In terms of my Cherokee identity and that influence on my childhood, and kind of my trajectory as an adult, and what I’ve done with my life, I grew up in a variety of small towns within the Cherokee Nation reservation, which is located in Northeastern Oklahoma. And, my mom’s mother — my grandmother, my Elisi, she had volumes of family pictures and family histories.
And she would tell me about different members of the family and things that they had done. Many of them were schoolteachers, and so from an early age I knew that our family was one that gave of their gifts and abilities to others. You know, they were definitely service-minded people. And my mother definitely instilled that in me as well that even though I would be the first generation to graduate from college that I needed to look at how I would also be of service, you know, and use the gifts and abilities that I have.
Being raised in a community where there were a lot of Cherokee people, and also Shawnee and Delaware, there were also white and Black people, too, not as many of other groups. That’s just what I knew as reality until after my parents had divorced and we moved to California.
And then the world got a lot broader in terms of variety of different ethnic groups, religions. But my education is focused from undergraduate in Native American Studies, that’s also my graduate degree, with an emphasis in Federal Indian Law and Policy, and then I went to law school and worked as an attorney with tribal law. Also, I went to DC and worked as a legislative director. I managed a national nonprofit that served American Indian and Alaska Native Elders in Albuquerque.
All of those things — like I say — were in service to Native people and Native Nations.
