Story by Jessica Rothschuh | Photo illustration by Clarissa Westmeyer | Photos by Lauren Arendt

Her dark hair is pulled back in braids, leaving her face open, two large, dark eyes peering out from long eyelashes. Her skin is a warm almond color. Her ethnicity is hard to put a finger on. She could pass as Hispanic or Native American.

Jalayna Nadal, freshman Latin American studies major from Edinboro, Pa., is both. Her father is black and Cherokee, and her mother is Puerto Rican and white.

Developing her multicultural identity has been a lifelong process for Nadal, and college is a time to further explore her multiple heritages, shaping her cultural identity as she learns more about herself and her roots.

For biracial and multiracial students like Nadal, college may prove both exciting and difficult. Mixed-race students in particular can experience an intense desire to discover their heritages and create their racial identities, but they also can feel pressure to define themselves. For the first time, students are searching for identities outside the environment in which they were raised, without the constant support of family.

Although Nadal now lives her life following Native values, she wasn’t born into her Native culture. In a white, rural town, her family lived a typical American life. But when she was 5, her brother’s friend, Eagle Boy, invited the Nadals to attend Native events, such as sweat lodges.

It took years for Nadal to feel at home in the Native Cherokee culture. She thought the ceremonies were stupid. The children were suspicious of outsiders and were slow to open up to her. But when she returned year after year, they began to accept her, and she adopted the Native path. “I started really falling into the culture,” Nadal says. “It impacted me. What I take from it is honor and dignity.”

At Kent State, Nadal celebrates her Native culture by incorporating it into each day. Her belief in living a life of honor became the subject of her first college paper, and the Native theme of order is reflected in daily rituals. For example, when she sees an animal, especially a bird of prey, such as a hawk or eagle, she lays down tobacco and says, Aho mitakuye oyasin.

“It’s like saying a prayer for that animal because it is a part of creation, and the creator made it,” Nadal says. It means ‘all my relations,’ or ‘we are all related’ in the Lakota Sioux language, which Nadal learned from a family friend.

Even brushing her teeth reminds Nadal of her Native path. She rinses her mouth four times because four is a recurring number in life — four seasons, four directions, four colors of people.

But college can be a difficult place for some students to connect with their culture. For junior Spanish major Ikaika Isaacs, coming to Kent State from Virginia Beach, Va., meant becoming further detached from his cultural heritage.