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The halls of Bacone College are cold and dark. In the main room there are no conferences, only the constant hum of the heater that keeps the administrative offices warm.
Students are not attending classes here this semester, but there is still work to be done. In the university’s historic buildings, there are leaks to plug, mold to purge, and priceless works of Native American art to save from ruin. Not to mention the idea of designing a plan to prevent the university from closing permanently. It’s a daunting task for the nine remaining employees.
But on this rainy December morning, the university president is executing a DoorDash order. “If we have money, we can pay,” acting president Nicky Michael said of the salaries. Even she has to find a way to make ends meet.
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Founded in 1880 as a Baptist missionary college focused on assimilation, Bacone College transformed into an Indigenous-run institution that provided intertribal community as well as a degree. With permission from the Muscogee Nation Tribal Council, Bacone’s founders used a treaty right to establish the university at the confluence of three rivers, where tribal nations had been gathering for generations.
Throughout the 20th century, the center of this was Bacone’s Native American art program, which produced some of the most important indigenous artists of its time, including Woody Crumbo, Fred Beaver, Joan Hill and Ruthe Blalock Jones.
They and their contemporaries pushed the boundaries of what was considered “Native American art.” During a period of intense hostility against tribal sovereignty by the United States, Bacone was defined by the exchange of ideas that his Native professors and students created and represented a new opportunity for indigenous education and academic thought.
“Bacone was the only place in the world where that could happen to Native people,” said Robin Mayes, a Cherokee and Muscogee man who attended Bacone in the ’70s and taught silversmithing there in the ’90s. “It’s a tragedy to think that It’s going to be suspended.”
For decades, the university has been plagued by poor financial decisions and inconsistent leadership, leading to conflict among administration, students and staff over the university’s mission and cultural direction.
Some have accused recent administrations of embezzlement, fraud and intimidation, leading to multiple lawsuits. Students expressed frustration over the lack of resources and cultural competency among some school leaders. The university has also had trouble maintaining its accreditation.
Last year, a lawsuit crippled Bacone’s finances. Ultimately, Michael made the decision to suspend classes for the spring semester. She hopes the postponement is temporary, but if the university can’t raise millions of dollars, Oklahoma’s oldest continuously operating university will likely close its doors.
“It’s lasted more than 140 years through terrible decisions,” said Gerald Cournoyer, an instructor who was hired in 2019 to restart the university’s art program.
“Supervising Bacone has been a struggle because of leadership or lack thereof,” said Cournoyer, who is also a renowned Lakota artist. Some presidents devoted time and money to sports programs, others to Bacone’s Baptist missionary roots. “When you put absolutely no money, nothing, not $20, not $10, into your fundraising efforts, this is what you get.”
During Patti Jo King’s time as director of the Center for American Indians in Bacone from 2012 to 2018, leadership wanted to build a state-of-the-art museum to replace the 80-year-old building that housed many priceless Native artifacts. art.
“We didn’t even have the money to keep it open seven days a week,” said King, now a retired Cherokee professor, writer and scholar.
Even when she first arrived on campus, King said Bacone’s financial debts had already caught up with her. Student dormitories had no hot water, staff were severely underpaid, and graduation rates among the university’s remaining students were low.
Still, she and other professors worked to make it a place where Native students could find a community, but Bacone’s old problems never went away. Like Cournoyer, after years of working on the rebuild, she left frustrated.
Today, the old museum is empty. Their artifacts were moved to another location so that they would not be exposed to extreme temperatures.
The rest of the staff acts as caretakers of the historic pre-Oklahoma stone buildings, which themselves are important pieces of the past. At the museum, Ataloa Lodge, the fireplace is made of stones sent to the university from indigenous communities around the country: one from Sequoyah’s birthplace, another from Sitting Bull’s grave and another from the field where Custer died. Five hundred in total, each stone a memory.
Michael, the interim president, and others have been cleaning buildings in hopes that they will soon be able to host graduation banquets and student gatherings. Other employees chase away the looters. Rare paintings still hang on campus, including pieces by members of the Kiowa Six, who became internationally famous a century ago, and Johnnie Diacon, a painter and Muscogee alumnus whose work can be seen in the background of several episodes of the show. Reservation Dogs television series. .
A few years ago, experts at a Tulsa museum warned that many of the paintings are contaminated with mold, which will spread to other nearby works of art. Leslie Hannah, a Cherokee educator who serves on the university’s board of trustees, said she’s concerned, but the cost of restoring them is far down the list, behind broken gas lines, flooded basements and a mountain of debt.
Bacone’s current financial crisis is due in part to a lawsuit filed by Midgley-Huber Energy Concepts, a Utah-based heating and air company that is suing the university for more than $1 million in unpaid construction and utility fees. Last year, the Muskogee County Sheriff’s Office put Bacone’s property up for sale twice to settle the debt. On both occasions the auction was cancelled, most recently in December.
MHEC owner Chris Oberle told KOSU last month that he intended to purchase the historic property. Lawyers for MHEC have not responded to repeated requests for comment from the Associated Press.
Alumni have questioned the validity of any sale of the property, pointing to the treaty right that established the campus and its inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. Lawyers for the university declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
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Michael said he doesn’t know what stopped the auction, but he’s grateful to have more time to try to save Bacone.
Nationwide, there are only a few dozen tribal colleges, according to the American Indian College Fund, a nonprofit that supports Native American access to higher education. Tribal colleges must be sponsored by a federally recognized tribe and have a majority enrollment of Native students. But unlike most of those colleges, Bacone was built on its identity as an intertribal school, a quality that former staff and alumni said made it special.
Bacone, now a private institution, no longer receives state or federal assistance. Its finances have long depended on student tuition and it now has no students. Michael said that judging by the finances, it’s a miracle the university has managed to keep its doors open for so long.
“Now I look back and think this was set up to fail,” he said.
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