Video: Triston Black and Harley Interpreter

Triston Black and Harley Interpreter, both members of the Navajo Nation and both affiliated with Diné College, the tribal college on reservation land in Tsaile, Arizona. They arrived at Diné along separate paths, but each is committed to helping the Navajo people build a better life—Black as a high school teacher, and Interpreter by improving mental health treatment on the reservation by working to “decolonize” the field of psychology.

GO BACK TO MAIN ISSUE PAGE

Other Articles In This Issue

Navajo student Triston Black stands behind a livestock fence facing the camera.

Students at Diné College find relevance on the rez

Triston Black had the world at his feet. As a senior at Navajo Preparatory School in Farmington, New Mexico, scholarships and enrollment incentives were pouring in from across the country as colleges and universities were hoping to recruit him.

Menominee equips warriors for the fight to save the Earth

Jasmine Neosh had arrived at an inflection point. In the fall of 2016, the Menominee tribal member was waiting tables and tending bar at an upscale Chicago eatery as the protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline grew into a full-blown crisis in the northern Plains.

Lisa Dirks

Alaska-born Native scholar works to reorient research

In the early 2010s, Lisa Dirks was visiting her relatives in Alaska when she noticed an article in the Aleut Corporation newsletter on their dining room table: an item that looked like a research article. As a scholar, researcher, and tribal member, she was curious about its contents, so she picked it up and began reading.