"Before Christmas, a 6-year-old friend came into our lives.

He insists that I call him Skywalker. And I do, imagining how the futuristic name fits the America that he will inherit, a future likely so different from the one we now inhabit.

I tell him about the 44th President of the United States, who will take the oath of office on Jan. 20. And I talk about the two young girls, 7-year-old Sasha and 11-year-old Malia, who will soon take up residence in the most famous house in the land.

I don’t even try to explain the hope inspired across America by the election of a president who is African American.

I only tell him that the return of young children to the White House is a sign of hope for our country. In Native America, we have a hope, or an ideal, that everything we do must be done in consideration for the next seven generations. I say “ideal” because even we, the originators of this objective, don’t always live up to it.

Yet for the broader America, which does not share this tradition, the presence of children is sometimes the sole sign of hope for our future."

Get the Story:
Kara Briggs: Answer Obama’s call to hope (Indian Country Today 1/14)

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