Table Of ContentI AM WHERE I COME FROM
I AM WHERE I COME FROM
Native American College Students and
Graduates Tell Their Life Stories
EDITED BY
Andrew Garrod, Robert Kilkenny,
and Melanie Benson Taylor
WITH A FOREWORD BY
K. Tsianina Lomawaima
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
Cover illustration: Celestial #2 (Shannon Prince), from the
Dartmouth Pow-Wow Suite, 2009, by Mateo Romero (Cochiti
Pueblo). Photo transfer and acrylic paint on 60 x 40 in panel.
Courtesy of the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College,
Hanover, New Hampshire; purchased through the Mrs. Harvey P.
Hood W'18 Fund.
Copyright © 2017 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review,
this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any
form without permission in writing from the publisher. For
information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House,
512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 2017 by Cornell University Press
First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2017
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Garrod, Andrew, 1937– editor. | Kilkenny, Robert,
editor. | Taylor, Melanie Benson, 1976– editor. | Container
of (work): Prince, Shannon. Seeking to be whole.
Title: I am where I come from : Native American college students
and graduates tell their life stories / edited by Andrew
Garrod, Robert Kilkenny, and Melanie Benson Taylor.
Other titles: First person, first peoples.
Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2017. |
“The essays by N. Bruce Duthu, Davina Two Bears,
and Bob Bennett originally appeared in the 1997 book,
First Person, First Peoples: Native American College
Graduates Tell Their Life Stories”—Foreword. |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016049570 (print) | LCCN 2016050595
(ebook) | ISBN 9781501706912 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN
9781501706929 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501708015
(epub/mobi) | ISBN 9781501708022 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Indians of North America—Education
(Higher)—New Hampshire—Hanover. | Indian college
students—New Hampshire—Hanover—Biography. |
Minority college graduates—New Hampshire—Hanover—
Biography. | Dartmouth College—Students—Biography.
Classification: LCC E97.65.N4 I24 2017 (print) | LCC E97.65.N4
(ebook) | DDC 378.1/9829707423—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016049570
Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally
responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent
possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials
include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free
papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly
composed of nonwood fibers. For further information,
visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.
This book is dedicated to the Native students who have
opened their lives with such generosity and grace and to
the many others whose stories have yet to be told.
And to former Native students, friends, and teachers
at Dartmouth and in the Marshall Islands:
Taylor Keen
Melissa Candelaria
Carnell Chosa
Diandra Benally
Saige Hoaglin
Cody Riggers
Casey Sovo
Paige Anderson
Peter Sabori
Sarah McGlaughlin
Casey Lozar
Nehomah Thundercloud
Colleen Larimore
Carmen Lopez
Eric Hogenson
Cheryl Two Bears
Jacqueline Begay
Hannah Sahn
Gilbert Littlewolf
Dwight Bero
Kodiak Burke
Cote Theriault
Aaluk Edwardson
Aza Erdrich
Shawn Attakai
Don Carlos Steele
Amado Sainz
Shawn Schmitt
Andre Cramblit
AG
Contents
Foreword
K. Tsianina Lomawaima ix
Preface xiii
Introduction: Coming Home
Melanie Benson Taylor 1
PART I. BROKEN: RACIAL MIXTURE AND CULTURAL HYBRIDITY
1. Seeking to Be Whole
Shannon Joyce Prince 19
2. Bringing Back a Piece of the Sky
Blythe George 36
3. Chahta hattak sia, “I Am a Choctaw Man”
Preston Wells 52
PART II. AN INDIAN EDUCATION: LEAVING AND FINDING
HOME AT DARTMOUTH COLLEGE
4. Nihalgai Bahane’, A Fourth-World Story
Jerry Watchman 69
5. Bracelets Upon My Soul
Ma’Ko’Quah Jones 85
6. My Journey to Healing
Kalina Newmark 100
viii Contents
PART III. FULL CIRCLE: RETURNING AND REMAKING HOME
7. Little Woman from Lame Deer
Cinnamon Spear 117
8. Village Girl
AlexAnna Salmon 137
9. Future Ancestor
Hilary Abe 151
10. An Unpredictable Journey
John Around Him 172
PART IV. CONTINUING EDUCATION: NADS REFLECT
ON THEIR JOURNEYS
11. I Walk in Beauty
Davina Ruth Begaye Two Bears 191
12. The Good Ol’ Days When Times Were Bad
N. B ruce Duthu 219
13. Why Didn’t You Teach Me?
Bob Bennett 243
Notes 273
About the Editors and Author of the Foreword 277
Foreword
In his haunting, searingly beautiful memoir of early twentieth-century
student life at St. Peter Claver’s Indian Residential School—known to
its captive boys as “Spanish”—Ojibwa educator and language scholar
Basil Johnston wrote of shame, laughter, desolation, rebellion, camara-
derie, and, eventually, escape. He concluded by quoting his friend Dom-
inic: “We toughed it out, didn’t we? They couldn’t break us down, could
they?” 1 When I interviewed my dad, Curtis Thorpe Carr (Creek) and
about fifty other alumni of the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, their
memories of Indian school in the 1920s and 1930s—like Johnston’s—
mingled anger, joy, nostalgia, and anguish. 2 Bitter recollection inter-
twined with fond remembrance, as survivors of Canadian residential and
US boarding schools made meaning of their lives. That is not to say that
the institutions themselves were balanced, or equitable, or humane. They
were not. They were schools that took schooling to extremes, and in
the blast furnace of colonialism welded the worst aspects of schooling—
rigidity, homogenization, abuse of power, mindless bureaucracy, demean-
ing labor, and rote “learning”—with racism, oppression, and dispossession
to eliminate the Native. 3 They destroyed some, wounded others, but
also forged resilient survivors.
The experiences, then, of Native peoples with colonial schools are
diverse, complex, and filled with paradox. We must not forget: for Na-
tive peoples, most schools still are colonial. That’s true in 2017, and well
beyond, most likely. Indigenous self-determination in education has
deep—centuries-deep—roots; but the beginnings of Indigenous self-
determination in schooling in the United States date back only to the
Description:"The organizing principle for this anthology is the common Native American heritage of its authors; and yet that thread proves to be the most tenuous of all, as the experience of indigeneity differs radically for each of them. While many experience a centripetal pull toward a cohesive Indian experie
