The Cherokee woman will graduate June 17, taking her place among hundreds of Native students earning degrees from tribal colleges and universities in the heartland and coast to coast. I watched Gattone make her presentation when I visited the OSU campus this past week.
Being around the OSU Native students reminded me of a recent interview with Philip “Sam” Deloria, the new director of the American Indian Graduate Center based on the University of New Mexico campus in Albuquerque, N.M.
One young man attending school on the East Coast exemplifies these ideals. Cory Cornelius, a Dakota, Kootenai and Oneida, will graduate from Dartmouth University on Sunday.
Cornelius picked up a bachelor's degree and a double major in computer science and Native studies. His resume shows he excelled in the college classroom and received rave reviews from professors, which led to a temporary computer science job with Dartmouth's Institute for Security Technologies Studies upon graduation.
The young man credits his late Dakota grandmother, Fern Eastman Mathias, for opening the door to a world of computer technology. She gave him his first computer when he was 13 years old. It was a Mac. One of the first things he did was design an American Indian Movement Web site for his grandmother, who was an active AIM member.
Cornelius told me she understood the value of computers at a time when most people didn't. “I never really figured out why,” he said.
She also helped instill a strong sense of Native identity in her grandson. He embraces his culture, along with the idea that he doesn't need alcohol to find his place within a peer group. He said his views on alcohol sometimes left him at odds with other Natives at Dartmouth. In fact, he almost decided to go to Cal-Berkeley after his first visit to Dartmouth.
But Cornelius thought about his grandmother.
She had always wanted someone in the Eastman family to attend Dartmouth. It had been 120 years since the Eastmans saw their last family member graduate, an academic feat soundly resting with Charles Eastman, the famed Dakota doctor and author who was recently profiled in the HBO special, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.”
The year 1887 and five generations stand between Eastman - who was a brother to Fern Eastman Mathias' grandfather, David Eastman - and Cornelius' graduation.
Back on the West Coast, Gattone is wrapping up an undergraduate degree as an ethnic studies major. A 10-week internship at a Corvallis elementary school required her to debrief a professorial panel about the experience. She was calm when she did her presentation, and comfortably revealed many of the frustrations she had in working with teachers who often left her feeling overwrought and in despair.
Teachers have tremendous power to influence, interpret and reflect on the world in which we live, she said. And they have a captive audience - children.
She encountered positive teachers as well, though, who couldn't see past the European-American boundaries that dominated their lives. To them, the highlight of American history began with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the gold rush and pioneers.
Others appeared unaware that non-whites can and do get treated differently because of their race and ethnicity. “I saw school as a racial project,” she said. “Race is constructed here at a young age.”
But the word “race” was often viewed as a four-letter word and not something teachers wanted to talk about. “That was the thing; the teachers didn't believe racism still existed in our society,” said Gattone.
A professor attending the presentation said every public school teacher should read “Beyond Heroes and Holidays.”
Gattone's internship made her more determined to remain in school and pursue ethnic and women's studies as part of a graduate degree program.
When she's finished, she hopes to one day teach, write books and work with indigenous people at a grass-roots level. Her internship intensified her resolve to make a difference in someone's life.
“I know this is the field I want to be in.”
Reach reporter Jodi Rave at 800-366-7186 or jodi.rave@lee.net
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