Editor’s note: the following profiles are excerpted from a book entitled Real Indians: Portraits of Contemporary Native Americans and America’s Tribal Colleges published by the American Indian College Fund with assistance form the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. For information on how to buy a copy, call (303) 426-8900 and ask about the Real Indians book.  Photos by Andrea Modica

David Risling: Put all the Spokes Together

by David Risling (Hoopa Valley, Karuk, and Yurok)
Cofounder of D-Q University, former director and professor of Native American Studies, University of California-Davis

My wife, Barbara, and I have been married 58 years. We both went to Hoopa Indian School, the same school that my dad took over, the first Indian school taken over from the federal government in 1931. It’s not in any history books, but it’s in the archives.

When I first went to school, nobody was allowed to speak an Indian language. We got beat up if we did, and we were just little kids. We had to do everything but be an Indian. That was my first four years, and then my dad stepped in and said he’d had enough. He only finished the second grade himself before he ran away from all the boarding schools. So he got together with others and took over the school.

When I was a boy, my dad brought me into the woodshed and told me, “You’re going to go off to college.”  I said, “Yeah,” though I didn’t even know what college really was. He asked me what I was going to take there, and I had no idea that you had to take something. Then he made a little dot in the center of a big circle on the ground, and he asked me what it was, and I said a dot and a circle. He said, “Well, you’re right, but I want to show you what a wheel has to run on.” And then he asked me what would I like to do. I had never even thought about that. Finally I said I wanted to be a lawyer, because he always had these lawyers and congressmen and everybody else chasing him around. And he said, “You think that wheel will run with one spoke?”

He explained that Indians were only about 1 percent of the population — the dot in the center, and the dominant society was the circle. He said we may have to live in the dominant society, but we are still Indian people. And he went down the line and told me what was important. The first thing was who you are — your spirituality. Then the second thing he talked about was education. He went on about a whole number of things and about how you have to write your own history, because the history that’s written is false. And he told me, “Don’t bother to come home if you forget who you are. If you start something, you finish it.” You know, a lot of people, when it gets too hot, they quit.  You have to learn how to put all the spokes together in order for the wheel to turn.

There are a lot of changes coming out by Indian people. A long time ago, all these government people thought they knew everything, but they don’t have any of the facts. The big thing that I’m happy about is that all over the country, people are beginning to be who they are, and they can live in two worlds.

That’s what I did. I was on ships. I was in Congress. I can go just about any place on the white man’s side and be his friend. And on the Indian side, I get invited to almost every tribe in the United States, and they know who I am. I belong to about every Indian organization in the country that has power. You can live in the two worlds.

Vanessa Shortbull: I Can Do Anything

by Vanessa Shortbull (Oglala Lakota)
former student, Oglala Lakota College, and alumna, University of South Dakota

To tell you the truth, I laugh when people say, “You’re Miss South Dakota. You must’ve been at the top of your high school class.” Well, no. When I was in high school, the only reason I planned on going to college was so that I could be a dance major. And then, one day, my teacher said to me, “What happens if you break your leg or you hurt your back dancing?” I’d never even thought of that. She encouraged me to go into political science, because I loved to talk and had an interest in government.

I enrolled at the University of Utah as a dance performance major, and I also started taking some political science courses. But I wasn’t happy there, so I came back home and went to Oglala Lakota College (OLC, Kyle, SD) before going on to the University of South Dakota. What I enjoyed most about being at a tribal college was the sense of community. OLC was a stepping-stone. It gave me the confidence to be vocal and to get involved. I was president of the OLC Democrats, and I was active in the Political Science League. My time at OLC gave me a sense of duty and the poise to go further outward into the world.

I love the political scene, and I want to work on campaigns and get people out to vote. People say, “You’re Indian, so you must have anti-government feelings and sentiments.” But we can’t just say we hate the government and expect it to change for us. You can’t expect politicians to care if you don’t get out and vote.

The problem is not so much registering people to vote, because I think you can get people to care. It’s actually getting them to the polls. . In the 2000 election, I was driving kids from our dorm to the central voting place because I knew there was no way they were going to walk there.

All this unified patriotism resulting from September 11th is almost like a slap in the face when you look at the primary results—people are still not voting. The tyrants who flew the planes into the World Trade Center come from a place where they don’t even have open elections. We can put flags on our cars, go to Wal-Mart, and buy decorations for our houses to show how patriotic we are, and yet we can’t go out for three minutes and vote. It makes me want to scream.

When people ask me what I want to be doing in five years, I tell them that I just meet new opportunities as they come. I do plan on going to law school, and I’d love to hold a public office someday, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine doing stand-up comedy in an NBC performance studio in New York City.

I had a talent search audition in Denver on September 11 of 2001. I was going to do a dramatic monologue, but then I remembered my grandmother telling me over and over that Indian people have a great sense of humor—we laugh to keep from crying.. So I got up there and just told these stories. The producer sent me to the semi-finals in Syracuse and then to the finals in New York City, where I got the chance to audition for The Sopranos. I didn’t get the part, but the opportunity was something I would have never imagined possible.

My mom has always said that I can do anything that I want to. I can be a nurse or a mechanic or a senator. I think that’s how your life should be.