Elevate: Support the cultural and academic success of native students, staff, and faculty.

Educate: Inform non-native peoples about California indigenous groups and their cultural practices and challenges in modern times.

Engage: UC Merced is a campus that values and welcomes Native Americans, their lives, and their cultures. We work to engage local tribal groups about matters concerning repatriation and maintaining cultural practices.

Local indigenous people, including the Yokuts and Miwuk who understand the earth as a place for everyone, first inhabited the land where UC Merced is located. When we address diversity on this campus, we do so boldly, daring to look forward and backward, imagining diversity’s demand for the 21st century and the importance of diversity in addressing past wrongs, reaffirming humanity, and ensuring a reconciliatory path of redress for the future. The most prominent path on our campus is called Scholars Lane. By day, you can see, hear and witness the embodiment of our diversity through campus community members making their way across campus framed by the slopes and peaks of the Sierra Nevada.