My final year of high school I had to take a senior level government class to meet the social studies requirement per the Rapid City Area Schools district policies.

I remember being in a classroom taught by the head football coach at the time.His classroom was in the freshman wing, on the ground floor, which meant that there were no windows, every wall was constructed out of cinder blocks painted over with white paint, and fluorescent bulbs that could trigger a wicked headache at any point in the day.

On one particular day close to the end of the semester, a classmate of mine raised his hand and asked, “why is there a room for Native students, but not one for white students?”

I waited to hear my teacher’s reply. And to no surprise, his response catered to the white student’s needs without taking into consideration the experiences of any BIPOC (Black, Brown, Indigenous, and People of Color) that might be affected by the racial abuse.

When I heard those words spill out of his mouth, I retreated within myself, and said absolutely nothing for the rest of the day and I let the rest of the semester pass me by.

At this point in my life, I had a loose understanding of what it meant to be racist, or how to detect it in action.

When I first came to Montana State University for school, I struggled to make friends and find like-minded folks in my residence hall or in my classes. Something felt artificial about the interactions I had time and time again. But all of that changed when I attended an immersive identity retreat with roughly 30 strangers at a retreat location in Gallatin Gateway.

We spent the long weekend dialoguing about our social identities and how we have experienced power, privilege, and oppression. As I shared my lived experiences with total strangers, my knowledge base expanded in ways I would have never imagined.

I ask all of you reading this, to think of everything that you have been deprived of learning in a school setting. All the -phobias and the -isms that exist in our vocabulary… Can you imagine learning these definitions, while hearing from others firsthand accounts with racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. their entire lives, and were just now finding the definitions to define and describe their experience?

That was the 18 year old version of myself.

I ask that you please sit with that feeling or whatever emotion is coming up for you. And to keep that in mind far beyond the end of this post.

But what I want to share with you all focuses on this one experience I had that stuck with me throughout undergrad after I presented at my first academic conference, the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE) in Portland, Oregon, with a dear friend of mine. She had asked me to speak on the ways in which faculty could better connect and support BIPOC students at predominantly white institutions. I had accidentally purchased a one way plane ticket to Portland and my friend, and co-presenter had traveled by car. We were on our way back to Bozeman heading east on I-90.

I can’t remember what it was exactly that we were talking about at the time. But what I do remember, is that the two of us were outside of Missoula, and my friend disclosed an observation that she had seen throughout her many years in higher education.
She shared with me that “she’s upset with the fact that it’s students like me — that identify as BIPOC or LGBTQ+ that are championing for our basic human rights at OUR university and that we should be afforded the same experience as our white counterparts.”

This was one of the first experiences that I can remember that my time spent at university or in a college setting, and the work that I was doing, was catering to, and making space for my oppressors to right their wrongs and clean their slate.
But now, after several years of learning the history of our geographic location and it’s original inhabitants, and those who have been historically marginalized in this region, I ask each and every one of you to do the same.

We cannot continue to recreate, congregate, and advocate on these lands without knowing the history of where we reside.

And now, after serving with the ONLY Black led, and entirely BIPOC staffed nonprofit in the state of Montana, I learned that our voices and experiences have to be centered, or else meaningful change isn’t possible. But it has to be done so in a fashion that uplifts the historically marginalized, disenfranchised, and oppressed peoples within the confines of our state.

I know that I personally have a lot left to learn, and that this isn’t my plateau. It’s the start of another uphill journey, and I hope to bring you all along for the ride, so to speak. But before I close, I want to make one thing clear with those of you reading this… My goal wasn’t to make my white readers feel like I’m blaming, shaming, or pointing fingers. My goal is to educate and to create awareness of the current situations in which we are living in.
Yeah, the pandemic has wreaked havoc in our communities. But what I want to specifically call attention to, is that as BIPOC folks, we too, are also living with another pandemic. And that is the racial injustices that have occurred as a result of the state sanctioned violence and force that has taken too many BIPOC lives far too soon.

As a call to action, I hope you all can purchase and read Ibram X. Kendi’s ​How to be an Antiracist,​ that you learn the original history and the legacies in which you are able to live the lives that you do on the lands in which you are visitors to, as well as connecting with the organizations that are leading the revolution that we have been dreaming of for far too long in meaningful ways.

Now is the time to make our dreams reality, and we need your support along the way. Please, join us.