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Seattle – The towering portrait of famed Navajo Chief Manuelito takes over the room in a city where views of the Space Needle are hard to compete with.

“He’s got my back,” says Cassandra Manuelito-Kerkvliet, of the portrait that hangs proudly behind her desk. Manuelito-Kerkvliet is nearing her three-year anniversary as President of Antioch University, the first Native American to hold such a position at a non-tribal college or university.

Manuelito-Kerkvliet was born and raised in Laramie, Wyoming at a time when thriving as a Native American was tough. Her parents, both born and raised on the Navajo reservation, relocated to Wyoming because it was the only place they could find work with the Union Pacific Railroad.

Hers was a family very much rooted in Navajo tradition and culture. So much so it meant traveling 600 miles back to the reservation every weekend so the Manuelito children would not forget the ways of their people.

She remembers trying to fit in with the kids in town only to be ridiculed because she was different.

“We’d get home (on Monday morning) at 7 (am) and go to school at 8 (am,),” recalls Manuelito-Kerkvliet. “So you kind of lived a double life.”

Living in two worlds led to a determination to remain true to who she was. It gave her the drive to excel academically.
“Students come to me and tell me how hard it is (to be a Native American). I tell them that it can be hard, but if you’re committed to who you are, you can do it.”

Manuelito-Kerkvliet knows the struggles that Native American students face in their quest for a higher education not just from mentoring them, but because it’s a battle that she had to endure herself.

“In school, I was an honor student but no one paid attention to me, no one said, ‘Cassandra, you’re going to college.’”
There were instances when many people, even those of her own tribe, told her that she would fail.

“I have a really strong spirit and all I could think was ‘I’ll show you,’” she recalls.

After high school she enrolled at the University of Wyoming and majored in social work with the hope that she could do something to offset the negativity so many Native students felt in transitioning to college. She went on to work for Oregon State University where she saw the stark difference in Native education programs compared to those offered in Wyoming.
“They didn’t even have a Multi-cultural Student Affairs (office). They had to set one up in order for the Indian Education Office to have an umbrella to fall under.”

This office was set up thanks to her urging and thanks to the work she did with the 11 tribes in Oregon.

“I gathered the heads of these tribes and had a meeting with the President. The money (and support) that these students were given from the tribes was not making it into their hands. I had to do something,” she said. It was meetings like these that allowed her to engage in conversations with the Deans and President of OSU.  The education of Native students now became a priority for the head of the university, allowing for improved and an immediate response to issues regarding Native American students.

This was the type of work she always wanted to do. She went back to school to get her doctorate degree. Soon enough, Manuelito-Kerkvliet was offered a position that she could not turn down. She had received an anonymous phone call telling her about the vacancy for the position of President at Diné College on the Navajo reservation.

She spent a term at Diné College as its President, a term in which she was able to more than double the school’s budget and, consequently, allow for the school to be federally recognized.

Soon came another offer – this time from the president of Antioch University.

Again, Manuelito-Kerkvliet applied and was chosen.

She’s now making a difference at the campus in downtown Seattle. As one of the five campuses that comprise Antioch University, Manuelito-Kerkvliet is proud to be head of “one of the few universities that allowed blacks and women to attend upon it’s opening in 1852.”

The joy in her voice is obvious when she speaks of how progressive her university is in community development. “Antioch is one of the few universities that allow students to complete their degrees regardless of the number of years they have spent away from school,” she says when explaining their curriculum.

One of her main priorities is to give back to the community that has given them so much – they have programs that help homeless women and children in addition to programs that give Native American teachers the opportunity to hone their skills by going back to school.

Manuelito-Kerkvliet remembers a conversation that she had in one of her classes when she was asked to state her lifelong goal. At the time, she was scoffed at for saying she wanted to be the president of a university someday – now, it’s no laughing matter.

“If I’m the first Native American to be a President (of a university), man, we’ve still got a long way to go,” is her response now.
Just as Chief Manuelito before her, Cassandra Manuelito-Kerkvliet is a leader in her own right and her position is sure to affect progress for Native Americans and education for years to come.

“We can’t forget the teachings that our (parents) taught us. How many college presidents can take their teachings into their work?” says Manuelito-Kerkvliet. The portrait of Chief Manuelito is a reminder of what her parents taught her, where she comes from, and where she aspires to go.