Fighting Isolation: How Four Native Women Created Change at UNC–Chapel Hill

Abstract:Mixing oral history and document analysis, this article examines how the first historically Native American fraternity and sorority (HNAFS), Alpha Pi Omega, was founded in 1994 at UNC–Chapel Hill by a group of women known as the Four Winds. This article also showcases why Native female students wished to create Alpha Pi Omega and how they fought the isolation they felt as Native American students at a primarily white institution in the mid-1990s. Using tribal critical race theory as a lens for analysis, the article explores the rationale for why and how Native American women wished to create a Greek organization.