Before 2021, Indigenous students did not have an affinity space at Princeton. Natives at Princeton (NAP), in their search for a space, first requested a room in the Carl A. Fields Center, the renovated eating club on Prospect Ave. home to many of the campus’s affinity spaces. However, their request was denied due to a lack of room.
“[That] kind of feels ironic because the University was built on stolen Lenape land,” said Ella Weber ’25, a tribal citizen of MHA Nation (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara) and current member of NAP.
“For us to gather,” said Keely Toledo ’22, former co-president of NAP and a member of the Navajo Nation, “we needed a place for us to have that was ours.”
Ultimately, after persistent student advocacy and organizing, the University granted Indigenous students an affinity space in Green Hall in 2021. Green was no CAF, which offered colorful, freshly renovated rooms with plenty of daylight. Instead NAP was relegated to a small space, in a stuffy building otherwise designated for academic classrooms for the linguistics department.
In 2020, Princeton was reported to have the fewest academic, institutional, and social resources for Indigenous students of all Ivies. While peer institutions such as Stanford, Dartmouth, and Brown reported academic programs, designated staff members for student support, admissions officers for Indigenous student recruitment, affinity spaces, and more, Princeton had none.
Four years later, although Princeton remains without an official academic program in Native American and Indigenous Studies, offerings in Indigenous studies have significantly expanded and many Indigenous professors have joined the faculty.
Indigeneity at Princeton, however, extends far beyond academics, affecting the personal lives and identity of Indigenous students and staff. The Daily Princetonian spoke to Indigenous students and alumni about their experiences advocating for acknowledgement, support, and space at Princeton outside of the academic sphere, as well as their hopes for the future.
Going further than “scraps and pennies”: establishing a permanent Indigenous affinity space
The NAP affinity space consists of two small rooms in Green Hall, a building near Nassau Street that is often used for smaller programs and studies.
Though students were disappointed they were denied a space in CAF, they quickly took on the Green Hall space as a community project. The space has since been decorated with fairy lights and meaningful traditional objects, brought by Princeton students from their home communities.
Ixtle Montuffar ’27, Vice President of Natives at Princeton, described the affinity space as a “safe haven, where we’re able to just enter through that doorway and relax a little bit more.”
“The students have put so much care and love and time into making it a beautiful community space, bringing things from their communities, and reaching out to tribal leaders in order to have really meaningful objects there too, which is really wonderful,” noted Sydney Eck ’24, a former leader of NAP and economics major of Cherokee nation descent.
While the space has morphed into a community home, Noah Collins GS — an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation and is White Mountain Apache — has concerns that Green Hall will no longer accommodate a growing NAP.
“We’ve already outgrown the space,” he said. NAP now comprises more than 50 members.
Collins said he believes that Native students are perceived low priority for affinity spaces to other ethnic groups on campus.
“We’re a minority in a minority,” he said, “and we get lost in the marginalization.”
Montuffar, who is Hñähñu, noted that their place in Green Hall added a sense of physical isolation from the other affinity groups at Princeton and the other affinity spaces in CAF. “A space in CAF would be great,” they said.
University spokesperson Jennifer Morrill commented on the future of the Indigenous affinity space at Princeton in an email to the ‘Prince.’
“With campuswide renovations underway, it is too early to know what additional space offerings might become available for the future,” University spokesperson Jennifer Morill wrote to the ‘Prince.’
“As always, the Office of the Vice President for Campus Life will continue to work with affinity groups to better understand desired locations for their organizations,” she added.
Toledo worked with the administration to acquire the space during her time at Princeton leading NAP.
“As a student, I was frustrated with how slow things are,” she said, “but now as an alum, seeing how things work in the background. I can understand a little bit more.”
Weber says that she has “gotten used to ‘what we have is what we have.’” While she told the ‘Prince’ she is grateful for what progress has been made, she similarly finds the process frustrating.
“We shouldn’t just keep asking for scraps and pennies.”
“I wish I could exist in peace, but I cannot”: Being Native as a “political identity”
More often than not, it’s Indigenous students advocating for Indigenous issues. While rewarding at times, Students say, the work to secure small wins is draining because the fight is inextricably linked to their identity.
When Samuel Lee Regan ’26 arrived on campus as a transfer student last fall, they said they did not feel welcome by the Princeton community. Regan, a member of the Cherokee Nation and current NAP officer, described their first semester here as “insanely hard,” especially as they encountered individuals who had never met a Native person before.
“It’s crazy that we’re at the best University in the world and people are so disconnected from my experience that it feels like a show,” they said. Regan characterized this sense of standing out and meeting so few people with shared experiences as “really overwhelming.” They explained, “It was really all I could think about.”
They considered transferring but eventually decided to stay. “I made this determination that I’m not going to be made to feel unwelcome,” Regan said, adding, “This is my space. I don’t care … I’m not getting pushed out.”
When Regan entered Princeton, they had hoped to be an advocate for more Indigenous representation within the University through new initiatives from instating an Indigenous elder-in-residence to cooking traditional Native American food in dining halls. But being a full-time student strained those ideals. In the midst of their second semester here, they reflected, “Frankly, this school beats you down so hard, and it's so exhausting.”
In their first year at Princeton, Montuffar has productively collaborated with administrators and faculty from across the University to advocate for Indigenous students. “It’s nice to have so many people we feel support us and have our backs,” they noted.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done in making sure that we have resources on campus,” Montuffar added, “and also just making sure that we, individually and as a collective, are doing well, not just having to constantly advocate for ourselves and better resources, but just being able to survive as students.”
Weber characterized the Indigenous advocacy on campus as “passionate individuals” pushing for change. This work includes coordinating speaker events, organizing internal meetings, and speaking with administrators.Weber said pushing for these changes is intensive for students.
“I feel like I don’t necessarily get the privilege of being a student first,” Weber said. “Like I’m a Native American student at Princeton, rather than just a Princeton student that’s also Native American.”
“I think it’s not the responsibility of students to have to take on a full time advocacy role while they're just trying to get through their studies,” Toledo noted. She argued that the University needs a “designated staff member” to serve as an administrative advocate, or an academic program as a home for Indigenous students.
In an email to the ‘Prince,’ Shawn Maxam, Associate Provost for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, discussed new hires aimed at supporting Indigenous student wellbeing.
In January 2024, the University hired inaugural assistant vice president for Diversity, Belonging and Well-Being “to strengthen belonging across student identities.”
“In addition,” Maxam wrote, “the Carl A. Fields Center is seeking an external consultant to lead a year-long part-time project to support the co-curricular experience of Indigenous and Native populations from two lenses: supporting our Indigenous and Native students and the various academic and student affairs departments across campus that support them.”
NAP has a critical mass of 53 students, with five student leaders, but internal dynamics complicate the solidity of the group. Some believe that Natives at Princeton should be a politically active group, while others argue that it should serve purely as an affinity space. In order to provide an alternative space from NAP to specifically focus on advocacy, the Princeton Indigenous Advocacy Coalition (PIAC) was formed in 2019. However, the limited number of people in each group results in a significant overlap.
Weber believes that the Princeton Indigenous Advocacy Coalition (PIAC) should work on Indigenous advocacy, while Natives at Princeton should remain an affinity space.
She acknowledged that “[NAP is] naturally going to be more political, because being American Indian and Native American is a political identity.” However, Weber noted that the group’s political advocacy should not get in the way of cultivating a sense of belonging.
“Different Native students are gonna have different perspectives, and it’s not appropriate for Natives at Princeton to speak on behalf of all Native students,” she explained, however. Regan, on the other hand, believes that NAP should be a political organization.
“[NAP] has to be a political group, because we’re having to advocate for our rights constantly. And no one is doing it for us,” she noted.
“It’s a challenge, because as any type of marginalized person, or specifically as Indigenous people, our existence is politicized,” Montuffer noted. “To me, there is no separation of affinity with politics.”
Montuffar added, “I wish I could exist in peace, but I cannot.”
The role of the University: “Not just empty words, but substantial action”
The University does boast its attempts to improve Native life on campus. Beyond hiring efforts, Princeton has focused on expanding representation within the student body.
“Princeton Admission is a partner of College Horizons — a college-access organization focused on the academic journeys of Native students,” Morrill wrote to the ‘Prince.’
She also said that the University uses data from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education to plan recruitment travel with peer institutions and “reach majority Native populations.”
Regan hopes that Princeton will match their admissions work to “significantly increase the presence of Native students on this campus,” through intentional outreach, religious accommodations for Indigenous students, and Indigenous food in dining halls.
Weber echoed Regan saying that some Native students might not want to go to Princeton due to the historical lack of community and resources for Indigenous students on campus.
“If Princeton wants more Native students,” she said, “they need to invest.”
According to Maxam, Princeton has been thinking about how to make the University more inviting to Indigenous students and enrich research and scholarship through incorporating Native and Indigenous voices.
Maxam hypothesized a possible recruitment strategy to the ‘Prince’ that would be “informed by site visits to reservations and communities,” rather than simply focusing on the message that “Princeton is available to everyone.” He said that Princeton could partner with tribal colleges and work to tailor its recruitment strategy to people’s needs and experiences.
“You have to do the kind of outreach that says that Princeton wants you, that Princeton actually needs you,” Maxam explained.
“There [are] other universities and institutions where that kind of mode of inquiry and thinking has [been happening] for decades,” Maxam explained. With the addition of new Indigenous studies professors and working to build mutually beneficial relationships with Indigenous communities and scholars, Maxam hopes to see progress over the next 5–10 years.
When asked about how he wants the University to be perceived in the future regarding Indigenous issues, Maxam said, “We’d love to be a leader.”
Over the next few years, the University plans making in-person visits to other educational institutions that have had “longer histories with building relationships with tribal nations or thinking about collaborative research.” Maxam explained, “We are very keen on understanding what peer institutions are doing and what we can learn from them.”
Toledo, who is two years out from Princeton now, emphasized the urgency of building Indigenous spaces at Princeton.
“Princeton has the resources and money to create something spectacular,” Toledo questions, “Why haven’t [they] yet?”
Now, as a mentor to current Indigenous students, she shares her hopes for the University’s path forward.
“Please,” she said, “ask the next generation what they want.”
Raphaela Gold is an associate Features editor and head Archives editor for the ‘Prince.’
Mira Eashwaran is a staff Features writer for the ‘Prince.’
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