Thesis (M.S.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes survey document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 84-89).

Native American doctoral student enrollment has not increased over the past twenty years, despite a steady increase in enrollment at the undergraduate level. Native Americans are the only group to not see an increase in doctoral degrees granted. There are many individual and institutional factors affecting Native American student success such as cultural and social isolation, financial stressors, racism, and access to indigenous faculty and mentoring. What are American Indian/Native American Studies (AIS/NAS) programs doing about it? AIS/NAS programs are uniquely qualified to address these factors. They were originally created to increase enrollment and recruitment of Native American students on campuses. Many of these programs have incorporated Native student retention into their missions and are often the only ones taking the next step to promote Native American graduate student success on campus. There are eight "pure" AIS/NAS graduate programs in the country. "Pure" means that the program is a stand-alone unit and the degree is earned in AIS/NAS. There are only three such doctoral programs in AIS/NAS: University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of California-Davis, and the University of Arizona. The University of Arizona is the number one doctoral degree granting institution in the United States for Native American students. Despite lack of funding and resources, forty percent of these doctoral recipients are from the American Indian Studies Program. A mixed method approach consisting of intense empirical research and data mining was used in order to find enrollments of Native students, identify AIS/NAS programs and enrollment trends, and identify factors affecting student success. Native American students are vastly underreported in the federal data base (IPEDS), which affects federal student aid and relegates many students invisible. The following were identified as the key factors for Native American graduate student success: determination and resiliency, supportive relationships through mentoring and access to faculty, and a desire to give back to their communities. It is recommended that AIS/NAS graduate programs honor their land grant obligations in order to increase access and funding for Native students through endowments and tuition waiver programs, develop a detailed mentoring plan, and improve outreach to Native communities.

This study examines the traditional views surrounding Indigenous birthing and mothering, as well as the mother-child relationship cycle in contemporary Indigenous literature, and compares the traditional past to the contemporary present. Five contemporary Indigenous novels from four different American Indian and Indigenous Nations are included: Louise Erdrich's The Painted Drum (Ojibwe), Betty Louise Bell's Faces in the Moon (Cherokee), Dawn Karima Pettigrew's The Way We Make Sense and The Marriage of Saints (Creek), and Alan Duff's Once Were Warriors (Maori). Themes in the novels are studied individually and collectively, through the frameworks for literary analysis that Arnold Krupat terms nationalism, indigenism, and cosmopolitanism. Each novel will be analyzed first using Arnold Krupat's theory of literary nationalism, which suggests that in order to fully comprehend an Indigenous text, it must be explored using only a culturally-specific framework that focuses specifically on the Nation depicted within the novel. However, on a broader scope Krupat's literary theory of indigenism will addressed throughout this study, examining ways in which similar parallels within each selected text and Nation overlap to create common areas of study. Lastly, aspects of the mother-child relationship will be assessed using Krupat's theory of literary cosmopolitanism, which suggests that even though there are very unique aspects of Indigenous literature that must be viewed from a tribally-specific vantage point, there are also cosmopolitan, or common, elements within the human experience that link all individuals together like the act of birthing and mothering.

No description available.

The commitment to community shared by Native American authors such as N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, and Louise Erdrich is partially evinced by each author's readiness to inscribe in novel form the values and traditions of the tribal community or communities with which he/she is closely associated. Many students of the novel will attest to its pliant, sometimes transmutable nature; nevertheless, as this study attempts to make clear, there are some reasons why Native American authors should reconsider using the novel as a means to express their tribal communities' values and traditions. Unambivalent prescriptions, however, seem more suited to the requirements of law or medicine; and so this study also examines some of the reasons why Native American authors should continue to embrace this relatively "new" art form persistently termed the novel.

Thesis(M.S.)--Auburn University, 2006. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references.

Thesis (M.A. (Hons.))--University of Wollongong, 1999. / Typescript. Bibliography: leaf 145-150. Also available in electronic version.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oklahoma, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in print.

Thesis--Freie Universität, Berlin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 449-480).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 473-520).