Salish Kootenai College
Salish Kootenai College is a private tribal land-grant community college in Pablo, Montana. It serves the Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai, and Pend d'Oreilles tribes. SKC's main campus is on the Flathead Reservation. There are three satellite locations in eastern Washington state, in Colville, Spokane, and Wellpinit. Approximately 1,207 students attend SKC. Although enrollment is not limited to Native American students, SKC's primary function is to serve the needs of Native American people.
History
Prior to 1978, SKC was a branch campus of Flathead Valley Community College. SKC is a tribal college, chartered in 1977 under the sovereign governmental authority of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. In 1981, the college formally disassociated from FVCC and became completely self-governing. The college was designated a land-grant college in 1994 alongside 31 other tribal colleges.In 2015, a satellite designed by SKC students and faculty was successfully deployed into low Earth orbit under NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative, making it the first operational CubeSat designed by a tribal college. BisonSat's primary mission objective is to transmit image data of Earth with a targeted ground sample distance of 100 meters.
Some former employees sued the college in 2017 under the Federal False Claims Act, saying that the administration had falsified student records in order to continue receiving public grant funding from the United States Department of Human Services and the United States Department of Indian Health Services. This suit was dismissed with prejudice in May 2018 by United States District Court, D. Montana, Missoula Division in a determination that the lawsuit violated tribal sovereignty of the Confederation Salish and Kootenai Tribes.