College counselors can enhance the development of Native American Indian college students. College counselors need to be aware of traditional Native American Indian values, interpretation of mental health, content and process concerns in counseling, and indigenous healing practices. These areas are discussed, as well as implications for counseling pmctice.
The manner in which college counselors deliver services to Native American Indian students may need revisiting. These students' life experiences typically include poverty, ill health, malnutrition, abuse, family disintegration, neglect, and hopelessness. However, the basic problem is not service availability, but rather the delivery of services, because many counseling programs tend to react to a narrowly defined need (e.g., academic problems or financial aid).
This approach to service delivery is not effective with Native American Indian college students because these students' needs are neither static nor singular. In this article, the reader is introduced to several traditional Native American Indian values. In addition, specific implications for the college counselor are presented. The discussion begins with an overview of the inadequate preparation of Native American Indian students for postsecondary educational and training experiences.
AN INADEQUATE PREPARATION FOR COLLEGE
A primary causative factor for small Native American Indian college populations rests in low teacher expectations and counseling that directs Native American Indian students into vocationally oriented curricula at the secondary level (Bowker, 1993). Because college admission is often contingent on standardized test scores, and high teacher expectations are linked to high achievement test scores, low teacher expectations may influence the number of Native American Indian students in college. For example, students attending the American Indian Science and Engineering Society conference expressed concern over the lack of counseling they had received