The Many Nations Longhouse is part of a larger initiative that will make the University of Oregon a regional and national center for Native American education and research.  The initiative encompasses and coordinates many programs and ideas forged at the UO over the past decade to learn from and serve the Native American communities and individuals of the Northwest.  To read about some of the components of the initiative, see the following text.
 

• Student Access and Support.  The UO has increased access and academic support for Native American students.  Elements include a proposal for in-state residency by aboriginal rights initiated by Allison Davis-White Eyes formerly in the Office of Admissions. Special attention to Native American student recruitment.  Active Native American student organizations on campus include the Native American Student Union and the Native American Law Student Association.

• Graduate Student Support.  The university makes a concerted effort to recruit, support, and mentor Native American graduate students.  The UO ranks seventh in the Nation for the number of Native Americans who have received doctoral degrees.  From 1992-97, fifty-three Native American students earned graduate degrees and nineteen earned law degrees at the UO.

• New Directions in Anthropology.  UO Department of Anthropology faculty members and students, as well as staff members of the UO Museum of Natural History, work closely with Native American communities of the Pacific Coast to preserve and protect native archaeological sites.  Building on an extensive and distinguished history of scholarship in Native American lifeways that started with Luther Cressman in the 1930s and continues with the work of faculty members Jon Erlandson, Madonna Moss, Mel Aikens, and others, the UO is at the forefront of changes that align the field more directly with the interests and needs of native peoples.

• Native American Law.  Associate Professor Mary Wood’s work on tribal environmental issues is being used by several federal agencies in developing national policies.

• Native Language Preservation.  UO Department of Linguistics faculty members, including Scott Delancey, Tom Givon, and Doris Payne, have done their own research and have guided Native American graduate students in the study and preservation of tribal languages.  Graduate students in the department are studying Klamath, Northern Paiute, Tolowa, and Chinook languages as well as tribal languages of Mexico and South America.

• Native American Literature.  Shari Huhndorf, an Alaskan Native—assistant professor in the UO Department of English—teaches Native American literature courses and has written books and articles on Native American literature, history, and culture.

• Native American Gatherings.  The UO campus has become a focal point for tribal and community gatherings in Oregon.  In May 1997, leaders of coastal Oregon tribes gathered for the first time in more than a century for a potlatch ceremony on the campus.  During the ceremony, leaders of the Coquille tribe, in conjunction with the UO Graduate School and Knight Library, presented to the tribes of Southwest Oregon copies of some 60,000 pages of documents on tribal history and culture.  The documents were found and organized as part of the Southwest Oregon Research Project directed by George Wasson, a Coquille leader and a UO doctoral student in anthropology.