PAMELA

“It’s two worlds.”

“When they go out into the western world, it’s so different. It’s two worlds and you’re happy in one and you go into another one and you don’t have equal access or chance, and it’s very frustrating.”

“You can imagine that … in order for you to get to Cuba, it’s 27 miles away and you don’t have a car to get there. So then they talk about you behind your back, about these parents that are not involved in education. And it’s like, well you see if you can drive twenty seven miles in a secondhand vehicle in bitter winters.”

“We have mud days, did you ever hear of mud days? Mud days are not snow days. Mud days are the roads are so muddy a school bus cannot pick our children up, which happens about ten school days of loss a year.”

“For equal access to the general curriculum, it’s not the same. And our children are very bright, very smart, and if you measured an IQ test of two worlds and not just one, you would find that our children are just as brilliant. But our IQ tests in the United States only measure one world, not two.”

“It’s two worlds and they’re just as valid, it’s just two things to learn rather than just one, right?”

“I think the western world likes to think Native American minds are sick. They’re not. They’re extremely healthy and resilient. We don’t need social workers. I do not practice western therapy or psychology. In fact I just asked for $750 worth of drums because we’re meant to drum. It eases our anxiety, it slows your heart rate down, you feel it.”

“What’s interesting about anxiety is it’s a western phenomenon because we live in buildings. But you’re not supposed to hear your heart beat. That’s what my mother taught me. And if you’re in nature, you can’t feel your heartbeat, so you don’t get anxiety, because your heart alerts you that you’re anxious.”