When Rita Rabbitskin was a little girl, bush planes were the primary link between her Cree community in Northern Quebec and the outside world. She watched the skies with fascination, dreaming of one day flying herself. “That was the world I wanted to be part of,” Rabbitskin says. “I used to go see the pilots and crews that worked back home, learning what my options would be. The initial dream was to be a bush pilot.”

Julia Blue Bird is curious about a lot of things. She has earned three master’s degrees, one in electrical engineering from the University of Southern Florida and two from Columbia University in philosophy and astronomy and in astrophysics. But these days her curiosity is focused on galaxy evolution over cosmic time as she completes her PhD in astrophysics at Columbia. 

By the age of six Joseph Peters had spent countless hours on his father’s salmon fishing boat and knew he was meant to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors. Members of his Squaxin Island Tribe are descendants of people who for millennia lived on the shores and watersheds of Puget Sound, and Peters wants to continue the family tradition of working on and with the water. Having recently graduated with a master’s degree in natural resources, Peters feels more prepared than ever to help his tribe in the conservation and sustainable management of their land and water. 

Dominque Pablito grew up in the small town of Aneth, Utah, on the Navajo Nation, and in New Mexico on the Zuni Reservation. She lived in a four-bedroom house with 13 family members, sharing a bedroom with her mother and brother, and visited relatives for extended stays. “I spent time with my great-grandmother, whose house had no running water or electricity,” she says. Because her grandparents did not speak English, Pablito learned the Zuni and Navajo languages. Pablito says that her father, an alcoholic, came in and out of her life.

Chris Greenstone's family moved around quite a lot when he was growing up — Sitka, Alaska; Gallup, N.M.; and Phoenix and Bitter Springs, Ariz.; among other places. But of all those moves, Greenstone calls Bitter Springs home. His family has lived in this small village on the Navajo Nation for many generations. 

Former high school dropout Christopher Villarruel is about to graduate with a BS in forest hydrology. He gives a lot of credit for his personal turnaround to the grandmother who raised him. “My grandmother, Lillian Lego, was a very strong woman,”hes ays.“She was Ajumawiand Atsuge on her mother’s side and Madesi on her father’s side. She raised many of us grandchildren, and some of my first cousins are just like my siblings.” 

The same month when Joe Akin was set to defend his PhD dissertation in Boston, his grandmother was to be honored on her 100th birthday in Oklahoma. Akin really wanted to be there, but didn’t see how he could manage the time or finances to make the trip possible. His brother wisely reminded him there was no way he was not coming, and together they managed to get Akin there to witness the ceremonial presentation of a Cherokee communal handsewn quilt to his grandmother. 

When Steven Just takes stock of his high school experience, he admits that because of some personal struggles, he did not achieve the highest grades or have the best attendance. In fact, sometimes he clashed with the principal and teachers. But the advice he gives today — even to students who aren’t enjoying high school — is apply to college. “College is so different from high school,” he points out, “and you can choose to study subjects that you find interesting.”  

For Dr. Henrietta Mann, stressing the importance of education has been a lifelong mission. At a very young age, she developed a passion for learning that blossomed into an unrelenting quest to promote education — for Natives and non-Natives alike — and led to a career of teaching at the pre-college, community college, undergraduate, and graduate levels.

As a little girl Kaitlin Russell had a big imagination. Her father fueled it by sharing his love of science-fiction movies, so for young Kaitlin, colonizing Mars wasn’t far-fetched and, she reasoned, there would have to be pets on Mars when people lived there and someone had to take care of them. “I knew I wanted to do something with space,” she recalls. “Space veterinarian?”