The University of Montana (UM) has announced a $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of integrating Indigenous ways of knowing and expertise into the university’s humanities curriculum.

The grant will fund an Indigenous scholar-in-residence program and provide academic support for faculty members to center Indigenous research or teaching methodologies within the Native American Studies (NAS) department and across the university. In addition, the funding will bolster UM’s commitment to fulfill the Indian Education for All (IEFA) mandate of the Montana State Constitution to ensure that students gain fundamental knowledge and understanding of Native peoples in the region. To that end, the program aims to provide university faculty with culturally centered guidance, based on the teachings and input shared by 12 scholars-in-residence, to create culturally responsive and IEFA-compatible content for UM’s humanities curriculum.

“This award aims to elevate knowledge that represents more complete and accurate narratives of the human experience by incorporating perspectives of Native elders and knowledge holders into…Indigenous research and teaching across our humanities and arts curricula,” said Fernando Sanchez, director of the university’s Elouise Cobell Land and Culture Institute. “The University of Montana intends to provide a national model to incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing into higher education.”

“This award can help to transform NAS and to create a new vision for Indigenous studies at UM,” said NAS chair Annie Belcourt. “As we all seek to build a hopeful future, this project seeks to bring community partners into the center of the discussion and to build transformative equitable partnerships in scholarship.”

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