Advice to Dropouts Like Me
Skip School — Not Education
If you are currently an important person by conventional standards, you may want to skip this. Ditto if you are an adult completely happy with your life. Unless there is a young person in your life who needs to hear this, you don’t need to spend the time, because I’m speaking to myself at age. … oh, 14 or so, upward.
I know you because I was you, raised on Indian land currently occupied by white people. Raised by extended family rather than a mother and a father and not knowing anybody in my immediate circle who finished high school.
I have visited reservation border towns where you could cut the racism with a knife if it didn’t cut you first. That was an atmosphere I did not have to contend with, and if you do then I started a little better off than you.
Honestly, I had few encounters with white people who flat out did not like Indians (although those few were memorable). However, being known as who I was meant that I was destined to work with my hands, unless I could be an artist of some kind. The people who assumed that did not mean me any harm, but directing me to classes and activities for which I had no talent was not helpful.
I’ve heard people say they didn’t know they were poor. That’s the case unless somebody tells you, and plenty of people let me know. It did…
