Hayley Elkins: Native women armed with their own arsenals

We young West Texas women—especially young Native women—come out of the chute with our own arsenals. We don’t have access to a lot of the fancier products found in urban markets: no organic handmade soap, no exquisite eye cream, no miracle stain remover.

There’s no such thing as easy-heat hors d'oeuvres or “catering” unless you exclusively mean someone who has a smoker big enough to barbecue a pig.

Good doctors are so few and far between that “Oh, she’s already gone to Midland” (a more sizable city 90 miles away) is often the response when inquiring about a well-off pregnant woman in her eighth month.

And of course, this is exaggerated with the ball-and-chain of poverty, a gift of jewelry from European settlers to Native cultures that still chokes off our own agency hundreds of years later.

So as a young woman, you build your personal toolbox, stocked with solutions passed down from the women in your family.