Helping Students Succeed with Carol Davis

The other story that goes along with that is now we’ve got students in school when they’ve been funded and here it comes a trickle everybody’s coming back to the reservation and so we said how do we how do we keep students in school and we heard about the Navajo community college so we started to hold meetings locally Lin was on that committee nervous we had about five people on the reservation who had college degrees and I think there were two teachers in the bunch a social worker a registered nurse and Dan Jerome who was he was the superintendent of school so we had about five people and that was it you could count we at one time knew all of them that was it and so we decided that we should have a college here on the Turtle Mountain Reservation so what we did was we began to make connections with South Dakota Virgil kills straight at Pine Ridge and I became real partners and we he helped me get to Seattle that fall I think it was one of the first National Indian Education Association conference meetings and he said there’s going to be a meeting there and he said they’re gonna form this alliance of tribal of people who are trying to start tribal colleges and he said if you can get there he said that’s where it’s gonna take place so I called Dave gift but Standing Rock and Dave couldn’t make it he was doing something else so I said he said just talk for us he said I said okay so I called my boss in at the University of Mary and I stood down this is what we’re trying to do and I want to get to this meeting and he said there’s nothing in the budget for that so I got my salary check and I and this was like must have been October November I’m not sure somewhere in there maybe November I got my salary check and I bought myself a ticket and I went to this meeting when I made my reservations I always got it now when I look back at it I was really a res girl I made my reservation I called this hotel where it was taking place and I had only been in one hotel before to stay I’ve been and we had a hotel in Rolla but I had stayed in this hotel in Aberdeen South Dakota when we were going to boarding school we got a cot in the storm and there was a great big bathroom at the end of the hall and it you have to leave your room and go to this bathroom at the end of the hall I thought ooh a bunch of strangers and I don’t want to be doing that so after I made my reservation I told this guy that was on the other end I said could I ask a big favor he said sure I’d said could I have a room that has about through a minute he said ma’am all our rooms have bathrooms jeez when I got there this big swanky hotel nothing like the one I had stayed in South Dakota