Written by Office of Alumni Affairs Intern Michael O’Hearn
Photos courtesy: Vince Redhouse
Vince Peter Redhouse, a Fulbright U.S. Student Program exchange alumni and member of the Navajo Nation, has dedicated an immense portion of his professional career to advocating on behalf of Indian tribes. He does so by fostering and fundraising scholarships, and cultivating initiatives towards intercultural exchanges to advance his community.
Vince completed his Fulbright exchange program in 2015 in Australia, where he strove to bring the local community together through hospitality hosting weekly barbecues for other graduate students. These initiatives established a safe place amongst the student body to relax and not worry about day-to-day stressors.
He also acted as a local tutor focused on Aboriginal communities in history for regional students.
“I was able to share my experiences of being Native American with them and sort of give them that compare and contrast. It was a unique opportunity,” said Vince.
During his time in Australia, Vince noted the distinction between Australian and United States approaches on Native American issues, differentiating Australia's patterns of paternalistic policies with the U.S.’s self-determination approach.
“The U.S. has charted a path of self determination allowing tribes or reauthorizing tribes to govern themselves as quasi-sovereign nations…but seeing Australia, the impacts of that paternalistic structure, seeing the children you know happy, healthy, just enjoying life, that light in their eyes, and then seeing that dole over generations and generations, and generations - at least in the people that I interacted with.”
Despite this heartache, Vince’s grit and goal did not deter him from continuing his personal dedication to empowering the next generation of Native American leaders.
While he was at the University of Arizona, Vince implemented the Moving Mural Project – a transformative project to break down the silos that confined students to specific resource centers based on their identities. It served the purpose of expression, amplifying intercultural exchanges, and honing an interconnected community moving from center to center – and drawing in hundreds of student participants and their engagement.
“I knew growing up that I'm Native American, but I'm also white. I’m Native American, but I'm also a first generation college student, a Native American, but I'm also… the list goes on and on,” said Vince, adding, “I was never just pigeonholed to one [aspect] and that made sense to me. We're multifaceted human beings. We need support from lots of areas of interest, interest in lots of areas… I want to do a project that captures that idea.”
Vince continued his dedication to Native American youth at the University of Arizona, where he ensured that scholarship grants and funding would remain intact through the global pandemic.
“They were going to cancel a bunch of student scholarships. I got them to not do that… which ended up netting over $50,000 in scholarships for students,” according to Vince.
Direct on-the-ground engagement and education is what Vince describes as the most beneficial approach to combating misconceptions in the community. “Actually engaging with the tribe and learning about the tribe and engaging in some sort of collaborative process or to make land acknowledgement and then the tribe using that as an opportunity to, ‘Hey, that is teaching you more about us and our culture, and our ways and the needs of our students, or the needs of our citizens who live off a reservation. Let's find other ways to work together,’ things like that,” he said.
Collaboration is vital to upholding Native American culture in the United States. Nurturing and positioning the next generation of Native American leaders to excel is at the forefront of Vince’s dedication. Through collaborations with the U.S. Department of State and the National Congress of American Indians, Vince strives to create more opportunities for Native American youth.
Vince worked with the State Department to fund a proposal to bring six international indigenous youth to the U.S. to participate in the White House Tribal Youth Forum. “I thought it'd be a neat experience for them to see, here's how a tribe from out west goes through these horrific experiences, with the U.S. government facing racism every day. Here's how they go from there, to having their own office in Washington, DC, to advocating and engaging in diplomacy every day, on behalf of their tribe meeting with legislators at the highest levels.”
Ultimately, Vince’s goal is quite clear: striving for the ability for full sovereignty of tribes. “My personal goal is [that] I would like to see tribes fully sovereign, which is land back and no need to rely on state or federal governments, or any support. That's not to say tribes have to be that way. But I want to see tribes in a position where they could decide to exist that way,” Vince said. “I just would like to see tribes in a position where they can each make that decision for themselves.”
Through and through, Vince recognizes the needs of his Native American community and he has set out to empower generations to come through setting out to erode misconceptions, forging paths of collaboration, and liberating and platforming the next generation of Native American excellence and voices.