David Gipp, ’69, is president of United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck.
The Standing Rock tribe is “looking toward maybe starting our own wind farms,” she added, and the college has received a grant to put up its own wind turbine for training and to cut the school’s electrical bills. “We’re really good at applying for grants,” she said. “But, those usually are for only two or three years, so we’re constantly looking. We would like to build an endowment so we don’t constantly worry” about finances. Despite that, “I’m optimistic,” she said. “As we see students moving forward toward careers, it’s really exciting.” These are exciting times at Little Hoop, as well, Lindquist said. “We’re thriving,” she said. “We’re providing opportunities to our people, opportunities to enter professions that we need, and focusing on the revitalization and perpetuation of our language and culture. “The tribal colleges are gems in Indian country.” UND also has ties to two other North Dakota tribal colleges, Turtle Mountain Community College in Belcourt and Fort Berthold Community College in New Town. In August, UND President Robert Kelley joined TMCC President James Davis for a tour of the Turtle Mountain campus and discussed continued collaboration between the two schools.
Cankdeska Cikana | Lindquist, a member of the Spirit Lake tribe, grew up on the reservation until she was 13, when the family moved to Grand Forks. She finished high school in Crookston, Minn., graduating in 1969. “I wandered around for a while, kind of lost,” she said. “But, eventually I came back to the reservation, where the leaders were pushing tribal members to go to college (and) providing some financing.” She earned a degree from UND in 1981 and went to the reservation as a health planner. The work led her to enroll in a master’s degree program in public administration at the University of South Dakota, with an emphasis on the Indian health system and supported by the Indian Health Service (IHS). After working as a recruiter at IHS, she became an adjunct faculty member at the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences, working in community medicine and rural health. She also served as assistant director of rural health. “That led to writing a huge grant called Health Start, addressing infant mortality in Indian country,” Lindquist said. “It provides neonatal care and Healthy Start is still addressing such unmet needs as high-risk pregnancies.” The time she spent at IHS “was one of the best things I ever did,” she said. “It was phenomenal seeing Indian country from a national perspective,
seeing the progressiveness of native leaders and tribal communities. “This bigger world view, seeing where I came from, gave me a positive outlook on our future. I realized that it can be done — we can have economic development and quality education, and we can take over our health care and do it in a new and more cultural way. Working at IHS, I got to see how governments can work together to address these things without always blaming each other for everything and pointing fingers.” In 1997 she returned to North Dakota. “I missed the flat plains, the dark sky, the stars so close,” she said. Following the flood of 1997, she helped the city of Grand Forks recover by working in historic preservation. The next year, Governor Ed Schafer, ’69, HON ’08, asked Lindquist to become executive director of the North Dakota Indian Affairs Commission, a liaison between the state and tribes. In 2002 she returned to UND to help the medical school and rural health office with Indian recruiting and to work on a doctorate in educational leadership, supported by a Bush fellowship. “Then I was asked to come home to be president of the college,” she said. “The college was not in good shape and my tribal community asked me to come home. The college had been w i n t e r 2010 5