Volume 17 Fall 2005 Issue No. 1
In This Issue
Telling Our Stories
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Recyling Lives - students to believe in
by Marjane Ambler
The reception room was packed when the American Indian College Fund and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium honored the Students of the Year in April. However, we wished that thousands more people could have listened as each student came to the podium to testify about how education had transformed their lives.
“Thanks for believing in us; not a lot of people do,” said Deleana Otherbull (Crow), a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA, Santa Fe, NM).
Each year, we look forward to these receptions. Each tribal college has chosen an Indian student who has not only maintained a high grade-point average but also has served the community. Students are awarded $1,000 scholarships from the Castle Rock Foundation.
For the staff at the Tribal College Journal, we never get enough contact with tribal college students. They are our reason for being. We meet students when we visit their campuses, interview them on the phone for articles, and see them compete at the college bowls during the annual AIHEC Conferences. But no event is guaranteed to elicit as many tears as the annual Student of the Year reception.
One student brought her mother along. “This [award] is something we never thought could happen. I was a drug addict and an abused wife, but my mother never gave up on me. I want to tell the other students: Whatever happened in the past can stay in the past.”
Another survivor of domestic violence said her tribal college experience inspired her to study law. Several students described how they had turned “tragedy into triumph” and how their tribal college fulfilled their spiritual needs, as well as their emotional and intellectual needs.
Kendell Graywater (Spirit Lake Sioux) of Cankdeska Cikana Community College (Fort Totten, ND) says her children motivated her to go into nursing. “I just want to take care of my family and be an inspiration to other students with families,” said Graywater.
The age span of the honorees reflects the diversity of tribal college students. Kendell Graywater is 19, and Sarah Yazzie (Navajo) was 50 and a grandmother when she enrolled at Crownpoint Institute of Technology (Crownpoint, NM) and decided she wanted to be a law advocate.
Although the vast majority of tribal college students are women, 14 of the 34 students honored were men. At the reception Frankie Kipp (Blackfeet) described the boxing club that he and his tribe created as a youth mecca to help stop suicide among Blackfeet youth. “Your scholarship will help not only me but them, too,” he said. His description inspired TCJ to profile him in this issue.
Kipp spoke for a lot of older tribal college students when he described what it was like to start college at Blackfeet Community College (Browning, MT) at the age of 40. This tall, muscular, former boxer said, “I saw the young minds there, and I was scared.”
Students like Kipp are themselves becoming agents of change, multiplying the impact of the tribal colleges. Tanya Parker grew up in California, and when she enrolled in Sinte Gleska University in Rosebud, SD, her goal was to learn how to bale hay and be a better farmer and rancher. However, her cultural resource management classes awakened new passions. Her paper on the Blue Water Massacre will soon be published in American Indian Quarterly.
Now Parker (Miwok) plans to earn a Ph.D. and a law degree so that she can be an anthropology professor and a “free lawyer.” “I see people getting the run around because they have no power,” she says.
While only Indian students were eligible for the Student of the Year award, thousands of non-Indian students also attend tribal colleges. In this issue, the 11 th annual TCJ Student Edition features the writing of Mary Ellen Ryall, a 59 -year-old who recently graduated from Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College (Hayward, WI). She overcame four “dream killers” to attend and graduate from LCO: fear, doubt, worry, and guilt.
The Student Edition describes a young girl’s trauma and forgiveness after being denied contact with her birth father, a mother’s speculation about her baby’s sweet dreams, and traditional Ojibwa humor, belying the stereotype of stoic Indians. Two remembrances of time spent with grandparents (“Aaka’s” and “Riding Songs”) convey rich cultural experiences that were likely invisible to onlookers.
In many cases, the biographical paragraphs about the authors are as moving as their writing. One of the most promising writers, Jeannie Wells, 54, says that writing has been her lifelong dream, and her classes at IAIA are helping to make it happen. Her great-great grandmother traveled the Trail of Tears as a 9-year-old and was orphaned. Now when school becomes difficult, Wells rededicates her efforts to honor her ancestors’ hardships.
The students often mention specific instructors who stood by their sides, and often the students plan to become mentors themselves. For example, Lois Red Elk (Santee/ Hunkpapa/ Yankton) wants to be an elementary teacher. Jessie Cree (Ojibwa) intends to write a book of traditional stories.
Our cover artist’s story proves the ripple effect of education. Peterson Yazzie (Navajo) has captured the attention of galleries in Santa Fe, NM, and Sedona, AZ, places that see hundreds of American Indian artists rise and fall over a season. This is one of those who will rise, they say.
Growing up in a remote area of the Navajo Reservation (Greasewood Springs, AZ), he never expected to attend college; college cost money. However, his plans changed after taking a Southwest art class in high school from Don Whitesinger (Navajo), a graduate of IAIA and Rhode Island School of Design.
Yazzie received art scholarships that made education possible, and he graduated from IAIA this year. His powerful, color-saturated paintings (like the Birth of the Water Clans on this issue’s cover) have won several awards and have been featured at nationally prominent Native American art fairs.
Yazzie, 25, hopes to return to the reservation and become an art teacher one day. He says, “My paintings are expressions of who I am, an individual co-existing between worlds. I use traditional aspects of my culture to communicate in a contemporary society.”
Many other students who co-exist between worlds are featured in this issue, but many others go about their studies, taking care of their families and their communities without recognition. The faculty and the staff at the tribal colleges know who they are.
IAIA student Deleana Otherbull says she started a recycling program at IAIA to save aluminum, glass, and paper – items that would have otherwise been discarded into a landfill. For many students, tribal colleges perform this function. They recycle students’ lives, helping them transform into more creative, happy, and productive participants in society, and we all benefit from their contributions.
Marjane Ambler has been editor of the Tribal College Journal since 1995.