OPINION: How a tribal college silenced a student journalist

Imagine you’re a student journalist at a tribal college. You learn that administrators may have misused a $50,000 grant intended for campus food pantries — vital resources, since 58% of your peers experience food insecurity. You publish fellow students anonymously alleging retaliation against a whistleblower and bullying by school officials.

Within months, you lose your job, campus housing and get placed on institutional probation.

This isn’t a hypothetical. This is the real story of David McNicholas, a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

In 2024, McNicholas published two anonymous student submissions in his zine “The Young Warrior,” both responding to the sudden resignation of Karen Redeye, a beloved student advisor. One was an editorial accusing Redeye’s supervisors of bullying her into leaving, an allegation Redeye later confirmed. The other was a flyer accusing an administrator of misappropriating the $50,000.

A school administrator called the publication an example of “bullying” and “defamation,” and suspended McNicholas from campus housing.

He had to go sleep in a friend’s driveway, but continued to call for accountability, which wasn’t easy. The school initially denied that the $50,000 grant even existed. That is, until McNicholas and his peers in student government produced a photocopy of the award letter. Then, suddenly, the school told students it “researched it” and now wanted to explain how the grant was spent. McNicholas recalls thinking at the time, “Yeah, I bet you do.”

McNicholas contested the charges against him, arguing that the administration was using its anti-bullying policy to suppress legitimate criticism.

Moreover, as a public institution, IAIA must uphold the First Amendment.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, where we both work, has seen this story play out before. In 2020, FIRE intervened at a federally-operated tribal institution, Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas, where another student, Russell Parker, was left homeless for exercising his freedom of speech. In that case, Russell called a university employee an “asshole” during a heated exchange. The administration labeled his words a threat and suspended him from student housing. In a blatant violation of his right to due process, Russell wasn’t offered a hearing to contest the charges and was forced to live out of his car at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We’re putting IAIA on notice. One year after Haskell trampled Russell’s rights, they did it again. This time, the school tried to silence Jared Nally, then-editor-in-chief of Haskell’s “The Indian Leader,” the oldest Native American student newspaper in the country. And this time, FIRE sued and won a landmark victory. Haskell was forced to adopt sweeping reforms protecting the editorial independence of “The Indian Leader” and student free speech rights, as well as pay $40,000 in attorneys’ fees.

There has been little justice at IAIA so far. The school has yet to clear the disciplinary records of McNicholas or any of the other students who were punished for criticizing school officials. Nor has the school revised its anti-bullying policy. And it has ignored FIRE’s letters demanding that they comply with the First Amendment.

This saga doesn’t have to end with McNicholas howling into the wind as IAIA smugly refuses to change. Public pressure can push IAIA to correct course — and motivate the school’s Board of Trustees, or the Bureau of Indian Education, which funds tribal colleges, to investigate or intervene. Readers can help by contacting these offices or sharing this story.

FIRE won at Haskell, and with your help, we can win at IAIA. Demand accountability from IAIA to remind the school that it must uphold students’ fundamental rights. If we allow colleges like IAIA to punish dissent, we invite a future where no student feels safe to speak out. Native communities, and all Americans, deserve better.