for Public Service and the Native American Cultural Center (NACC) in the summer of 2018, the cohort consisted of one or two fellows who interned at an organization that served Indigenous communities. In 2023, the number of students expanded to 16 with a gift from the Vadon Foundation, and this past summer the program supported 23 fellowships.

The fellowship was designed with the goal of building future Indigenous leaders. During the summer, students are often faced with the choice of investing in their hometown communities or pursuing opportunities elsewhere that can provide experience for their future careers. The fellowship alleviates that choice for students from Indigenous communities by providing opportunities centered around reinvesting in Indigenous communities.

Matthew Yellowtail, ’18, started his role as the program coordinator for the Indigenous Communities Fellowship in the summer of 2023.

“The NACC has always prioritized uplifting our students, making them visible, and providing them with opportunities,” he said. “We've crafted this fellowship to be inclusive so that any student, regardless of where they come from, can be successful as a collaborator and servant to the Native communities and organizations they work within. But ultimately, a central goal of ICF is to be a connector for students to find a pathway back home.”

This summer, 23 undergraduate and graduate students received fellowships that took them to communities across the country. The fellowships are self-designed, meaning that students find and propose their own experiences, receiving support in the form of funding for travel and living costs and preparatory programs that help students get the most out of their experience.

The projects that students worked on spanned a wide range of issue areas. Caleb Ketchum, ’26, interned at Indigetize Computer Science, an organization that works to overcome systemic technology gaps in Indigenous communities by providing computer science education to Indigenous youth in Corrales, New Mexico.

In the policy and governance space, rising junior Chazlyn Curley interned at the Navajo Nation Office of the President, working on policies that advance positive change for the Navajo people. Libby Hailey, ’27, helped develop a language-learning curriculum at her internship with Xine:wh-ding Inc. located in the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, which seeks to increase the number of people who are fluent in the Hupa language, Na:tinixwe Mixine:whe.

“The fellowship provided a unique opportunity to stay connected to my Hoopa cultural ways of life, especially my language since it isn’t offered at Stanford,” said Hailey of her experience. “I had the chance to coordinate a week-long Hupa language summer immersion camp, which allowed me to focus on practicing and learning my language while contributing to the development of curriculum for future language camps. The most rewarding aspect was engaging deeply with my culture, an essential connection given the challenges of maintaining it within a large, Western-focused university.”

Each year, the students share about their fellowship experiences at the annual Indigenous Communities Fellowship Showcase during the fall quarter. Students present posters, display artifacts, and play videos and slide decks to give attendees a more holistic understanding of their fellowship experience.

In thinking about the future of the fellowship, Yellowtail says that he hopes to build on the support that it provides for Indigenous students and communities while also providing a platform for understanding the deep roots of Indigenous service for the wider campus, an effort that is bolstered by the passionate work of the students.

“The students are very committed to seeing this program thrive,” Yellowtail said. “They're really generous with their time to help us market this program to the broader campus, recognizing the impact that it can have for future students that will come through once they graduate.”