Lisa Byers
Cherokee
My father was illiterate. My mother finished the 8th grade at Seneca Boarding School. They both worked as janitors. Neither of my parents spoke of college. Learning to type to avoid physical labor was my mother’s goal for me as she talked about waking up at dawn with her brothers to pick cotton as a little girl in Oklahoma. The toll that a lifetime of physical labor took was a lesson that lingered as I decided that typing and even an undergraduate degree was not enough to secure a future for me and my tribe. As a Buder Scholar I was strengthened by fellow American Indian and Alaska Native students who understood the cultural and economic strains of graduate education. Kathryn M. Buder’s financial support and appreciation of the cultural strengths of tribal nations allowed me to gain my graduate degree. Now I am educating social workers as an Associate Professor. The Buder Center, fellow Buder Scholars and the educational rigor of the Brown School has empowered me, my family, my clan, my tribe, and the social work profession.