It is in this story that we find the most unexpected lesson from the mouth of a Native American teenage girl named Behitha. For this family their education started many centuries ago and had been passed down to them generation to generation. She shares with us the experiences that she had living on a reservation with her family until the day that her father who was one of the tribe leaders passes away. As the eldest it became her responsibility to take over his positions when the time was right. Her mother decided to send her outside of the reservation to get additional education from the public school a few miles away. Starting out with kids making fun of the names that they think Native Americans have Behitha’s struggle to fit in was clouded by her focus on why she’s there. Behitha soon found herself educating not only her classmates but her teacher as well. Often asking permission to teach aspects of her Native American culture too everyone in the room period it became quite a staple with everyone. On the day she got permission from the tribe to bring her class onto the reservation so that they can see that the way in which the tribe lives is no different than the way the students live in their neighborhoods and their cities. The way that their areas are governed is also no different but the moral compass maybe coming from a slightly different reality. What we learned from this story is that it is possible to educate people who know nothing about your background end gain a respect from them that no one ever thought possible. It shows us a reality that maybe the answer two inclusivity lies in the children. in the end we get to see the joy of Behitha coming into the woman she always knew she eventually would be. Our destinies maybe prewritten for us but sometimes the chapters, little too fast. A beautiful story of education and coming of age from a girl who followed in the footsteps of her father the Eagle.
Native Eagle
“The Reservation” I would always laugh when my friends in public school would ask me questions about it as if it were a secret society of men and women and children clocked in all black and hiding from whatever it is that they think we had a reason to hide from. Didn’t take much offense, I didn’t think much of it quite honestly, I just knew I was intriguing to them. The girl from the reservation. A place that for them they had only seen from the base of the street, they saw the signs and once I started going to public schools, I realized that we were quite the mystery for them. Like, the garden of Eden or the magic place where Batman’s cave was, hilarious to me and my family that for us, we were just a pretty fantastic group of people. A nation bound together from centuries of ownership on land we could trace back since before any of us living were born and it was difficult, beyond words to leave the reservation and walk into a public school for the first time.