Tribal education: reflections from the Pine Ridge Indian reservation

Attracting and retaining Native American nursing students is crucially important to the health and well-being of Native American populations. Tribal institutions of higher education are doing excellent work, but their continued progress depends on an awareness of their successes, difficulties and functional requirements. This article shares the authors' experiences in teaching nursing Oglala Lakota College's associate degree program on the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, an area approximately the size of the State of Delaware. The authors wish to alert the larger nursing community to some of the educational and health care needs and issues of this population, to communicate the importance of the work of tribal nursing programs and to illustrate the experience as an opportunity for nurses who are interested in multicultural development.