The following story was written and reported by Jesse Abernathy, Native Sun News Editor. All content © Native Sun News.

SUMMIT, SOUTH DAKOTA –– “Ultrabright.”

This is one of two nicknames family and close friends affectionately bestowed upon Wakanda Onawa Gonsalves. It evolved from her larger-than-life smile, which illuminated virtually every moment of her life, says her mother, Lisa Gorsuch Gonsalves.

Her daughter’s other nickname was “Waka,” an abbreviated version of her given name. “But only the people who were really close to her were allowed to call her that,” Lisa said with a laugh. And, translated from Lakota to English, her daughter’s first and middle names are “The Beautiful One” and “Wide-Awake, or Alert, One,” respectively.

On May 7, the girl whose glowing, becoming smile could literally light up the room unexpectedly made her journey to the Spirit World, just days after celebrating her 19th birthday.

She leaves behind her parents, three brothers, a sister, many friends and other relatives and the love of her life, Felix. The couple had been together for four years.

Gonsalves, a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate like her mother, was born at Travis Air Force Base in California on April 28, 1993. Both Lisa, who remains on active military duty, and her husband, Leon Gonsalves, were deployed to Iraq from 2003-2005. Lisa lovingly calls her daughter a “military brat.”

“She’s been all over the place with us. For part of the time we were deployed, she lived in Massachusetts with her grandmother, Leon’s mother, for about nine months, until we returned from overseas.”

During her brief time here on earth, she touched the lives of everyone who knew her and always strived for high achievement in all that she did, said Lisa.

A student at Tiospa Zina Tribal High School on the Lake Traverse Reservation, Lisa said her daughter never wanted anything less than straight A’s and was active in sports – including one that used to be reserved for boys only – for most her life.

“She played volleyball during elementary school through middle school. She attended Enemy Swim Day School and played basketball. She was also on the wrestling team there.”

Gonsalves graduated from eighth grade at Enemy Swim, which is also located on Lake Traverse, and was set to graduate from Tiospa Zina with a cumulative grade point average of 3.2 on May 19. Out of respect for Gonsalves’ milestone, school officials presented Lisa with her daughter’s diploma at the high school graduation ceremony.

“She wanted to maintain a 4.0 grade point average, but she got sick for half a year and didn’t have the opportunity to make up her work,” said Lisa. “She had plans to attend Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., and had just completed her application and SAT.”

Lisa said a car accident in 2006 also slowed her daughter down – but only momentarily – during her academic career. “(The accident) almost killed me and my son, and we survived that – she survived that, too – and she was very strongheaded and determined. She was the type of person who got very angry and upset if she got something lower than an A or a B – B was unacceptable to her. The standards she set for herself were very high; she could’ve been something big.”

Gonsalves applied for many scholarships and education camps throughout high school, including the South Dakota Governor’s Camp, which is for gifted students. “She succeeded in getting accepted to the camp in Vermillion and then was requested to become an ambassador of excellence, who are the ones that guide all the newbies coming to camp. She was awarded a medal for that,” said Lisa. “In 19 years, she did quite a bit.”

During the last six months of her senior year, Gonsalves successfully completed her studies at Tiospa Zina independently through the school’s Alternative Learning Center.

The veterans of the tribe’s Bravo Honor Guard also selected Gonsalves to be their princess – a post she held honorably for three years. “The guys (from the honor guard) are pretty proud of her. She represented them at every powwow she went to,” Lisa said. “She learned how to dance as soon as she could walk.”

Gonsalves, whose ceremonially given Lakota name is Hota Inyea Mani Win, or She Speaks Loudly As She Walks, started out as a traditional buckskin dancer then progressed to a jingle dress dancer through about seventh grade, her mother remembered. “At that time, she transitioned to a fancy shawl dancer and also served as the Sun Dance pipe girl when she was much younger. She had made the commitment this year that she wanted to start sun dancing on her own.”

And her Indian name fit her, Lisa added. “She did speak loudly, and everyone definitely knew when she was around.”

Lisa said her daughter always focused more on helping others rather than herself. “I don’t know where she would have gotten that from,” she said with a telltale chuckle.

Early on Friday, May 4, Gonsalves made a visit to the doctor because she was having difficulty breathing and had a chest X-ray done. That evening, her parents took her back to see the doctor and were told their daughter had stress-induced asthma. The situation, however, was more serious than that.

“She had an enlarged heart,” said Lisa, “and Monday morning, at 4:30, she started waking up, and she had a migraine, which she always dealt with because she was so hard on herself.”

An hour later, Gonsalves had stopped breathing. “At 8:19 a.m. (on May 7), she was pronounced dead,” her mother quietly recalled. “She had cardiomyopathy, an enlargement of the heart.”

The official cause of death was a heart attack.

“Here at home, my husband did CPR on her, giving her compressions and air for probably about an hour and a half before we actually got her in the ambulance and got her to Milbank hospital,” Lisa said. Milbank is some 22 miles away from Summit.

Gonsalves was ill over the weekend as well but managed to make it to her senior prom on Saturday, May 5, where she was voted queen, Lisa said. Due to nausea and vomiting, however, she made an early departure.

“Her dad went and picked her up and brought her home. She slept pretty much most of the day on Sunday. And late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, she was up for a little while talking to her friends on Facebook.”

Lisa said she wanted to bury her daughter in the local veterans cemetery, but cemetery policy won’t allow it. “As my dependent, she is eligible to be buried in a military cemetery, but the military cemetery here doesn’t follow the same guidelines as the federal government,” she noted. “I was kind of upset with them about that.”

Instead, Gonsalves is buried in Goodwill Cemetery, which is for Native Americans, at Agency Village on Lake Traverse.

“I didn’t want to have to go to another military cemetery to bury her, such as near Rapid City or Minneapolis or anywhere else,” said Lisa. “I want her next to me, and this way, she can be.”

Administered by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Black Hills National Cemetery is located approximately 25 miles northwest of Rapid City, near Sturgis. Fort Snelling National Cemetery, also overseen by Veterans Affairs, is in Minneapolis. Situated in two different directions from the Lake Traverse Reservation, which is tucked away in the northeastern corner of South Dakota, both sites are a few hours away from Summit: Black Hills National Cemetery lies almost 400 miles to the southwest, while Fort Snelling National Cemetery lies 200 miles to the southeast

. “She could have been tribal chairwoman some day,” Lisa said. “She means the world to me.”

(Contact Jesse Abernathy at editor@nsweekly.com)