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

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When I became the president of the student body at Chemawa it opened a lot of doors to opportunities and experiences. That afforded me the chance to visit with the Yakima Indian nation and to travel to the Navaho nation. The goal was to visit tribes and learn how they operated. That was part of becoming a leader and I learned quite a bit. Looking over the tribes had a big influence on me. It was a good political education and taught me lessons about leadership.

By being elected president of the student body I got an entirely other kind of education at Chemawa. I learned a lot of politics and I learned about other Native tribes and cultures. My advisor, Clement Azure, was the one who suggested the training prior to my term as president. He was one of the best student advisors.

Up until then I didn’t know how to run a meeting or carry out the directions or rules that the student body made or the student council passed. I’d say the school benefitted from me attending that program in Missouri. I learned about much more than overseeing meetings. I learned how to do something. For me alcohol was already an issue to be looked at. When I traveled I heard that “drunken Indian” phrase a lot. I heard people say that if they just looked at the way Indians were portrayed in the media, they were all drunks. The portrayal in many places, certainly the movies, did show all Indians as drunks who didn’t know what they were doing. The image was that they are all killing themselves and that they’re always drunk.