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Drums of Community Beat for Native-American Grads

by Esha Sarai

   Deondra Jackson worried she would cry while delivering the farewell
   address to the Class of 2018 on the White Earth Native American
   reservation in Minnesota.

   "I'm kinda nervous," she said before she took the stage in front of 28
   other graduates and two dozen teachers and administrators. "Hopefully I
   don't break down on stage."

   "It's really bittersweet," she added after a brief pause.

   Jackson did fine, delivering a brief farewell to the mostly Native
   American students who have been her classmates at Waubun-Ogema school,
   many of them since kindergarten

   Jackson will move to a dorm at Minnesota State University in Moorhead
   this fall to study social work -- the same field her mom has practiced
   on the reservation.

   "On the reservation, there's a lot of families that are struggling,"
   Jackson says. "Some of my family members have lost a parent to drugs."

   Jackson says she wants to help break the cycle.
   "Some of the stories she tells me it's like '¦ wow, how does a parent
   do that to their children? How does a parent just abandon their child?
   That's one of the things I really want to help. I want to come back and
   deal with the children," she says, "maybe a little with the parents
   just to help them get on the right track."

   Jackson's life has been reservation-focused, like for many Americans
   who grow up in small towns, traveling only outside to nearby cities in
   Minnesota and North Dakota. She's "never experienced anything other
   than life around the reservation," she says.

   Breaking stereotypes
   But she isn't nervous, she says, about leaving home and meeting new
   people of different backgrounds this fall in college.

   "There's a stereotype that, like, Native Americans are bad, that they
   don't expect us to get a lot, like, far in life, and I'm just excited
   to go there and prove people wrong," she says.

   "I'm not going to be a statistic of Native Americans not going to
   school."

   Jackson lined up with her fellow classmates for a class photo before
   the ceremony. The students' smiles flit between laughter, when someone
   cracked a joke, and nervousness when the room fell quiet.

   As their families and friends filed into the school gymnasium, the
   commencement ceremony looked like so many others across the United
   States, although a bit smaller and less generic.

   Because they are on the White Earth reservation, Native American
   traditions and customs are part of the ceremony. A procession that
   includes a tribal flag with the American one entered ahead of the
   graduates as they walked into the gymnasium.

   After the requisite performance of the national anthem by the high
   school band, a local Native-American drum group performed as attendees
   remained standing.

   A few speeches and the handing out of 29 diplomas later, Jackson took
   the stage to deliver her class's farewell address.

   "We should never forget where we came from, and who was by our side for
   it all," Jackson says from behind the podium, addressing her classmates
   with a steady voice.

   "So Class of 2018, now it's time to say goodbye. So shed a tear, share
   a smile, and be sure to remember all the while, although it may be time
   to move on, today's memories will last your whole life long."