Charles Trimble: Youth will build a new world for Indian Country

Opinion

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Not long ago, I received a phone call from a girl who introduced herself as Autumn White Eyes, a very gracious young lady from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. She was a new graduate from the Red Cloud Indian School at Pine Ridge, and was calling to thank me for helping the school by my volunteer and financial contributions. I know that such calls must be part of the school’s public relations campaign to keep donors giving, but she did not make a pitch for contributions, just wanted to say “thank you.” She will be attending Dartmouth this fall, she told me, and planned to have a career in medicine, as a physician.

Autumn White Eyes made my day. I was as proud of her as if she were my own, and it gave me hope for the Pine Ridge Reservation and all Indian people that there is a whole generation coming up to save Indian Country. There was an old Lakota song that said, “Look, a nation is coming.” That’s how I felt.

When I speak at my annual visit to a workshop in the School of Pharmacy at the Creighton University Medical Center, there are always several Native American students in the class, most of them Lakota, but some from other tribes. Their presence makes me want to give the best talk I can, because I know that they want to be proud of me. Most importantly, though, it’s because I am so proud of them. They are our future. They are our hope.

At the University of South Dakota, where I headed the Institute of American Indian Studies as interim director for several semesters, I was always impressed with the Native students there. There were somewhere near 250 each semester, enrolled in all disciplines including the Law School, the School of Medicine, the Business School, and all the Arts and Sciences. I’ve never seen them in one group, but it must be a powerful picture, a formidable force for the future of the Lakota people and all Indian Country.

They have great hopes and great dreams, wherever they are studying all across the country. They are in the prestigious Ivy League, at Stanford, and at major state universities. Many more are in the tribal college systems, and others will go on to college after military service.

What occurs to me as I ponder this wonderful phenomenon is that all these young folks are not in gangs, or going down the drain with drugs and alcohol. That’s a wonderful feeling, especially when we hear so much about the Reservations on the Northern Plains, awash in alcohol and drugs, and perishing in brutality – in the homes and on the streets. And when we read about the almost epidemic rate of suicide or attempted suicide among the youth, it is distressing.

But what will bring them back to the Reservations to fulfill their dreams for a career after they complete their college education? Places all over the country vie for that kind of talent and background, even in these difficult economic times. City governments put on workshops to attract and identify those young promising people for future recruiting. They promote their cities and counties and states as safe and enjoyable places to live and raise families, with good educational facilities and programs for them to raise their children.

Surely some will want to return to their Reservations to help meet the challenges their families and villages will face long into the future. They want to make their homelands a better place to live and to raise a family. They want to see an end to the mass societal dysfunction that characterizes so much of reservation life – in the families, in the villages, and in the tribal governments and schools.

But the Tribes need to do something to attract them home. First of all, the tribal leaders need to envision what the reservation could be, and to articulate that vision in plans, timelines, and their needs in terms of human and financial capital, infrastructure, businesses, law and order, education, and government. And they need to invite their young people to be a part of planning and building that new world. Only then can the Native college students visualize a place for themselves in the future of their homelands.

That emerging force of young talent would be a terrible thing to waste, and our tribes will have wasted a great opportunity if they can’t offer something to retain them. The young graduates won’t waste their own education, talents and energy. They’ll simply go elsewhere, to a place where one can find employment and a decent life in which to raise a family and to live in safe and secure neighborhoods. They will have earned that right with their diligence and their work to get a good education.

The challenge to bring them home is with the Tribes and their leaders.

Charles “Chuck” Trimble, was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and is a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation. He was principal founder of the American Indian Press Association in 1970, and served as Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians from 1972-1978. He is retired and lives in Omaha, NE. He can be contacted at cchuktrim@aol.com and his website is www.iktomisweb.com.