01 Dr Twyla Baker Where I Find My Compass

My name is Twyla Baker and I am the president of nuit ahead Asus Akash College in Newtown North Dakota which is the treble e chartered College of the Mandan Hidatsa and Arikara nation I’ve been in that role for almost four years now and it’s it’s an interesting job it’s there’s never a dull moment never a dull moment there’s always something going on it’s and I think I have a tendency to think that it’s there’s nothing like being a tribal college president it’s not like being a mainstream institution president because of the culture portion that I pay attention to and then I have in my mission and we have worked into our vision as well and the work that I do with a lot of my background has been in working with tribal nations from across the country so I was blessed that way because it helped me to see and understand that there is such diversity within the tribes themselves and it’s not just tribes it’s Alaskan Natives its Native Hawaiians it’s it’s all indigenous people across the Turtle Island up into our First Nations relatives and down into South America all the way through so knowing and understanding a lot of who I am as a enrolled member of MHA nation and also being a tribal member of I’m of Mandan and Hidatsa descent and primarily raised Hidatsa both of my parents were that was a first language was hit outside that’s what they kind of instilled in me was this sense and understanding of our cultural life ways and that was my identity and it was my solid base from where I was able to draw the strength and the ability and fortitude and understanding to be able to go out into the world and start doing work in higher education it helped me get through my academic career help me to understand and know it kind of really informed everything I did and it’s still this to this day it informs just about everything that I do you know so from the day-to-day to the big things to the big decisions it really helps me to keep my compass you know that’s that’s that’s a where I draw a lot of my purpose my purpose in life and it’s it’s fun and it’s rewarding and it is so fulfilling to be able to do this job on behalf of my people on my tribe of people and work within these different realms that allows me to travel throughout Indian country and Indian country really is not limited to just like good reservations and things like that Indian country is wherever you set foot the whole place is Indian country you are standing on Indian land whenever your land you’re standing on Turtle Island so there were a people and there was an understanding and there was a place that I think we probably could hardly fathom as modern I guess modern is we like to call ourselves people that existed terrible before any type of influx of people from outside that room and I feel that we had this knowledge base that we had established millennia ago from just thousands of years of intimate knowledge of the land and the space that we occupied and we didn’t just sit and although I think man Danson hadass this kind of came to the closest to being like in one spot in one spot for a very long time but we moved around I mean it was just like how it is today people would migrate to different spaces and they would there would be a great deal of mixing intermarrying intermingling trade cultural transference that type of thing that’s how we influence each other that’s how we manage our economy we did a whole lot of things there was a lot of things going on before anybody just came and discovered us so there was a lot of there was a lot of life I’m happening um particularly in this area being in the Midwest and along the Missouri River the Mandans and hidatsa’s were kind of keepers of an economy and a trade we were part of the largest trade corridor in the Midwest and there was just oh I mean it was just kind of like a place that people came to talk to trade in to interact and we feel those influences and we find evidence of those influences to these to this day we’ve there’s been artifacts from East Coast West Coast South America and Canada found in this area so we were very good hosts and I like to think that we still we still do that we still try to keep that tradition of being good hosts and I guess I’m really super lucky in the fact that I am still living my bloodline has been on this land in this particular area for thousands of years for thousands of years so I like to refer to this place not just like Bismarck Mandan but the you know the Missouri River along the Missouri River as the place where my spirit lives and I’ve left this place for quite some time to go and pursue my higher education but I would also have to come back and like replug in and recharge and get back get resented and then I’d be it was able to return back to where I was doing the things I needed did you get my to get my degrees and such and but eventually home called home was like and literally called like pick up the phone and said it’s time for you to come home you got your degree Iommi I swear I think I only had maybe about three months of work if that when I got a phone call from home saying okay well we have this position and it’s it’s time for you to come home and I was just happened to be in a situation where I was I’m kind of in the Senate just generation where I’m taking care of young children I’m taking care of aging parents so my dad was getting older he was needing someone to help take care of him so it just kind of all came together in a good way the job the position was waiting and the folks that supported me made it very easy for me to even with my enormous family they provided avenues because they wanted me to be here doing this work and I have a feeling that there was a divine intervention there then we take that very seriously we take that very seriously we don’t kind of talk about like a spirituality or the spiritual side of things lightly it’s it’s it drives a lot of what we choose to do and how we act and how we interact and it’s intermingled there’s no that the separation isn’t necessarily always there as a matter of fact it probably informs the work that we do because it makes us who we are it’s what causes us to be our particular selves and I’m talking about my tribal nation of course so I was lucky that way and then I came home and then I happened to kind of stumble into me president but it’s such a it’s such a great it’s such a great job and it’s there’s of course there’s you know there’s challenges upon challenges the same way any other higher education administrator has challenges with budgets of funding and you know legislation and what-have-you but I think there were rewards far outweigh all of that in that I’ve I mean we work to not just preserve but to propagate and to revitalize our cultural life ways in a very particular in this in this very particular modern context that we live in and expressing who we are as tribal people as is our right and to define and redefine and redefine and keep defining that into perpetuity for our young people so because they’re the ones that are gonna decide who we are as mhm a nation once we get older so we want to make sure that they have that good grounding that good understanding these cultural life ways and who they are because that’s gonna be kind of their armor once they go on to the lecture world and that’s how it served me I was always different I was always a little bit different well not a little bit a whole lot different I was very different from like my classmates and such I think about the times when I was as my background is in environmental geology and technology so um I’m sitting in a classroom I’m already female I’m already brown I’m already you know I’m about as nish as you can get sitting in the classroom with a bunch of white males and finding my way doing this this work this research and things like that like I think back to my systematic botany class where I had to make this big collection of plants now being a traditional person I can’t just take plants I can’t just cut him down I have to lay down something for them to like the payment and things like that my tobacco it was a expensive class a hundred and fifty samples that I had to collect and dry and identify but so rewarding so very rewarding it I think I might have thrown my teacher off just a little bit cuz I’d stop and I’d be like I’d put my tobacco down and I talked to the plant and things like that too before I could take before I could use it and I know he was kind looking at me well sideways stuff when he didn’t say the ask questions so I offered that information I just told him this is how we do things we don’t just take things we can’t just take things and I think he appreciated that because I don’t know if he was comfortable talking to her asking me about it you know he felt a little intrusive I’m sure and but I mean I as a I don’t know I just wanted to make sure that he understood knew just in case you got another student like me because more and more of us are getting into higher education more of us are getting into STEM things like that yeah I’m not the last that you’re gonna see of you know my particular type of student so this is this is a good thing for you to know this is a good thing for you to understand and to respect as well you know and don’t negate it because clearly it’s important to this person to the student and to their success for them to be able to practice who they are and to live who they are you know no matter the context you know my academic side is not separated from Who I am is a tribal person I don’t have to do that anymore I don’t refuse to walk into worlds as people say that always gets a little irritating to me cuz I’m a whole person I can’t be split I cannot be split I’m I went and I mastered this western style of Education like literally mastered it got a master’s degree got a PhD I am a recognized expert in their recognition scale okay I got that it did that now I don’t have to kin to that or split myself or walk into worlds now this world has two kin to me you have to adapt to me I know that I am new to me before I am anything else so it’s it’s it’s empowering to have that to have that education and to be able to watch our young people and to see and I think