When I think about safety, I think about the basement of a long-lost suburban childhood home. The lights are dim, the carpet is coarse, and the air smells faintly of new paint flecked with sawdust. It’s cold, but I know the humid heat of a Midwest summer waits at the top of the stairs. The distant scent of petrichor tells me I should move my bike from the driveway, or it will get rained on. I should move it anyway, it’s in my dad’s parking spot.
The safe simplicity of that existence has been foreign to me for so many years it feels like a different person’s memory. Milestones of youth flung themselves at me. I learned adaptability and independence under unfortunate circumstances, skills utilized as I watched another milestone stalk toward me: college graduation.
As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I majored in History and Anthropology with certificates in American Indian Studies, Archaeology, and Classics. My studies felt self-indulgent, but I couldn’t stop from burying myself in these passions. As graduation loomed, I decided to follow in my older sisters’ footsteps and explore graduate programs in business. As luck would have it, nestled in a charming third-floor office of UW-Madison’s own School of Business, laid a center that valued culture, diversity, and personhood in business; the Bolz Center for Arts Administration beckoned me to balance my desire to develop practical acumen while maintaining my fascinations.
After the application and interview process, I was ecstatic to be accepted into the Bolz Center. At the same time, I became a tour guide for the First Nations Cultural Landscape Tours. This tour explores the Indigenous history and contemporary presence of UW-Madison’s campus. My role as a tour guide informs my applied learning placement at the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association as an Enrichment Programs Fellow, where I am managing two projects. One is the Teejop Waterscapes Boat Tour, which focuses on the Ho-Chunk cultural connection to Lake Mendota. The other is a project to erect a sculpture by a Ho-Chunk artist in Alumni Park.
As an aside, I am often asked why I, a non-Native person with limited connection to Indigenous Peoples, care so passionately about this kind of work. That is an answer too complicated to address here, but I might sum it up like this: how could I not?
My older sister told me that tough times don’t last, tough people do. This past year in grad school I have dug down and mustered all the independence, energy, and adaptability I have to complete my business degree. The Bolz Center has equipped me with the tools I need to graduate knowing I will flourish in my career in the nonprofit sector, where I hope to work in development or marketing. Now when I think of safety, for the first time, I can think of the future and not the past.
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