Former Student Reflects on Challenges for Native Americans in College

Born and raised in Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation near Hayward, Wis., Billyjack Parent, 24, graduated from UWM in 2020 with a degree in Japanese Language and a minor in Political Science. He currently is enrolled in a Stanford postgraduate program and lives with his brother in Ann Arbor, Mich. 

Q: For those who don’t have a knowledge of the native tribes in North America, who are the Ojibwe people?

Okay, so I will try and give you a short answer. The Ojibwe are a part of the Three Fires Confederacy or the Anishinaabe nation, which includes the Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi, and we controlled pretty much all of the Great Lakes region. And we are the third biggest tribe in the US and if you count our numbers within Canada, we’re actually one of the biggest North American tribes 

Q: When did you graduate from UWM and with whatdegree?

I graduated last spring and I graduated with a degree in Japanese language and minor in political science.

Q: Drawing on my experiences as an Arab in America, people of color are always either passively or actively representing their people. What was it like representing your people at UWM and being under such scrutiny?  

This is a very good question, actually. Oof that is a hard one. I’ve been doing it so long that’s its almost natural to me at this point. But I’m also very a lot more outgoing about being Ojibwe then most people. But it’s interesting cus because of that I get to learn a lot about misconceptions about Natives and about other people and I get look at my own misconceptions of other people like “Huh, people have these misconceptions about me and I probably or I do have these misconceptions about other people,” and that is why I should think on the way I think. I don’t think I was every quite like some people, “Oh do you actually live in a pyramid” or “Do you live in a teepee” but you know, obviously I do have misconceptions and I know you definitely had your fair share of that. But I like it does suck sometimes cuz sometimes you just want to be you. You want to be like “yeah, I’m just trying to eat dinner man Like I don’t want to (be bothered.)” But on the other time, they also makes me feel good that people actually getting educated, so it’s kind of a Double-edged sword if you will.

Q: Do you think that UWM’s initiative towards inclusivity have been successful?

Kind of? That’s a really hard question, man.  They do have a lot of programs for Native high school students. That is the reason, I actually ended up going to UWM, so they do have those that are really good but a lot of it is kinda tone deaf too.  People like me were from reservations who were first-gen students who have no idea what school is about. I had no f—ing clue. I didn’t know what a masters was, I didn’t know what a doctorate, like “There is school after college?”  So, they don’t understand there are a lot of people just don’t know anything about college. They just expect us to know and that hinders a lot of their inclusivity. But they definitely got better, they started letting us do more religious stuff on campus. So, I got to see that in my four-year span. I got the feeling that you can’t do any of this s– because it is f—ing voodoo s–. And then we were having feasts and stuff on campus and in the middle of campus and they couldn’t do s—about it; They’re actually supporting me. So, it has definitely gotten better.

Q: How has the pandemic affected your mental health? 

Oh, it’s been terrible. I had a personal family thing happen. It’s just not conducive for studying at all. It would have sucked for a lot of you know, foreign exchange students, but we should have found a way that universities closed but also keeps going because online class is just terrible. It has destroyed me. It completely destroyed my want to study, it’s just not conducive to studying. It just ruins your mental health. It really did. Yeah.   

Q: Can you talk a little bit about your Post-Graduate Studies after you graduated from UWM and how the shift to online school changed the curriculum? 

Oh, yes. I could talk about that for hours. I won’t but it sucks in summation. So, I got in a program in Japan, and we have to do it online and we have students from all over the world in this program. There is people in Europe, China. I think there’s one person in Africa. Bunch of people from the U.S and Canada. None of us could go to Japan. They refuse to give us visas so it’s all online. And it f—ing sucks. This semester I had to get some Japanese books online, luckily, I was able to find a store here in the US now but everywhere else, shipment wise, it’ll be like” Yeah, it’ll be there in like three months from now” even though you would need it in a couple of weeks. In the online, they gave us more work. There was somebody in the program where their husband took the program beforehand and looked at the coursework now and he’s like “They’re giving you three times the amount of work we had.” They assume that we are cheating which actually makes us want to cheat more, it is way too much work, it’s impossible. And it sucks for a lot of people because they had to move back into their parents’ house. It really screwed up a lot of things. And a lot of people just don’t study well online, and a lot of professors don’t understand that. And they’re getting mad at us, they’re like “What are you stupid? How are you in the program if you’re this dumb? You can’t even do this.” No, doing it this way rather then being in person is just completely different. Their class happens during our dinnertime here and I know somebody in Spain, it happens for them at 2 or 3 in the morning and they’re taking the class. So, they should have postponed the class or the whole curriculum, they should have just waited till next year or something, but they also told us if we dropped the program, that we’d never get accepted again; We can’t drop out, you have to do the online, which I think is bogus as hell, so it’s been a really s—experience all the way through.

Q: I know that you made the move from Milwaukee to Ann Arbour, Michigan recently. What informed your decision to relocate?

There was a lot of s—experiences in Milwaukee like having people pointing guns at me and stuff like that and I was in a very s- living situation at the time. I was in this tiny tiny room like it was ridiculous. I had a loft in there and I still had no room to move around. And I was paying ridiculous amounts, I paid more for rent in that tiny room then my two-bedroom apartment now. The other thing was I’d get to be around family who can help and support me, whereas before in Milwaukee, I had friends, but it was different. You can’t exactly go to your friends and be like “Hey, man. Mind helping me out with this, this and this.” It’s just a different thing and your friends are just as broke as you are. You can’t go up to someone who can barely pay their rent and be like “Yeah, I can’t pay for my rent,” it’s not ideal. Milwaukee is a fun city for a while but again the amount of rent in that area is ridonculous, especially for broke students. After a personal family thing happened, I really wanted to be closer to family.   

Q: How did your reservation handle the pandemic?

They shut down right away. They shut down pretty much everything. They were like “No one in or out”. Literally the first week it happened, I had to get a new Tribal ID and I had to pretend that I wasn’t from Milwaukee. They were like “It says here that your address was in Milwaukee. When did you move back?” and I was like “Um, three months ago,” bull-in like “Yeah, I graduated,” because they were about kick my ass out of the tribal office. So, they have done a really good job, but I know other reservations had harder times like the Navajo res because they have a lot of people who don’t live near a water source and it really hurt them to get supplies and make sure everybody was okay because they were so spread out. Luckily my reservation, it fared better.  

Q: If you could talk to a younger version of yourself about the events of last year, what advice would you give him, what would you tell him?    

Drop out of class, definitely. Drop out of the program (laughs). For sure.