$5 million donation from Bezos’ ex-wife to help IAIA expand programs, research

Gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott will help institute launch graduate programs, build campus research center

For nearly 60 years, the Institute of American Indian Arts has given Indigenous students across the nation and world the gift of learning how to preserve their cultural and artistic traditions.

Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave the four-year college on Santa Fe’s south side an unexpected gift: $5 million.

The award is part of more than $4 billion Scott has recently given to hundreds of organizations nationwide, including several in New Mexico.

“After the last nine months, responding to issues around the COVID pandemic, this is amazing,” IAIA President Robert Martin said of Scott’s gift. “It’s a great way to end 2020, which, for all of us, has been a rough year.”

Scott, a writer and the executive director of an anti-bullying organization, received a $38 billion settlement following her divorce last year from her former husband, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and quickly pledged to give much of her wealth to charity.

Martin said the institute, which opened in 1962, learned about the funding in late November and the check arrived a few days later.

The $5 million will be spread over a number of initiatives, he said, adding it will help launch two new graduate programs in museum studies and studio arts, and help build a research center on campus for students and historians.

Some of the money will go toward

increasing the school’s endowment and scholarship programs.

In return for the gift, Martin said, the institute’s leaders will turn in three annual reports over the next three years, none totaling more than three pages, explaining how they spent the money.

In the last four months, she has given $4.16 billion to 384 organizations. Among them were United Way of Central New Mexico, Meals on Wheels of Albuquerque, Goodwill Industries of New Mexico, Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque, Navajo and Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief and the Navajo Technical University in Crownpoint.

In a blog post titled “384 Ways to Help,” Scott said the groups selected “have dedicated their lives to helping others, working and volunteering and serving real people face-to-face at bedsides and tables, in prisons and courtrooms and classrooms, on streets and hospital wards and hotlines and frontlines of all types and sizes, day after day after day.

“They help by delivering vital services, and also through the profound encouragement felt each time a person is seen, valued, and trusted by another human being,” she continued. “This kind of encouragement has a special power when it comes from a stranger, and it works its magic on everyone.”

Martin said IAIA’s gift from Scott could not have come at a better time.

Since the pandemic began, it has affected the educational system at all levels, he said. For the institute, one of nearly 40 tribal colleges in the U.S., it led to a drop in freshman enrollment and an immediate transition to online learning.

Some 80 percent of the college’s students are Native American. Many of them live in communities where COVID-19 has exacted a heavy toll, adding extra stress to their lives at a time when they had hoped to be learning on the school’s 140-acre campus, Martin said.

“Many students live in multigenerational households,” he added, “so it was difficult to focus on their studies because, having gone home, they may have additional responsibilities to take care of elders or younger siblings. And there was often competition to get on the internet, with other family members wanting to use it for Zoom purposes as well. That made it really challenging.”

The institute — which offers four-year degrees in studio arts, creative writing, cinematic arts and technology, Indigenous liberal studies and museum studies, among other options — enrolls students regardless of their racial or cultural background.

It normally has about 500 students, Martin said, but suffered a 5 percent enrollment drop this year.

“A lot of freshmen decided to wait another year and hopefully will come back to campus next autumn for in-person classes,” he said.

Martin said Scott’s gift was the largest single-donor contribution ever made to the institute.

“That makes a big difference and lifted our spirits,” he said. “It provides a lot of encouragement for going forward.”

Bryson Meyers, a member of the Chippewa Cree tribe in Montana and a senior at the institute, agreed.

“Especially for students from around Indian Country coming to this institute, this lets me know that those beyond our reservations really care not only about our institution, but about other higher education institutions where Native students are,” he said.

“This lets me know that the rest of the students are gonna be OK as we move forward,” Meyers added, “even with this pandemic going on right now.”