Is Miss Indian BYU tradition waning?

PROVO — As a Navajo who was Miss Indian Brigham Young University 2007, Farina Smith enjoyed visiting the Miss Indian BYU portraits that hang in a third-floor hallway of the Wilkinson Student Center.

"It's a beautiful history of this place," she said.

There is no room in the hallway for a picture of Smith or her two immediate predecessors, which doesn't bother her. What does is that she may never have a successor.

The on-again, off-again tradition of Miss Indian BYU is off yet again. The tradition might not return after a controversy over candidate qualifications led to cancellation of the Miss Indian BYU pageant in March.

"It's unfortunate what happened," Smith said. "There were mistakes on everybody's part. It doesn't have to be the end of everything."

The Tribe of Many Feathers student club is considering options for the future, club president Shauntel Talk said. No decision will be made until September, said Talk, who was one of seven contestants who applied for the pageant this year.

The contestants represented five tribes — Chickasaw, Sioux, Navajo, Cherokee and one from Canada.

"I think the Miss Indian BYU program is important to the club," Talk said, "but it's getting more difficult to gather Native American young women to participate. I've seen a gradual decrease in the number of contestants, and I don't think we should keep anyone from participating."

Miss Indian BYU's main job is to represent the American Indian student body by sharing her native culture with visitors to BYU's annual powwow and with children at area schools. The title was created in 1967 when the university launched Indian Week — now Heritage Week — in the midst of a drive to recruit more American Indians to the school.

"They wanted someone to represent the American Indian students and act as the hostess of this celebration," said Smith, who is researching the pageant's history as history major pursuing a minor in Native American studies.

BYU had five American Indian students in 1951. A long, laborious push by BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson and leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns BYU, began to pay off in the 1960s.

By 1967, 122 American Indian students attended BYU. The number leapt to more than 600 in 1973-74, according to Wilkinson's history, "Brigham Young University: The First One Hundred Years."