Читать книгу Racing Toward Recovery. The Extraordinary Story of Alaska Musher Mike Williams Sr. онлайн

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I think my four years in Oregon really helped shape me as a person. I broadened my horizons. I got a chance to play on sports teams. I became president of the student body and learned about political issues. That was a whole new area for me then. The school did ask quite a bit from its students. I got an exposure to the western way of life in the United States, and by that I mean western as in American as opposed to Native. But Chemawa also made us learn practical skills. We did our own banking and by that I mean that we started a student bank my senior year. We started other programs. One was like a junior entrepreneurship and we started a business selling hamburgers. The business was for fund-raising for the student body.

We started another program built around alcohol education. We had all heard for years from white people and from movies that there was an image of “the drunken Indian” out there in society. We started a program when I was school president to try and focus on changing that image of the drunken Indian. It was basically a counseling program for people with substance abuse problems, both for students and staff who needed help. I was only twenty years old at the time, but I recognized that my people had problems with alcohol that needed to be fixed.