That fundamental idea – of looking out for others – is certainly nothing new to Austin Littlesun. Growing up on a Montana Indian reservation in the 1960s, he was steeped in the traditions of community and connection that still define his Northern Cheyenne heritage. Unfortunately, a college education wasn't among those traditions. And so, while Littlesun learned as a child to live off the land in the ancient ways, less was done to prepare him for success in the modern world. No one ever mentioned college. Even into his teens, Littlesun says, he didn't understand college or its purpose. And when it was finally defined for him, Littlesun put college into his own personal context: He was convinced it wasn't for "stupid" people like him. Everything he'd learned in school told Austin Littlesun that he wasn't meant for college.

Today, at age 51, Littlesun – a man just shy of earning the associate's degree he will use to launch a business career – finally knows that is untrue.

To understand why Littlesun and others on the campus of Olympic College in Shelton, Wash., are bursting with pride at his accomplishment, a history lesson is in order. The text is a short, tawdry story from America's past – one that stifles college participation among Native people to this day. It is Littlesun's story, as well as that of three generations of Dawn Stevens' family.

The saga begins with John Eliott, Stevens' grandfather, one of thousands of Native Americans who were taken to faraway boarding schools, often without the knowledge or permission of their parents. The intent of the government-run "residential schools" that existed from the 19th century to nearly the halfway point of the 20th century was to "help" American Indians assimilate into white culture. The idea was to purge tribal languages and other vestiges of Native culture from young Native Americans. The lessons were often harsh. John Eliott himself fled from his school three times to escape the abuse.

Although the boarding school era had all but ended by the time Stevens' father, Don Hardison, came of age in the 1950s, the suppression of Native students was far from over. Hardison's penchant for math, a talent his daughter believes could have led him to a career in engineering, screeched to a halt the day he asked a Shelton High School teacher about enrolling in calculus. Trigonometry and calculus, the teacher told him, weren't intended for students like him.

Even without the math classes, Hardison graduated from Shelton in 1957. There, his formal education stopped until – years later – he returned to school to earn an associate's degree. Hardison's eldest daughter at first achieved even less academically than he had. Bored and disillusioned with a high school that all but ignored her culture (even though more than 10 percent of its students lived on the Skokomish and Squaxin Island reservations), Dawn Stevens – herself a member of the Steilacoom tribe – left Shelton High before the start of her senior year. In doing so, she became part of an epidemic that continued long after her departure: a dropout rate that hovered near 65 percent among Native American students.

Stevens married, had two children and, at age 21, made the choice between education and welfare. She earned her GED and never looked back. The first in her family to attend college, she now holds an associate's degree from Olympic and a pair of bachelor's degrees as well as a master's degree from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. Stevens is now an information specialist with the Center for Native Education (CNE) at Antioch University in Seattle. But one of the first moves she made in her career as an educator was to go back home. In the early 1980s, she accepted a teaching position at Shelton High School. "I wanted to come back to Shelton because I had disliked it so much," she says. She returned because she wanted to help make the school more relevant to Native teens – a move she hoped would raise their graduation rates and their chances for college. "As a Native American, I wanted to bring Native culture and traditions back to the students."

Poking through a storeroom shortly after her return, Stevens found confirmation that her decision was the right one. She discovered several copies of the history textbook used during her days as a Shelton student; the fourth chapter in each book had been removed. Eventually, Stevens also came across an edition with the fourth chapter intact – the one that explored Native American history.

During Stevens' youth, culturally destructive or insensitive acts toward Native people certainly weren't limited to Shelton High School. In fact, the negative attitudes that drove such actions were commonplace, even pervasive, in some regions. Today, things have clearly changed at Shelton – and Dawn Stevens is one of many who helped institute those changes over the years by finding ways to incorporate Native culture and traditions into the school setting. For example, weights and measurements of arrowheads have been integrated into math lessons, and geometry is now taught using an ancient Native container known as the Bentwood Box.

Finally, and significantly, Stevens helped instill a critical component of Native education into the school's method of teaching literature and history. "The Native way of learning doesn't necessarily come from sitting at a desk, minding your own business, reading and writing, but from listening and learning from your elders," Stevens explains. Working with school officials and with initially reluctant tribal elders, Stevens helped bring the tribes' oral tradition into the school.

As Shelton High awakened to the value of using local Native culture to teach all of its students, other entities stepped up as well. The Center for Native Education used grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other philanthropic organizations to bring the Early College High School Initiative, a national dual-enrollment program, to the school. And the evolution of Shelton High hasn't stopped there.

"The district has embraced and improved the situation for Native students in ways that just did not exist before," says Linda Campbell, CNE's executive director.