Tribal Leadership and Community Impact: Lexie ’26’s Dartmouth Journey
August 2025 edition of the DCF student-produced vlog
Welcome to the August 2025 edition of the Dartmouth College Fund’s student-produced vlog! In this video, Lexie ’26, a double major in government and linguistics with a modification in Native American and Indigenous studies, shares her impactful experience as an intern with Dartmouth’s Tribal Leadership Academy.
Lexie takes us inside this unique week-long program where tribal leaders from across the nation come to Dartmouth to build skills—from health care to law—that they bring back to their communities. She highlights how the Academy connects Dartmouth’s commitment to Indigenous peoples with real-world leadership and sovereignty.
Beyond the Academy, Lexie reflects on how her academic studies in federal Indian law complement her internship work and deepen her understanding of Indigenous governance.
Watch the full video to hear Lexie’s story and learn how Dartmouth is empowering Indigenous communities through leadership and learning.
Full Video Transcript
Hi, I'm Lexie. I'm a ’26. I'm double majoring in government and linguistics modified with native and indigenous studies. And this year I am one of the interns for Dartmouth’s Tribal Leadership Academy.
The Tribal Leadership Academy is a week-long event where we fly out tribal leaders from across the nation to come to Dartmouth campus to learn from native alumni at Dartmouth on skills that they can take back with them to their communities so that they can be better tribal leaders.
These skills range from healthcare delivery to resource management to law and politics. This year we have 26 different tribal leaders from across the nation who have identified needs within their community, and they’re coming here to learn from the best of the best.
The Tribal Leadership Academy is also a part of Dartmouth’s rededication to indigenous peoples and its charter. So this is a way to go outside of just supporting indigenous students and also reaching the nations themselves.
My favorite thing about the Tribal Leadership Academy is getting to meet with the various leaders and learn about how they are helping their community. It’s really fun to have conversations with them about how they’re serving their community, whether it’s through building schools or doing food drives and whatever it means to be able to serve their people the best.
Since working with the Tribal Leadership Academy, I’ve been able to use everything that I’ve learned in my federal Indian law class and learn about the cases that have happened throughout the centuries of Federal Indian law and how those apply in a real world context to these tribes that are all represented at the TLA.
I am particularly looking forward to the possibility of the Tribal Leadership Academy expanding into an institute that supports tribal sovereignty and really rests on the founding of the school by Samson Occom and just always is rededicating and refocusing our founding charter of the school.