On the ball
Women are using school to get ahead.
Many men are falling behind.
Story by: Keriann Lynch
Photos by: Katrina Baldwin

            Leslie and Tanya Plainfeather don’t have the lofty dreams characteristic of many college students.  The sisters are just certain of what they need.
            Food on the table.  Heat in their houses.  Education and safety for their children.  And all on their own terms.
            Leslie doesn’t look like a 37-year-old with six kids.  She doesn’t look like a woman who has felt the pains of poverty, the holds of addiction, or the back of a husband’s hand.  She is short in stature, reserved but not shy, quick to laugh and patient with her children.  Her eyes are a stunning green, in sharp contrast to her dark skin.  Leslie had her first child, Dusty, when she was just 16.  Now, 18 years after her first attempt at college and four years after splitting with her husband, she’s taking classes at the same college as her son.
            “I’ve always wanted to go to law school, but after the divorce, I had to struggle,” Leslie says.  “I was dependant on my ex-husband for everything.  I actually didn’t ever want to be like that, but that’s how it ended up.”
            The drive to support herself and her children, and a need for independence and self-sufficiency, led her back to a lecture hall.  When she talks about the struggles that pushed her, her face draws tighter and her voice more determined.  She pauses and pulls her 5-year-old daughter into her arms, whispers in the child’s ear and strokes her hair.
            “When he left, I couldn’t even pay my electricity bill and when I called to talk to him about it, he was like, ‘Oh well,’” Leslie says.  “He ended up helping, but after that I’m like, ‘I’m never doing this ever again.’  It was a horrible feeling to have to depend on him when he wasn’t willing to be there.”
            Leslie’s younger sister Tanya says she’s never thought about what motivated her to return to school, but when she finally does ponder the question, the change in her demeanor is stark.  The face of a welcoming, 35-year-old mom of five loses its ever-present, cheeky grin.  Tears well in her eyes and her answer is short.
            “Being knocked down so many times sets a fire,” Tanya says.
            Knocked down.  The woman who was once a teenage mom and high school dropout will graduate this spring from Little Big Horn College with an associate of arts degree in Native American studies.  The woman once unemployed is now a park service law enforcement officer.  The woman whose home was once a battered women’s shelter now lives in a clean, spacious house.
            Home for these sisters and generations of their families before them is the Crow Reservation.  Located in southeastern Montana, the border of the reservation is only 30 miles from Billings, the state’s largest city, but most of the tribe’s approximately 10,000 members live about an hour away.  On Crow land, 2.2 million acres of rolling prairie hills surge upward into stunning mountain peaks, and the Bighorn River twists a tortuous course through the colorful limestone and sandstone cliffs where it powers Yellowtail Dam.  Tanya lives in government housing near the dam, in Fort Smith, where the beauty of Montana is overwhelming.  Leslie lives in Lodge Grass, where the number of junk cars and stray dogs seem to outnumber the human population of 510.
            Leslie and Tanya’s challenges aren’t unique, but are more common on the reservation than elsewhere. Abject poverty and a 62 percent unemployment rate have cut their social scars, as have elevated rates of substance abuse, school dropouts, domestic violence, teen pregnancy and single-parent families.
            Their return to college as adults isn’t unique either.  At Little Big Horn College, the two-year tribal school in Crow Agency, almost 36 percent of the 307 students are age 30 or older.
            Leslie and Tanya also represent another unusual statistic at the school – 63 percent of their classmates are female.
            Tribal college staff list the same reasons the sisters do for the high number of women in school: single moms trying to provide for their families,  women seeking financial and economic independence, strong female role models and support networks, and financial aid for single mothers. 
            “A lot of women here are single parents, and being a single parent, in order to receive welfare help, they either have to work 20 hours a week or go to school,” says Donna Falls Down, the school’s Human Resource director.  “It’s overwhelming for women who are left to raise children and feel like their ex-husbands get off the hook.  They get their strength and convictions from other women with similar experiences.”
           It’s not uncommon here to see a child coloring in the back of a classroom or a student watching her friend’s child in the common area while mom’s in class, Falls Down says.

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