Nyché and Madeline wearing their traditional regalia during Indigenous Peoples Day in 2021.

Madeline and my policy platform starts with a land and labor acknowledgment that we wrote with members of the Yale community. This sets the tone for the comprehensive, extensive list of demands we will enact as Yale College Council’s first Indigenous president and vice president. 

We met in 2020, when we were honored with an award administered by the Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational-Migration department here at Yale which was named after Ebenezer Bassett, the first Black and Indigenous student that attended Yale in 1855. We have been growing together before and during Yale and seek to grow with the Yale student body.

As Branford Senator of the YCC this past year, I was the only Indigenous senator. I was part of an organization with direct ties to the unfathomable resources and Yale administration; Yet, subject to the very limitations the administration has in place against Indigenous students. My running mate Madeline was on the front lines of administrative scrutiny for advocating for our community. We know what being minimized is, and this is why we are running to be president and vice president of the Yale College Council.

Under our administration, all members, organizations and communities will be included. We plan on expanding the function of the YCC to directly collaborate with more organizations by introducing a new role: delegate representative. A delegate representative will allow organizations to utilize the resources YCC has for their communities. We believe the greatest way to extend YCC resources is through the budget. For example, we will allocate a portion of the YCC budget to New Haven organizations, businesses and community initiatives. Our platform is centered around building bridges– to students, organizations, and communities— through YCC’s resources and our vision. 

The time to uplift Native leadership — on Native land — is now. This year is the 10th anniversary of the Native American Cultural Center, the 168th year since the first Indigenous student attended Yale and the 322nd year since Yale stole Indigenous land. Let’s make next year the first year the YCC is governed by Native leadership.

NYCHÉ ANDREW is Yup’ik and Inupiaq, a sophomore in Branford College, and served as YCC Senator this past year. She is a Presidential Candidate for the Yale Colleg Council. She can be reached at nyche.andrew@yale.edu.