Yale Group for the Study of Native America Henry Row Cloud Dissertation Writing Fellowship

The Henry Roe Cloud Fellowship honors the legacy of Henry Roe Cloud (Ho-Chunk), a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Nebraska and graduate of Yale College, 1910. A tireless critic of federal Indian assimilation programs, particularly the manual, vocational labor programs developed at various boarding and “industrial” schools, Roe Cloud championed increased educational opportunities for American Indians and founded the American Indian Institute which he co-ran with his partner Elizabeth Bender Cloud (Ojibwe), a noted educator, advocate, and member of the Society of American Indians. Together, they worked to transform American Indian higher education and federal Indian policy more broadly. Roe Cloud served, for example, as the only Native co-author of “The Problem of Indian Administration,” commonly known as “The Meriam Report,” an extensive survey made at the request of Secretary of the Interior that detailed the appalling failures of federal Indian policy in the early twentieth century. This survey, presented to Congress in 1928, helped to set in motion many of the subsequent reforms of the Indian New Deal.

The Fellowship will support a graduate scholar in any doctoral field for the academic year. Graduate students working towards careers in higher education who have completed all doctoral requirements but the dissertation are invited to apply. The expectation is that the dissertation will be completed during the fellowship year. The criteria for selection will be based on an assessment of the quality of the candidate’s work and the project’s overall significance for the study of American Indian and Indigenous Studies.