Apr 07 2008
DQ Students Risk Arrest to Save Their University
GUEST: Chris Yazzie, Student Occupier of DQ University from the Rocky Ridge Navajo Nation
Last week, sheriffs from Yolo County arrested eighteen students, elders, and community supporters on the campus of D-Q University. Booked and released on charges of trespassing, the occupants were removed from California’s only tribal college at the request of the university’s Board of Trustees. According to a spokesperson for the Yolo County Sheriff’s Department, current board members described some of those arrested as “squatters.” However, students and their supporters accuse the Board of Trustees of failing its purpose by not actively seeking re-accreditation. Last week’s episode followed an incident in February when three students were arrested for trespassing on campus grounds. The non-profit Associated Student Body, critical of the current board’s actions, sought applications for a new board yesterday at its pow wow. Founded in 1971, D-Q University has sought to unite indigenous peoples from both sides of the border in the nation’s first indigenously controlled college. The campus lost its accreditation in January 2005 as students have since struggled to re-open classes.
For more information, visit www.myspace.com/DQuniversity
2 Responses to “DQ Students Risk Arrest to Save Their University”
EAGLE AND CONDOR
A People’s Machine For Progress At D-Q University
140 B Street Suite 5 Box 113
Davis, California 95616
phone: (530) 400-7642 e-mail: thegreatlizardking@yahoo.com
February 14, 2009
THE RETURN OF QUETZALCOATL:
The Affiliated Obsidian Nation Looks Back On One
Year Of Struggle and Sacrifice At D-Q University
With regard to the Land and Leadership Controversy currently unfolding at D-Q University. January 2009 marked the one-year anniversary for the “closure’ of D-Q University.
In the twelve months following the school’s administrative collapse, the school itself has been the eye of a geo-political hurricaine. A Yolo County Special Weapons and Tactics (S.W.A.T.) team staged an armed assault on the school on March 31st: arresting 18 students and their supporters.
This foolish and ham-fisted act of state-sponsored police agression prompted dozens of community organizations to rally to srestees’ defense.
In the wake of the police assault, a (very) small group of American Indian and Mexica people occupied D-Q University and its’ ten buildings, pledging not to leave -until when?
That is the question that hangs heavy over “California’s Only Tribal College” (D-Q University) even as these words are being put to paper.
The D-Q Unity Coalition -so far, has not been successful in toppling the corrupt Board of Trustees at the school. The board in question has come under withering criticisn from the Coalition and its supporters, who say the board has voted itself into power illegally.
The Chairman of the Yolo County Supervisors, Duane Chamberlain, still continues to lease over three-fourths of the school’s hotly-disputed land.
The school still has no official accreditation; a factor that continues to keep potential new students away in droves.
California’s Indian Gaming Tribes ganerate over 11 billion dollars in profit every year. Even so, these wealthy and powerful tribes haven’t DONATED ONE SINGLE DIME of this freight-train full of cash to D-Q University.
At the school itself, the buildings and dormitories sit idle. After dark, the entire campus is plunged into darkness. The once-bustling dormitories are now dark, foreboding, (practically) empty, -and freezing.
This is because the school’s board of trustees cut the electricity off ten months ago. The board did this with the direct cooperation of the millionaire Chamberlain.
The board was hoping that the freezing Winter temperatures would finally succeed in doing what the board and it’s private police force, the Yolo County Sheriff’s Department could not: drive the occupiers out of D-Q University once and for all.
But the cold wet weather only stiffened the occupier’s resolve; they remain on campus 24 hours a day; and the People’s Occupation of D-Q University is still going strong.
The Board of trustees itself is sharply divided into two warring factions; -that is, if one chooses to believe this easily discredited lie. The corrupt Board of trustees of D-Q University isn’t fooling anyone by claiming to be split down the middle. The board still exists as one entity, on paper. (Readers are encouraged to document this fact by researching D-Q University’s non-profit status at the offices of the California Secretary of State.)
As the official entity in control of the school and it’s finances, the board of trustees continues to suck up over $52,000 every year from Chamberlain as payment for his very controversial land-lease.
THE STRANGE CASE OF DUANE CHAMBERLAIN’S CHAMELEON LAND LEASE:
At first, (in 2005) the Board said that Chamberlain’s lease was perfectly fine. Then, in June of 2008, the board declared that his lease was illegal and that D-Q University had voided it.
Then, -after the Federal Government (in the form of the General Services Administration in San Francisco) became involved, the board reversed itself and announced that Chamberlain’s lease was -once again, perfectly acceptable.
Chamberlain’s money keeps rolling in, earmarked for D-Q University. But where is it all going? His checks are mailed to a post office box maintained by the board of trustees, and are known to be (being) cashed on a regular basis.
Paradoxically, the members of the corrupt board refuse to provide any documentation to indicate that they are making any attempt to pay off D-Q University’s long, laundty-list of bills.
The bills that we’re talking about are huge. At last count, D-Q University owed over $250,000 to its many creditors.
One such creditor is the US Department of Education. D-Q University owes over $100,000 to the the D.O.E. as a result of a diplomas-for-dollars swindle that D-Q University pulled on 300 middle-Eastern students in Corona, California, 2003.
It’s obvious to us that D-Q University’s self-appointed board of trustees are using the school’s latest twin crisis (the administrative implosion of 2005, and the bare-knuckles People’s Occupation of 2008 by students and their supporters) as an excuse to continue doing NOTHING, to help the school move forward.
In public, the “Board” says that’s it’s engaged in a seldom-appreciated, heroic struggle to bring classes back to D-Q University and to “get the school back on its feet again.”
But behind the scenes and in private, the board has nothing but contempt for anyone -the Affiliated Obsidian Nation included, who speaks out against the board, it’s members, and the violent, racist behavior that these people have directed toward the occupiers of D-Q University.
The violence and racism of which we speak is a well documented fact.
WHO IS THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF D-Q UNIVERSITY ACCOUNTABLE TO?
NO ONE, APPARENTLY.
WHO SUFFERS THE MOST BECAUSE OF THE BOARD’S STUPIDITY AND SELFISHNESS?
THE AMERICAN INDIAN AND MEXICA PEOPLE, -THAT’S WHO.
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A GLIMPSE INTO THE FAR-DISTANT FUTURE; -BY WAY OF THE RECENT PAST
Speaking here specifically with regard to the Land and Leadership Controversy currently unfolding at D-Q University: Where are our leaders?
Where are the Ph.D.-level professional educators from American Indian Academia in this, D-Q Universitys’ time of greatest need?
Why have we heard nothing from the Indian intellectuals at nearby UC Davis? Some of these people (as we have been told) are actual FOUNDERS of D-Q University, yet all we have heard from them -so far, in these critically-trying times is silence.
Whre are our political leaders? Why have we heard nothing from the Inter-tribal Council of California regarding D-Q University? (Oh we forgot; the I.T.C.C. recently agreed to lend its’ support to a scam environmental project at D-Q University; -sorry.)
One of the members of the D-Q University board of trustees oversaw a make-work project that netted him and his buddies $90,000. After the “project” was finished, they stuffed the money into their pockets and disappeared.
Why have we heard nothing from the American Indian Movement regarding D-Q University? Mr. Dennis Banks claims to be the long-time “Chancellor” of D-Q University. The nearest chapter of A.I.M. is located in San Francisco; a 45-minute drive away from D-Q University.
Yet when the California Highway Patrol put up a roadblock on County Road 31 in front of D-Q Universitys’ front gate, and the Yolo County S.W.A.T. team came charging onto school property on March 31st of last year, the American Indian “Movment” was nowhere to be seen.
Why has the local law enforcement community turned it’s back on the multi-million dollar swindles and scams going on at D-Q University?
For years, a succession of corrupt American Indian administrations have been poster children for waste, fraud, and mismanagement of funds at D-Q University.
If this in-your-face ripoff of innocent people’s money were taking place in the City of Davis or within the Yolo County governmental infra-structure, the who’s-who of local politicians and citizenry would be outraged.
But, that’s apparently not the case where American Indian people crammed into an obscure little corner of the Realm are concerned. Year after year, both the City of Davis and Yolo County are satisfied to merely look the other way.
Like a collection of fat, farm-fed ostriches, they merely hide their heads in the nearest pile of sand, smiling all the while; pretending that nothing is wrong.
In closing; this is what we as a people’s resistance movement individual have to say about the situation at
D-Q University:
THE RETURN OF QUETZALCOATL
The Great People’s Dream known as D-Q University lives on in the hearts and minds of the American Indian and Mexica People.
Nothing that has happened in the past and nothing that could ever take place in the future can take the dream away from us.
The Spirit People gave D-Q to us a long time ago; saying: “this place -known to us as The Place of Big Dreams, known to you as “D-Q University” is Sacred Ground.
We give it to you, so that you can in turn give the message that it carries to others. Among all the places on Earth, this the only place where The Eagle will one day become One with The Condor.
That day is upon us, now.
We stand in the Sunrise of the Very Last Day. Today, the knowledge and the power of two great civilizations, the one from the North and the one from the South, is to be revealed to our people.
We are the fortunate, chosen few that have been put on this Earth to witness the culmination of the great prophecy.
We will carry this Gift of Hope and Beauty in our hearts, -forever.””
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We of the Affiliated Obsidian Nation are proud and happy to be a part of the once-in-a-lifetime series of events unfolding in, at, and around D-Q University.
We live for the day when D-Q University holds its head up and stands strong once again, among the American Indian and Mexica People.
This is all we have to say for now.
You may reprint and/or publish this statement in whatever form you may deem appropriate.
We are the Hope: We Are This Nation; the Affiliated Obsidian Nation. OUR ENDEAVOR NEVER SLEEPS.
And having said all that we would, we will be leaving you -for now.
Steve Jerome-Wyatt,
Acknowledged Spokesman
END
Powerful.
The unity is happening anyway. Native peoples from the south are now the 4th largest indigenous group in US.
How do you keep going???
take care from a chicana educator.