Wyoming’s Indigenous students can now apply for new UW scholarship

In a typical year, only a couple graduates from Wyoming Indian High School apply to attend the University of Wyoming in Laramie — the state’s only four-year college and an institution that has benefitted from ancestral tribal lands as a land-grant university. “This year, we have like, 10,” Wyoming Indian school counselor Roland Robinson said Tuesday. That’s out of an estimated graduating class of 45. A big factor in the spiking interest, Robinson believes, is UW’s new scholarship. The Wind River Promise Fund offers full scholarships to enrolled members of the Eastern Shoshone or Northern Arapaho tribes who graduate from a Wyoming high school and meet academic and enrollment criteria.

“I think in the past, it was just a more expensive option,” Robinson said of UW. That led many graduates of the Wind River Reservation high school near Ethete to opt for nearby Central Wyoming College or another junior college in the state. The UW scholarship could extinguish the affordability concerns that have kept many students from truly considering the four-year university. “I think there’s a lot of kids who are excited about the Promise Fund,” he said. “I’m excited that our kids are getting the opportunity.”

With the Wind River Promise Fund, UW joins colleges across the country that extend significant support to tribal students. Fort Lewis College in Colorado offers a tuition waiver for enrolled citizens or their children, and the University of Montana offers a tuition waiver for students enrolled in a tribe within the state. Advocates have been pushing for a Wyoming version for years, at times complaining that their efforts dragged on too long as tribal students were dissuaded by the costs of UW, even with existing financial aid. “It was a long time coming,” Shoshone Business Council Chairman Wayland Large said in a statement after the university’s board of trustees approved the Promise Fund.

When UW trustees voted to create the fund in August, they allocated $2 million for the endowment plus $250,000 in expendable funds to launch it in 2026. In March, the board voted to make the scholarship available to returning UW students as well as first-time and transfer students. Recipients can receive support for all tuition and fees. The scholarship is open to students who are enrolled members of the Eastern Shoshone or Northern Arapaho tribes, Wyoming residents who have graduated from a Wyoming high school, in good academic standing, enrolled as full-time college students, and who complete the FAFSA annually.

The idea has been batted around for years. Representatives of both tribes proposed a tuition waiver for Indigenous UW students in 2018. The idea behind such waivers is to remove financial barriers that keep Indigenous students from higher education and to address historical inequities. Revenue from lands the federal government gave to Wyoming helped generate UW’s endowment, making it a land-grant university. The United States seized some of those lands from tribes and gifted them to the new state to benefit public education. Those historic benefits, advocates say, create ethical obligations to Wyoming’s Native American residents.

The 2018 proposal did not gain significant traction, but a 2022 memorandum of understanding between UW and the tribes committed to building resources to assist native students. The waiver concept reemerged in 2024 after Alyson White Eagle, a research assistant and student in the UW College of Law who is Northern Arapaho, presented findings to lawmakers showing that less than 1% of the UW student body reports being Native American or Alaskan Native, compared to 4% of the state population holding tribal affiliations. Retention and graduation rates among Indigenous students also lag behind the general student population. Despite existing scholarships, applicants exceeded available funds. “So a lot of students missed out,” White Eagle said.

Native students often experience culture shock as first-generation college students, Robinson said. Many have lived their entire lives on the reservation, and Laramie represents a change that can be jarring. But historically, an even larger obstacle for tribal students “is affordability,” he said. Robinson himself attended UW, had a meaningful and positive education, and is glad more tribal students now have that opportunity. “I think it’s an eye-opening and enriching experience for our students,” he said. Students interested in applying must first verify tribal enrollment and complete a brief application due July 1. New first-year students must confirm their fall 2026 enrollment by May 1, while transfer students must do so by Aug. 1. The scholarship can be renewed annually contingent on continuous full-time enrollment, successful completion of 24 credit hours each academic year, maintaining a 2.0 GPA, and annual completion of the FAFSA and scholarship application. “Our Board of Trustees and university have made a tremendous commitment to students from the tribes of Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation,” UW President Ed Seidel said, “and we want to ensure that all eligible, enrolled tribal members have the opportunity to receive this new scholarship.”