9781496239495

9781496238078

"'He tried to outrun a train,' Theodore Blindwoman told David Joseph Charpentier the night they found out about Maurice Prairie Chief's death. When Charpentier was a new teacher at St. Labre Indian School in Ashland, Montana, Prairie Chief was the first student he had met, and the one with whom he formed the closest bonds. From the shock of moving from a bucolic Minnesota college to teach at a small, remote reservation school in eastern Montana, Charpentier details the complex and emotional challenges of Indigenous education in the United States. Although he intended his teaching tenure at St. Labre to be short, Charpentier's involvement with the school has extended beyond thirty years. Unlike many white teachers who came and left the reservation, Charpentier has remained committed to the potentialities of Indigenous education, motivated by the early friendship he formed with Prairie Chief, who taught him lessons far and wide, from dealing with buffalo while riding a horse to coping with student dropouts he would never see again. Told through episodic experiences, the story takes a journey back in time as Charpentier searches for answers to Prairie Chief's life. As he sits on top of the sledding hill near the cemetery where Prairie Chief is buried, Charpentier finds solace in the memories of their shared (mis)adventures and their mutual respect hard won through the challenges of educational and cultural mistrust"-- Provided by publisher.

"A teacher and mentor to students at St. Labre Indian School, David Joseph Charpentier details the joys, dangers, and complexities of life on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in this thoughtful tribute to one of his more memorable students, Maurice Prairie Chief"-- Provided by publisher.

1. As Brief as His Life

2. What I Knew

3. Cool, Indian Kids!

4. Teacher Dave from Minnesota

5. Fishing at Sitting Man Dam

6. Needed: High School English Teacher

7. Sleep, without Restless Dreams

8. I've Never Been Good at Algebra

9. Chimney Rock

10. Labor Day Powwow

11. Eagleman and Hawkman

12. Peyote Meeting at the Medicine Bull's

13. The Search for Fisher's Butte

14. New Possibilities That Felt like Gifts

15. Sweat Hobo

16. Stag Rock and Birthdays at the Runs Above's

17. Get Studly to Run

18. It Makes Me Think of Uncle Doug

19. The Huckleberry Party and Others

20. The Balance of This Day

21. Pissing the Day Away

22. Hawkman Tries to Say Goodbye to Eagleman

23. What Elaine Littlebird Said

24. Time and Distance

25. You Don't Wanna Help Me, Then, Do You?

26. Shooting Star

27. I Should Have Known More

28. Swallowed by the Darkness

29. He Knows How to Ride

30. I Wanted Him to Stay

31. All the Words I Was Forming, I Held Onto

32. Wrong about Buffalo One More Time.

Cheyenne Indians > Montana > Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation > Biography.

Teacher-student relationships > Montana > Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.

Indian high school students > Montana > Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation > Biography.

High school teachers > Montana > Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation > Biography.

Montana > Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation

Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation (Mont.) > Biography > Anecdotes.

Biographies

Anecdotes