For Tyler Rust, the Black Hills region of South Dakota was a natural geology lab. As a boy he camped in the Badlands with his grandfather, studying the astonishing formations and fossils. “From then on I had a persistent yearning to understand myself and my place in the universe,” he says.
Rust and his mom moved around a lot. When they were living with his mother’s parents, his grandfather taught him Lakota traditions and language. Eventually Rust and his mother moved to Black Hawk, S.D.
“Winters were brutal,” recalls Rust. “I spent the greater portion of the year inside reading and trying to understand a world I felt detached from.” A counselor in high school encouraged Rust to go to college for computer science. But a few months before graduation, an acquaintance threw some fireworks into a car on campus. Rust was accused and offered a search of his vehicle to prove his innocence. A single live bullet was found under the rear seat of his car. As Rust had never owned a gun, it must have belonged to the previous owner of the car. Despite the perpetrator of the crime taking full responsibility and regardless of a parking lot always full of pickups with gun racks and loaded shotguns, Rust was expelled for “possession of explosives.”
Without the necessary GPA or letters of recommendation, going to college for computer science was no longer an option. “That experience changed the entire trajectory of my life,” he says. “If I had gone, I doubt I would have studied earth science. I probably would have acquired some money but not fulfillment.”
Without a credit-worthy cosigner for student loans, Rust had to postpone college until he could borrow on his own. At age 25 he applied to South Dakota School of Mines & Technology (SDSMT) and got in on his ACT math score. His loans didn’t cover room and board, so he lived in his mother’s basement 20 miles away, often spending all his money on gas. “Friends would sneak me a slice of pizza from the dining hall to keep me from starving,” he says.
The course load at SDSMT is notoriously challenging. “This is not a party school,” says Rust. “Every night was an all-nighter — for homework.” He found relief in the Tiospaye Program (“family” in Lakota), which offers academic support and financial assistance for Native students. He was involved in other student organizations, including AISES. “AISES helped me in ways no other institution could ever hope to,” says Rust. “AISES is healing.” Attending AISES conferences energized him, and AISES provided scholarships and financial assistance for travel.
A Gilman Scholarship sent Rust to Turkey, to study the relationship between geology and human health, which set him on the path toward environmental geochemistry. The Pine Ridge Reservation, where he spent so much time with his grandfather, also helped chart his path. Good grades at SDSMT helped him land a job with an NSF research collaborative studying how elements in the soil and water affect health on Pine Ridge. “I knew that the best course I could take in life is to do something I love, something I am good at, and something that could benefit the world,” he says.
Rust is currently a fifth-year PhD candidate at the State University of New York (SUNY) Binghamton, where he found the cultural expectations quite different. There’s no AISES chapter or Native community. “Nobody had any interest in what my world is about,” he says.
Besides the cultural disconnect, the biggest change from undergraduate studies for Rust has been the shift from absorbing to creating knowledge. “This is not homework that you turn in to have your answers checked,” he says. “You are creating the answers.” With a project well beyond his knowledge base, Rust endured and taught himself what he needed to know.
His tenacity, traditional knowledge, and professors have helped him succeed. “I have been trained in excellent skills in scientific research and writing,” he says. “My professors did more for me than I ever could repay. My elders in AISES filled in all the cracks I could not cover, or even see. A lot of my success came from people believing in me, especially when I didn’t.”
For Rust, geology is a stepping stone. “The ultimate goal is to become an elder,” he says. “A teacher of science and spirit. A modern-day Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk).” His shorter-term goal is to become a professor at a tribal college or university, so that he can teach others to translate the language of nature and solve issues of the Earth system. “We can create our own reality,” he says. “We as Native peoples can create the reality we desire and deserve.”
