BABB -- Iris Pretty Paint, a sociologist, spent the last 10 years researching and developing a theory on educational persistence as part of her doctoral program. She was driven to find answers about why people don't give up when faced with challenges.

Pretty Paint has been using her research knowledge with members of the Blackfoot Project, a program she's coordinating to help fellow tribal members earn their doctoral degrees. It is the only known project of its type in the country, a collaboration that allows group members to work together and provide a direct benefit to the Blackfeet Nation by uniting traditional knowledge with Western science.

"I always remind them, 'Don't get sidetracked,' " said Pretty Paint. " 'The bottom line is you want a degree. That's it. If you allow things along the way to stop you, you just don't have the luxury of letting that happen. If we let the system stop us, they've won. And we've worked too hard in our lives to get to the point where we're at.' "

Blackfoot Project members recently met in Babb, a small town on the Blackfeet Reservation, to discuss the group's future. The daylong meeting crystallized the group's purpose and marked the group's seventh gathering since last September. Members proclaimed their determination to support one another as they develop individual master's or doctorate proposals and pursue their degrees.

The majority of the group's two dozen members are women.

"Most of our ceremonies from way back, I don't know how far back, were given to our women," said Narcisse Blood, an adviser to the Blackfoot Project. "Over the years, especially the last 200 years when we faced some real challenges, whether it's starvation or the killing off of the buffalo and especially today it's our Blackfeet women who step up and rise to the occasion of doing what needs to be done.

"A part of our history that's not always told is how significant a woman's role is," said Blood, also the coordinator of Kanai studies at Red Crow College in Alberta, Canada. "So when you look at a project like this, it's an accumulation of efforts over the years that we're going to do something that needs to be done."

Project member Linda Juneau said she's participating in the group because the Blackfeet Nation needs more tribal members with Ph.D.s to look out for the welfare of the tribe. Her doctoral proposal will likely fill a niche to unite a wide range of academic disciplines within the Blackfoot Project.

Together, the group's members aim to "tackle a problem that is important to the tribe itself," Juneau said. "It's important we move forward as a group. We need each other. We need to rely on the expertise of each other and the knowledge each one carries, not only their academic knowledge but their knowledge of being a Blackfeet."

Blackfoot Project members have chosen four core issues to guide their research projects, including rediscovering Blackfoot values, the role of stress, language and the limitations of political systems.

"Their vision is solid because they have confidence in who they are," said Pretty Paint. "They are very aware of the expectations. The more they learn about what's expected of them, it makes them dig in even more when someone tells them they can't do something."

The project's name is Ihto'tsii Kipaitapiiwahsinnoon, which in the Blackfoot language means "Coming from Within." The University of Montana's Partnership for Comprehensive Equity, or PACE, and also Research Opportunities in Science for Native Americans, or ROSNA, have helped guide the project to include the Blackfoot world view and philosophy.

PACE and ROSNA research shows it's difficult for people of all races to earn an advanced degree, with only 50 percent of people who start a program actually finishing it. It's even more challenging for Native people to do so, because their philosophical views are often at odds with mainstream higher education values.

Without an advanced degree, Native people have little chance of becoming faculty members at universities or tribal colleges where they can help their community or be role model-teachers. Only 30 percent of all faculty members at tribal colleges are Native. Those numbers drop even lower for instructors in science where only 15 percent have master's degrees and 23 percent doctorate degrees.

At the recent meeting in Babb, a half-dozen project members said they were ready to move forward with their individual research proposals and present them to a university committee in October.

"I'm interested in the community and the needs of the reservation," said Susan Webber, who lives on the Blackfeet Reservation. "It's a third world country and it needs economic development, infrastructure development, just basically bringing it up to par with other communities its size."

Webber hopes to be among the first phase of project members to present her individual proposal. The ones who complete their doctoral programs will join an elite group of scholars. In 2003, only 193 Native people earned doctorate degrees, compared to 2,841 Natives who earned master's degrees during the same year.

Pretty Paint earned her doctorate degree in May from the University of Minnesota after developing a theory that shows Native people succeed in higher education when they have a clear vision of what they want to accomplish, have a support network and include prayer in their lives.

A University of Arizona graduate program showed that 94 percent of Ph.D. students, of all races, who received individual attention completed their dissertations. They benefited from "writing coaches, peer criticism, support and financial backing."

The Blackfoot Project also seeks to build a foundation for success through shared tradition. The two dozen members are bound by the same language and place.

The group takes pride in that it is moving forward in ways valued within Blackfoot culture. Most notably, the members have been brought together, listened to and respected.

"When you do that for people, you really don't know the power that's going to come out of that," said Pretty Paint.