American Indian Culture and Research Journal

With bittersweet fondness, I recall my grandmother’s gift of a white shirt and a tie she thought I would need to attend college in the late 1960s. How could she have known? No one in my family had ever graduated from high school, let alone attempted college. I still clearly remember my only visit to a high school counselor who was perplexed by this skinny, dark-skinned youth who kept enrolling in college prep courses. “Don’t you understand that you will never get into a fraternity? Why not take auto shop?” At that time, I did not even know what a fraternity was. Being stubborn and determined to become an architect, I persisted and finally enrolled in the huge, somewhat intimidating University of California at Riverside (about three thousand students). I felt uncomfortable and isolated in the classroom, as most Indian students still feel today. As a result, I withdrew into the last row and cocooned myself in a blanket of uncommunicative silence. I spent my entire undergraduate career without Native American peers or role models. There were no staff, counselors, or faculty with whom I could share my self-doubts or my anxious dreams for the future. Because the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) had administratively decided not to make higher education scholarships available to California Indians, I was denied support. Consequently, I worked two and sometimes three jobs, year round, to earn money to pay for my education.