The federal government took my father from his parents and sent him to a boarding school where he was physically beaten if he spoke the Pawnee language or practiced his native culture. My sister was sent home from a public school because her skin was the wrong color. I heard a public schoolteacher describe Indians as “savage, bloodthirsty, heathen renegades.” Perhaps most painful, during my early childhood, my family had no expectation of achieving a higher education and becoming doctors, lawyers, or engineers. A college education seemed beyond our reach.
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