Finding D-Q U

The subtitle “The Lonely Struggle of California's Only Tribal College” suggests an apt eulogy for the subject, D-Q (for Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl) University, a product of the American Indian protest movement of the late 1960s. Founded on reclaimed land in Yolo County and granted full accreditation in 1978, D-Q strove to provide college-level education in a genuine pan-Indian environment, keyed to both North American and Mexican-American native cultures. At its peak in 1990, the school had 500 students, but financial mismanagement, questionable appointees, and other internal turmoil (full details are not given here) led to D-Q's closure in 2005, although an “Occupy”-style rogue community of academics, former and would-be students, and faculty holdouts tried to continue operating—ineffectively, it would seem. One interviewee states that this kind of infighting and dysfunction are all too typical of reservation-mindset politics, although there's a hint that D-Q's fate may befall many small colleges across the board as funding runs low in a Great Recession economy. A fuller, feature-length accounting of the D-Q saga would have been more instructive—filmmaker Chris Newman expanded this version from his seven-minute thesis project—although this is still a good addition for Amerindian studies collections. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)