[1] The four founders were Gerald One Feather of the Oglala Sioux Community College (now Oglala Lakota College), David Reisling of D–Q University, Pat Locke of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), and Helen Schierbeck of the United States Office of Education (USOE).
[3] One of the most significant achievements of AIHEC was to work with the United States Congress to authorize in 1994 land-grant status to 29 tribal colleges, achieved in October 1994 under the Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act.
As a result, AIHEC is eligible to have a representative participate in the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges' Council of Presidents.
The American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), since 1972, has been the collective spirit and voice of our nation’s Tribal Colleges and Universities, advocating on behalf of individual institutions of higher education that are defined and controlled by their respective tribal nations.
AIHEC’s mission is to nurture, advocate, and protect American Indian history, culture, art, and language, and the legal and human rights of American Indian people to their sense of identity and heritage through: