Tribal Membership Initiative Fellowship

A candidate for the Tribal Membership Initiative fellowship must be able to document affiliation as follows:

• Native Americans and Alaska Natives must be able to document enrollment in a federally recognized tribe. This can be done through tribal ID cards, verification of enrollment number, letters from tribal government, or other valid documentation. View this website for a list of federally recognized tribes. 
• To verify Native Hawaiian ancestry candidates must be able to provide a copy of a Hawaiian Registry card from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs or a verification letter from Kamehameha Schools.

• Applicants who wish to be considered for  the Tribal Membership Initiative must complete the standard UC San Diego application for graduate study which includes providing letters of recommendation, test scores, and academic records/transcripts.
• The application contains a section on the personal information page that asks applicants if they would like to receive consideration under the initiative. If yes, they must indicate their tribal affiliation on the application and provide the required documentation.
  • Native Americans and Alaska Natives must be able to document enrollment in a federally recognized tribe. This can be done through tribal ID cards, verification of enrollment number, letters from tribal government, or other valid documentation. View this website for a list of federally recognized tribes.
  • Native Hawaiian applicants should provide a copy of their Hawaiian Registry card from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs or a verification letter from Kamehameha Schools. 
• Applicants should submit this documentation during the online application process or to the department/program to which they have applied.
• Applicants should notify the department/program to which they have applied that they would like to be nominated for the TMI Fellowship.
• Questions about the Tribal Membership Initiative fellowship can be directed to gradadmissions@ucsd.edu.
• Deadline: All nominations must be submitted by August 30 in order to be awarded for the next academic year.

Tribal membership in government-recognized tribes can be employed as a priority factor in the admissions decisions of public universities. Proposition 209 prohibits consideration of race ethnicity, gender and national origin, and the designations of American Indian, Native American, and Alaska Native are generally considered racial/ethnic classifications. However, tribal membership also describes a political category due to the unique political relationship between tribes and the federal government which acknowledges federally recognized tribes as political entities. Setting admission priorities in order to educate members of recognized Native American and Alaska Native political entities represents a legitimate responsibility of the University of California San Diego. 

In 1975 Congress enacted policies establishing self-determination for federally recognized tribes. This was based on the understanding that tribes have functioning governments that have inherent sovereign powers. Courts have recognized the importance of leadership training to the government policy goals of tribal self-sufficiency and sovereignty. Cultivation of a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry is necessary. The path to leadership must be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals. Educating children and future leaders is crucial to the effective management of complex tribal affairs. Without this, tribes will be impeded in exercising their sovereign authority and the federal government's policy of self-determination will be undermined.

With 17 tribes in San Diego County, the University of California San Diego has an affirmative obligation to educate tribal members. The following is a summary of the legal paper, “Tribal Membership and State Law Affirmative Action Bans” by Cruz Reynoso and William Kidder. Native American and Alaska Native federal and state recognition depends not on their racial or ethnic designation, but on the political designation as enrolled members of a community to which the state has a political arrangement that includes responsibilities and obligations. Tribes have an overriding interest in developing skills in each generation that will allow for the realization of tribal sovereignty, which includes education in order to prosper politically, economically, and culturally.

The group at the statistical bottom of all the scales thought to measure lack of opportunity is American Indians. A line of viable Supreme Court authority holds that equal protection of the law does not require strict scrutiny of laws singling out Indians for advantage or disadvantage, when “Indians” is understood to mean members of federally recognized tribes rather than Indians by ethnicity. - Judge Steve Russell

A body of federal cases, dating back to the landmark 1974 Supreme Court ruling in Morton v. Mancari, treat membership in a federally recognized American Indian tribe as a political classification, distinct from classifications based on race, ethnicity and national origin. Whereas federal courts reserve strict scrutiny for classifications based on race, ethnicity and national origin (including affirmative action programs), classifications based on membership in a federally recognized tribe are subject to the rational basis test, a far less stringent standard of review. Generally the federal government and related court cases recognize American Indians or Native Americans as all persons having origin in any of the original peoples of North America or the Hawaiian Islands, in particular American Indians, Eskimos, Aleut or Native Hawaiians. This is based on their membership in what were originally independent sovereign nations.