Good evening, St. Andrew's family. It is so good to be here. 

I brought some guests today who I need to acknowledge: my honorary aunt, Sandy [Cadwalader], and her brother, Gardner [Cadwalader ’66]. He was a student here when it was all boys. Gardener has a son and daughter who are also graduates, and they are the ones who brought this experience to me. And I'm so thankful, because I was this young res kid who grew up in a totally different world. Growing up, I spent some of my time in a two-bedroom house with nine family members, and we had to use an outhouse in the woods. We didn't have a toilet. You had to boil water on a stove and pour it in a bin to wash yourself. And [the Cadwalader family] thought that I belonged in classrooms here with who I think are some of the brightest young people and teachers that this country has to offer. Thank you for bringing that experience to me, and to your family for seeing that in me.

I had the ability to express myself and to feel understood because of St. Andrew’s. And that was a gift, because when you come from a people who have been silenced, who are invisible, what greater power can there be than to find your voice?

I'm here to talk about my experience at St. Andrew's and the impact that it had, not just on me, but on my family, my community, and my nation. Boarding school is a dream for many families. I remember having roommates who were looking forward to their siblings or their family friends applying, with all this excitement and hope—how could they not? Look around you. Look at this campus. But that is not my story. I grew up on the Onondaga Nation, which is a little south of Syracuse, New York.

We’re the Haudenosaunee Confederacy—by our less-loved name, Iroquois, [but] it’s not what we call ourselves. It's “the people of the longhouse.” It's a confederacy of Indigenous nations that come together somewhat like the United Nations. For a time, I lived with my grandmother. Oftentimes, English was not spoken in my household when the elders were telling stories. But I do remember a few times when I did hear English, and they were talking about boarding schools. Those were not stories of opportunities. Those are stories of trauma, abuse, and loss.

[Beginning in the late 19th Century] Native children would be forcibly removed from their homes and placed in boarding schools. Some of them disappeared. Some of them grew up into adulthood through the program, lost their language, came back to their families, and could no longer communicate with their mothers and fathers. They were in this lost space between not belonging on the res, and not belonging out in the world. To this day, we find bodies that are buried on the premises of Indian boarding schools. So when I told my family, my community, “Hey, I'm going to boarding school,” it wasn’t the best reaction.

I remember having conversations about, “Those places are to civilize us. They're to beat our language out of us or to Christianize you.” But I had faith in the people here that they would never guide me wrong. When I came here, it opened a door not just for me, but also for students after me who decided to try boarding schools. There has been a movement of Natives in boarding schools. And in my community, it started right here. What had once been an instrument of erasure became, unexpectedly, a place of renewal. 

I come from a very tight-knit family known for certain things, and I'm proud of that. My family is made of athletes, of activists, of members of the resistance, of diplomats for Indigenous rights and for environmental injustices. And as children, we can often be recognized and sometimes constrained by the family legacy. I was once a teenager like you, just trying to figure out, “Who am I?” I was the jock, I was the jazz camp kid. I was the artist, the actress, the singer, the hip- hop dancer. I joined all those clubs. I tried to start all those clubs, but the school that I came from told me I could only choose one or two of those things. I didn't like being told what pieces of myself I was allowed to keep. St. Andrews said, “Why not keep all of them?” That was all I needed to hear. It was here that I first began to test the boundaries of my identity. I came as the first reservation kid, carrying a healthy dose of skepticism. I missed ceremonies back home. That is true. I lost a lot of access to elders with knowledge that will never get back. That's true.

But this school gave me something very powerful: freedom. To explore my mind, my heart, and most importantly, my voice. I read books that my old school deemed “too raw,” stories that reflected histories of where I came from and that the world preferred not to see. For the first time, I found classrooms and teachers including Indigenous literature. In those pages, I recognized narratives and histories that were passed down in my family. I began to feel seen. I was taught how to articulate complex feelings of being a young Indigenous woman who, yes, wanted to celebrate the Fourth of July and watch the beautiful fireworks. But who also had the solemn recognition of what one country's expansion meant for me, “a merciless Indian savage” as stated in the United States Declaration of Independence. What had once been silent confusion became language. I had the ability to express myself and to feel understood because of St. Andrew’s. And that was a gift, because when you come from a people who have been silenced, who are invisible, what greater power can there be than to find your voice? The training here, the writing, the articulation, the courage, would later allow me to sit at tables where very few voices like mine could be heard, and still hold my ground.

I also learned to test my strength here. When I was a junior playing varsity basketball, one of the boys said, “Wouldn't it be funny if some girl wrestled?” And someone replied, “I bet Asa could.” So I did. I left basketball and  stepped into the wrestling room, and no one dismissed me. In fact, they talked me through it. When I committed, the coaches and my teammates stood behind me. I gained real brothers here. They stood up for me when other schools were not so kind. I learned that strength and courage isn't just about doing what is not expected of you, it's also about having people who see you fully, who make room for your decision to grow.

St. Andrew's did not ask me to choose to be just pieces of myself. All of me was welcome here.

As the first reservation kid [at St. Andrew’s], I quickly realized that many people didn't know that we existed. One classmate said, “I thought all Indians were dead.” With the support of the faculty, I organized what I like to call a full-scale Native invasion. We filled this campus with the songs and stories and laughter of my community. Haudenosaunee food was served. We had wooden stick demonstrations. We screened films, had discussions and dances that shook the floors. I was so scared that nobody would come. But this community showed up: teachers, staff, and students, some of whom I had never even shared a hello. I remember thinking, “This is what it feels like to be seen.” And I carried that feeling home.

When I joined the rowing team, I was fascinated by the rhythm, the way eight people could move as one. I come from a place where we have this tradition that before any ceremony or gathering, or before a tribal decision was made, we have the Ganoñhéñ•nyoñ.

It’s like a meditation that's said out loud, and it means “the words that come before all else,” but you hear it referred to as the Thanksgiving Address. There’s [a] refrain that's repeated that means, “and now may our minds be one.” I remember the rowing team going across the pond and thinking, “This is the physical manifestation of this refrain.”

Rowing was the first way that I began to use my experience at St. Andrew's to empower my nation at home. The Onondaga Lake is very sacred to my people. It's where our democracy was born. It's a system that actually inspired the system of the United States’ governance. This lake is where our stories say the peacemaker came and gathered these divided nations to become the confederacy that exists today. By the time I was growing up, our people were removed from the lake, and we lost a lot of the words associated with water activities. The elders who still knew those words were dying out. This place was one of the most polluted lakes in the world. It became a Superfund site, but they still allowed the Syracuse rowing team to row on it.

I brought rowing to my community by trading my experience as a participant in Henley and Stotesbury to negotiate a contract with the local rowing team. The currency to return my people to our waterways was my skill as a rower. Every pull of an oar at home is a prayer answered. It's a gesture toward healing my people's connection to the waters. St. Andrew’s gave me the discipline, the rhythm, the language to connect something sacred that had been interrupted. I carry that same current into my writing, another skill I honed here more than I did at Dartmouth. I now write for The Syracuse Post Standard, sharing the reflection of gratitude and connection to land. Writing is another way to remind people that we are still here.

St. Andrew's did not ask me to choose to be just pieces of myself. All of me was welcome here. The athlete, the scholar, the artist, the believer, the skeptic, the community-builder and the nation-builder. Not every moment was perfect. It was hard. [At times] I had to be silent because I felt that maybe there was nobody else here who would understand my stories. But tonight, this school reminds me that it continues to grow, to listen, to evolve. I've carried what I learned here into every space, from meetings with city leaders on historical representation; to collaborations with, for instance, the Navajo Nation and the Electrical Workers Without Borders; to community projects that braid engineering with ceremony.

Every time I've had to hold my own at a table full of men who are typically lacking diversity in all respects, I draw on the confidence that was nourished in these classrooms, among these friends, and with some of these staff members. To the students here tonight: if you are struggling to find your footing, try to trust your community. There is guidance here, there is love. There is support if you are willing to let people in. And if you ever see silence about something that makes you uncomfortable, name it. This place is alive because of the people willing to make it better. 

And I am proof.

 

This piece has been edited for length and clarity.