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Third grade classroom teacher Lynette Stant, member of the Navajo Nation, grew up in Tuba City on the Navajo Reservation. She is a 15-year veteran instructor on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation in Scottsdale, Arizona. Stant earned her master's degree in elementary education from Arizona State University. She graduated Summa Cum Laude-the highest honorary academic distinction a graduating student can receive. Lynette Stant is also a Gates Millennium Scholar...
I grew up at Big Trout Lake, an isolated village in northwestern Ontario. When I was a child no one there spoke English, and I spoke only the Oji-Cree language until I was 12 years old, even though my father was originally from England. My dad had been sent there as a minister, so I grew up in the church. Every time the church doors were open, I was there! I'm the oldest in our family, and I have a younger brother and a younger sister. There was no school in our community at...
• Lead character in TV sitcom, Rutherford Falls • Host for Women of Size Miniconjou and Sicangu Lakota actor, writer and comedian Jana Schmieding is known primarily for her work in the Rutherford Falls sitcom where she plays Reagan, the lead character. She shares little about her family or early life, but states that she was born and grew up in a small Oregon town with her older sister, Kristen, and was raised "fairly traditionally in the Lakota ways". Jana studied the...
When you stand to pray, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him. Then your Father in heaven will forgive your sins also. If you do not forgive them their sins, your Father in heaven will not forgive your sins. Mark 11:25 NLV The telephone rang. It was four in the morning. The voice at the other end said that my father had been lost in the mine. They were checking the hospital to see if he might have gotten sick and been taken there. At six, the phone rang again with...
Shortly after Abigail Echo-Hawk, M.A., began her job as director of Urban Indian Health in 2016, she was astonished at what she discovered when she opened a file drawer. Inside the drawer was a 2010 comprehensive survey that asked Native-American women residing in the city if they had ever experienced sexual violence. The survey of the148 women participants revealed that 94 percent had either been coerced into sex or had been raped at least once. But what astounded Echo-Hawk...
I was born in Winnipeg but within a year, my parents moved to Spirit River, Alberta. My mom had been married twice and her first husband had an affair and abandoned her and her first child. Eventually she met my dad, and they got married and had my brother and me. We moved back to Winnipeg when I was ten and lived in the western part of the city for two years. Then tragedy struck our family. My dad worked in underground construction with his brother. One day, on his way home,...
The power of the Holy Spirit has made me free from the power of sin and death. This power is mine because I belong to Christ Jesus. Romans 8:2 NLV Standing less than one hundred yards from a bridge high above a ravine, I was about to throw myself over the edge to end my throbbing pain. But someone reached out and saved me. My story is a very personal one. My birth family was steeped in satanic worship. They devised their own increasingly gross ceremonies, which shocked even...
In her Olympic debut at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Jocelyne Larocque, playing with national Team Canada, won Gold. In the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, however, Larocque and Team Canada were awarded the Silver Medal. Second place. And the 3-2 loss to the USA was, momentarily, too much of a disappointment for Jocelyne to take. Born in Ste. Anne, Manitoba, Canada, Jocelyne Larocque (Metis heritage), is so competitive, she removed her Silver Medal from around...
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make jour paths straight. Proverbs 3:5 NIV It doesn't seem like a long time since I first gave my life to the Lord and received His promise of eternal life. In fact, it only feels to me like it was yesterday. I chose to follow Christ at the age of fourteen, with a large group of my friends one Friday evening at a youth rally on my reserve of Bearskin...
Hailing from New Mexico, Jourdan Bennett-Begaye is a Diné (Navajo) citizen who identifies as the Towering House Clan, The Coyote Pass Clan of Jemez, The Mexican Clan and also The Hopi with Red Running Into the Water clan. Currently stationed in Nenahnezad of the Diné Nation, Jourdan Bennett-Begaye holds a master's degree in newspaper, magazine and online journalism. She is also a Newhouse Minorities fellow. She received her degree from The S.I. Newhouse School of Public C...
We all have hopes and dreams for our families and a vision for what we want our families to be like. We want our homes to be a place where everyone feels safe, loved and respected. We also want our homes to be a place where every family member can discover his or her purpose, gifts and abilities. It's not easy to accomplish these goals though, is it? We face all kinds of challenges that can keep our families from being all that they can be. Some challenges we face are...
Everyone makes decisions that they wish they could change. There are things that you've done in the past that make you mad that you ever did them. Yet there's freedom from the hate that you have for yourself, there's freedom from the hate you have for that other person and it's a peace that would surprise you. The freedom that I found began the night that my Mom and I prayed for the Creator to come into my life. I was only six years old and I know that I didn't understand...
I remember standing out one night in my aunt's yard just looking at stars and thinking about the great God who created all things. At 9 or 10 years of age, I almost had a little headache just standing there thinking. "You mean this great God knows who I am?" It was incomprehensible to me that this great Creator knew who Jimmy Anderson was by name. I didn't think I really mattered. My people are the Muskogean people and they have the Creek name. In the early 1800s the...
Although born in Ada, Oklahoma and reared in Texas, swimming champion Mary Killman is also a citizen of the Oklahoma Citizen Potawatomi Nation. At age 11, as a member of the Santa Clara Aquamaids, Killman competed as a race swimmer in youth competitions. "I took to the water like a fish," she would later state in an interview for Indian Country Today. At age 15, however, Mary decided to switch from race swimming to synchronized swimming. A member of a close-knit family, Mary...
While others trusted her as a confidant, innovator, mentor, and friend, to her family, Laura Waterman-married to Lloyd Wittstock for a time-was called "a great mother" by her five children (from a second marriage to Florencio Olivera Simas, deceased). Her four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren remember her as "the world's greatest." But as for tributes, there are many more than shared here. Born to Isaac "Jack" Waterman and Clarinda (Cleo Jackson) Waterman on the...
God can give you all you need. He will give you more than enough. You will have everything you need for yourself. And you will have enough left over to give when there is a need. 2 Corinthians 9:8, NLV "The test is positive. I'm pregnant." Not knowing how to feel-elated or devastated-I knew challenges would be ahead. Though I'd become a Christian and gotten baptized during my pre-teen and teenage years, I'd been living a life devoid of God, leading a wild and reckless...
Miniconjou and Sicangu Lakota actor, writer and comedian Jana Schmieding is known primarily for her work in the Rutherford Falls sitcom where she plays Reagan, the lead character. She shares little about her family or early life, but states that she was born and grew up in a small Oregon town with her older sister, Kristen, and raised "fairly traditionally in the Lakota ways." Jana studied theater arts at the University of Oregon and earned her master's degree from Mercy...
Do not worry. Do not keep saying, 'What will we eat?' or, 'What will we drink?' or, 'What will we wear? The people who do not know God are looking for all these things. Your Father in heaven knows you need all these things. Matthew 6:31, 32 (NLV) One night in my isolated prison cell, I was facing many problems. It was a time and place very much like now. Facing many troubling problems and at the end of my rope, it seemed as if there was no hope. I was a heroin addict and even...
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics--celebrated in 2021 because of concerns for further spread of the COVID-19 Virus and Delta variant-can boast of the highest number of Indigenous participants than in any other Olympiad. From only three Indigenous athletes in the 2016 Rio Olympics, fifty such athletes headed to Japan to compete in the Tokyo 2020 games-the most ever selected in Olympic history. Sixteen participants hail from Australia alone, thirty-three from New Zealand, several are...
My life and family were upside down. My parents loved each other but alcohol drove them apart. Drink turned my dad into a monster, hitting and speaking terribly to my mom. My father became so abusive, one night he almost killed her by throwing her down a flight of stairs. Mom sought help but finally left him, separating when I was seven. Alcohol finally destroyed their marriage. I was thirteen and going through a lot of stress; my emotions were turned upside down. I had...
• Seminole Palmetto Doll Artist • Folk Historian Judy Baker learned the craft of Seminole palmetto doll-making from her grandmother and mother, and began crafting the dolls herself when she was around ten years of age. "Palmetto dolls are made from fiber found in the middle of palmetto bark," she explains. "It's brown in color, stretches after being cut, and after it is dried, it can be fashioned into dolls. Palmetto grows in thickets, and is harvested with tools inc...
Praise the Lord, 0 my soul; all my inmost being, praise His holy name. (Psalm 103:1, NIV) I was about five years old when I got sent on a bus to residential school. I don't remember much before that, and I don't remember much about the school either. I stayed at the residential school until it burned down when I was 13 or 14. That was the year I started drinking. When I got home from residential school, I was sent to a training school because I was a minor with a drinking...
At age four, I was taken from my home by the Children's Aid Society. They placed me in about seven different foster homes in the space of two years because I kept running away, trying to make my way back home. All the places were very abusive. They used to beat me for speaking my language. I was just a little kid, but full-grown men would punch and kick me. That's when I would cry out for my mom. I was sexually abused by the older boys and men in the foster homes. I was forced... Full story
• Olympian, Synchronized Swimmer • Silver Medalist, Pan American Games • 2001 Synchro Athlete of the Year* Although born in Ada, Oklahoma and reared in Texas, swimming champion Mary Killman is also a citizen of the Oklahoma Citizen Potawatomi Nation. At age 11 as a member of the Santa Clara Aquamaids, Killman competed as a race swimmer in youth competitions. "I took to the water like a fish," she would later state in an interview for Indian Country Today. At age 15, howev...
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:16, NIV I remember standing out one night in my aunt's yard just looking at stars and thinking about the great God who created all things. At nine or ten years of age, I almost had a headache just standing there thinking, You mean this great God knows who I am? It was incomprehensible to me that...
