The Navajo believe that dawn is the most sacred time of the day. But as daylight broke across the University of Arizona campus, tragedy struck one Navajo student.
Mia Henderson, 18, a UA freshman from the Navajo Reservation, was killed in an apparent stabbing, police said. UA police arrested her roommate, Galareka Harrison, also 18 and from the Navajo Reservation, and said she would be jailed on suspicion of first-degree murder.
Henderson's death shocked the tight-knit American Indian student population at the UA.
Most of the students — freshmen enrolled in the UA's First-Year Scholars Program for American Indians — gathered Wednesday afternoon for counseling sessions, to support one another and to offer hugs through tears.
Henderson, an athlete who graduated from Tuba City High School — 77 miles northeast of Flagstaff — seemed popular and had a lot of friends, said Heidi Dugi, 22, a UA senior at the UA majoring in public health and a member of the Navajo Nation who is also from Tuba City.
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"The whole town values sports. That's how we stick together," Dugi said. "She was an athlete and I think people in Tuba City are going to be affected. . . . I think it'll stick with us here for a while, too."
American Indian students who are full- and first-time freshmen are eligible to enroll in the UA's First-Year Scholars Program, designed to promote student retention, according to the program's Web site.
The program's first students, in 2004-2005, had a 69 percent first-to-second-year persistence rate, an increase of 9 percent from the average.
Each year, 50 students participate in the program, taking similar classes together and staying in a designated coed residence hall.
All scholars are housed in one wing of Graham-Greenlee Hall and American Indian upperclassmen serve as mentors for the students.
"She had a bright future," said Sarah Fendenheim,19, a sophomore and member of the Tohono O'odham Nation who was assigned to be Henderson's mentor in the program.
"She was definitely motivated and was very intelligent," Fendenheim said. "Even if she was quiet, she seemed social. It's sad it happened to such a good person."
"It hits home for sure," said Julian Billy, 27, a computer engineering major from Ganado, on the Navajo Reservation. "We're Navajo and it's hitting us hard. Especially at the community level ... first you hear that she's Native, then Navajo, then from Tuba City. The shock keeps getting bigger and bigger."
American Indian students make up just 2.2 percent of the UA student body, according to enrollment figures from fall 2006.
"It's not uncommon to find kinship and friendship with each other. Everyone usually sticks together," said Crystal Juan, 23, a Navajo from San Carlos.
"There can be a lot of pressure, especially if you're away from home for the first time," Juan said. "It's a big transition. You're going to a huge school and you're coming from the reservation where everyone knows one another."
The act of killing another human being goes against very basic tribal beliefs, said Waylon Begay, a Navajo and doctoral student in the UA's American Indian Studies department, who teaches a class about Indian traditions and beliefs.
"We're taught to respect every living thing to keep in harmony and balance," he said. "It disrupts the universe, it disrupts ourselves. And there are consequences for that."
