Although I grew up in Houston, I consider Torreon, N.M., in the Eastern Agency of the Navajo Nation, home. I spent much of my childhood in that remote rural area, playing on —and learning from — the land. It’s why I want to become a principal investigator and start my own microbiology lab on the Navajo Reservation: I want to take care of the land. After a nontraditional academic journey, I’m now a graduate student at Harvard University studying bacterial genetics, and I finally feel like I know where I’m going.

Sometimes you have to go outside yourself to find the things closest to you. While I’ve always enjoyed science — Star Trek is the best! — it’s been more of a growing awareness for me. I’m super curious about the intricate details of how biological systems work, and how this can be leveraged for good. 

I grew up in the small community of Briggs, Okla., east of Tahlequah near the Illinois River. The area is part of my family’s original allotments from the Dawes Allotment Act. My town has two of the three federally recognized Cherokees: my tribe, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, and the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Tahlequah also has Sequoyah High School and Northeastern State University, which both began as boarding schools for the area.

Both my parents studied computer science, and from the moment I started school they encouraged me to pursue higher education. I grew up near Spokane, Wash., where my college journey began at Spokane Falls Community College. From there, I went to the University of Washington, then to Haskell Indian Nations University, where I am currently a senior set to graduate this spring. My major is environmental science, which is a good fit for me since I’ve always wanted to study something within biology. Environmental science provides a good overview while being interesting and impactful.

Never forget where you come from” is a mantra I hold dear. Even though I’ve been honored to be a 2014 Cooke Young Scholar and a 2019 Cooke College Scholar, I never want to forget where I’m from. While I currently live more than eight hours away as a student at the University of Kansas, I feel a strong pull toward my ancestral home: the Rosebud Reservation in Rosebud, S.D., where I grew up.