Browning, MT – I’m awakened by the lovely, bright lights of the classroom I’m sleeping in, and, let me tell you, it is not the way you want to be woken up (especially since I already had an alarm set). I was not happy to be woken up like that, as would most people feel, so like any sleep-deprived and tired person might do, I was to be silently petty towards them. I went to eat breakfast, then move my things into the library, and my bed into the gym. I was getting my things and starting to head towards the shower, but then we were informed that school is cancelled today! So much for waking up, but the person that woke us up with the lights from heaven was also the person who told me that school was cancelled. I was still petty about the whole wake up call, but the news of school closing lessened my pettiness towards them. We all got our beds back to our rooms, and then made up for the sleep we’d missed.

Around 10 a.m., we received a list from the one of the teachers about some household things to do, which we completed, and then had two speakers come in the early afternoon. The first speaker brought his artwork and shared about it, which were very fine pieces (but were on the spendy side for a person on a college budget) which we all mentioned later on. After the art show we had another speaker who I personally liked and found more interesting. What I found most interesting was when he talked about blood quantum, what this means is that the US Government would “test” Native Americans to see how much native blood they had, when really the only way to prove this is through ancestry documents. The government did this because they didn’t want to be giving benefits like free college to those who weren’t a certain “percentage” of native blood. This process is so complex that I’m not going to describe it but I will tell you that this process in itself is fruitless and redundant because like the speaker said, you can’t wash away your history and you’re either native or you’re not.

 

– Kyle Thompson