From Wounded Knee to Carlisle to SFFA: An Indigenous Case for Affirmative Action

Education is power. It is essential for personal development, informed decision- making, and advancement in society. Those who are well-educated have the power to change their circumstances and the circumstances of others. However, education can also be weaponized to stifle ways of thinking, crush identities, and even reshape minds. The latter is largely the story of Indigenous education in the United States.

After hundreds of years of conquest and colonization, the U.S. government, over the course of decades, forced hundreds of thousands of Native children into assimilative boarding schools. Their mission was simple—eliminate Natives as a people by eliminating what makes them Native. These schools suppressed Indigenous languages, cultures, and religions, while subjecting students to violence, sexual abuse, and even death. The harm they wrought has been reproduced across time through cultural loss, intergenerational trauma, and subsequent educational failure.

Already-burdened Native people now face a new hurdle after the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College (“SFFA”). That decision likely invalidates race-conscious affirmative action in higher education, which could depress the ability of Native people to access college and improve their material conditions. But this need not be the case. Despite SFFA, this Note argues that the federal government has a compelling interest in remediating its historical injustices against Native peoples as a race, and it can and should do so through narrowly tailored affirmative action.