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A true community garden

NWIC’s new medicine wheel garden will feed and teach the community

The first phase of the medicine wheel garden was done by Northwest Indian College students, staff and faculty volunteers and included digging trenches and drainage systems, building small retaining walls and laying pathways to and through the garden. That process lasted four days, some of which were less than ideal for outdoor work.
Members of the Lummi and Bellingham communities have joined forces with Northwest Indian College (NWIC) students, staff and faculty to create a garden on the Lummi campus that will nourish, heal and teach the community.

The project, which began in March, is the Cooperative Extension department’s medicine wheel garden, located outside the department’s new building.

The purpose of the garden is to serve as a teaching tool for students and community members to learn how to use plants for food and medicine, said Vanessa Cooper, NWIC’s Traditional Plants and Foods Program Coordinator.

NWIC’s Winter 2012 President’s list

Congratulations, Northwest Indian College students for your outstanding work this academic year. The following students made the President’s List for winter quarter, 2012:

M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust awards NWIC $400,000 grant

Northwest Indian College (NWIC) was recently awarded a $400,000 challenge grant by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust for campus technology improvements, which will help further bring the college’s technology into the 21st Century. 

The grant will support campus-wide technology infrastructure at the college’s main Lummi campus and improve distance learning capabilities throughout its six full-service extended campuses at reservations in Washington and Idaho. The college must raise another $325,000 to unlock the full challenge grant and to complete $725,000 in technology improvements.

“Access to technology in rural areas and reservations is more limited than most places in the U.S. This grant will help create more technological access for our students and the communities we serve,” Cheryl Crazy Bull, NWIC President said. “We recognize that this is a substantial gift from the Murdock Trust and we are honored to have the Trust join us as a partner in Native higher education.”

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