In October I attended the National Indian Education Convention in Oklahoma City. It is a place of rich Native cultures and beautiful landscapes. It is so flat in Oklahoma City you cannot see the horizon and the winds sweep you off your feet as they rush across the plains looking to knock over whatever lies in their path.  There were places in the downtown area where the wind hit you for a few steps then slowed down. The Native people  there are a mix of those who have been in this place since the beginning of time and those who came here as a result of forced removal from the lands of their creation.  They all have made a place for themselves.

They have learned to live together and we witness the strength of their work in the faces of their elders and the hopefulness of the young.  I picked the convention as my urban theme this time because I noticed that the voices of our advocates for our urban children and youth are finally becoming more prominent.  There is a greater emphasis through the NIEA Urban Indian Education sub-committee and in the content of workshops on how we can better serve the diverse Native population in our public schools.  This leads to more focus also on mainstream colleges and how they may be serving Native student populations.

Reservation, rural and urban Indians must work together to ensure the best education for our children, our youth and our college students.  I believe that public schools through local, state and federal support have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure that our children have adequate resources and support to get a quality education that includes support for cultural education and to meet any special economic or social concerns.  Tribes have the duty and the legal right to insist upon this education and should not have to pay for it.

We are each uniquely identifiable as a people because of our specific tribal languages, our connection to a place that we call our homelands, our social, economic and governance systems and our relationship with creation.  It is very important as we focus on our children who are in public schools that we help them make the connection to their homelands and to the traditional knowledge that is their identity.  It takes work and it take cooperation because the diversity of most public school settings especially in urban centers creates a high risk for pan-Indian practices to prevail over the effort it takes to help each child find out more about their own people.  In many cases, this is made more complicated by the inter-tribal identity of our families.

But we can do it, my own children and grandchildren are mostly living in the cities in pursuit of employment so as a family we have to make a special effort to tell stories, practice our traditional ways and touch base with our relatives and our home.  They are inter-tribal being Sicangu Lakota as well as Shoshone-Paiute.  Because my children were raised in Rosebud they are mostly Lakota in their understanding of the world but they know they have a rich Native heritage in all of their tribal ancestry.

Generally, public schools won’t give our children their identity, but their family, community and their life education will.  We can ask of the schools to represent our identities appropriately and with respect, to give our children access to resources for success, and to ensure equity in their educational experience.  Parents and tribes have a right to inform the allocation of resources and to insist that cultural education be as as much a priority as academic support.  Cultural studies, curriculum, teaching strategies, extracurricular and co-curricular activities can all be used to support tribal children and youth.  As tribal people we must reach out to our families no matter where they are at, using the tools we have access to in the form of new media, to pass on our knowledge.

It is such a pleasure for me to come home to the Rosebud. Up until I moved away in 2002, it rarely occurred to me that I might live somewhere else. Once when my kids were young, I gave serious thought and put some effort into moving to Lincoln NE for a job. It didn’t work out although I still think Lincoln would be a great place to live. Moving to WA in 2002 was prompted both by Tess living over there and the opportunity to serve as President at Northwest Indian College. When we moved it took me months if not years to feel ‘at home’, and I admit that I never did feel the same type of connection to the people and land that I feel when I come to Rosebud. Now in many ways, I am making fleeting trips here, coming for a week or two and engaging in the semi-whirlwind activity of visiting friends and relatives and taking drives to places.

I am reading a book recommended by a friend, Quiet by Susan Cain and it prompted me to think more deeply about my own way of being. I have long considered myself an introvert in an extrovert’s role and her book has given me some language to describe myself.

I learned many years ago that I am a person who appreciates the quiet of time with myself, through walking, writing and reading. Lately that has included sewing which I especially like because of its creative outcome. I remember when I would find a place off the road and lie down on the prairie grasses or beneath pine or cottonwood trees and I would be silent, listening to the wind and brushing bugs away from my body. I always appreciated the quiet of my own bedroom where I kept my books and wrote in my journal while my kids and their friends watched TV and played in the other rooms.

This recent move to Denver and my years of living up at Lummi, helped me think about my own sense of place and how I create that and bring my own self into it. On the Rosebud, I always felt physically present, in the seasons and with the rhythm of community and cultural events. In my family, I felt that I had to be outgoing to be heard in the “noise” of family matters. When I got older I was surprised when people mentioned how talkative I was because it took such effort. Susan Cain says that there is some evidence that an introvert who feels passionately about a personal cause can learn to be more extroverted. That might be me, I feel so strongly about tribal colleges that I am willing to walk up total strangers and invite their support. I didn’t name it but now I realize that I sought the help of extroverts to make that access happen for me even though I am more than happy, even honored, to tell our story.

When I come home it is those moments when my eyes rest on the horizon, or I am walking in the cool morning air or the hot afternoon sun with the heat pressing against me, when I am writing and sitting quietly, that I am most at peace. I am reminded that all we want for ourselves as Lakota people is right here, all our foods, our medicines, our kinship and our ways of knowing, are inside and on this place. It can be a hard life because of poverty and all of its ramifications, but it is a life of possibility as well.

I am aware that this sense of place, of belonging, is one of the important qualities that all of us as Indigneous people must maintain. We must preserve regardless of whether we are reservation, rural or urban Indians, the place of our belonging.