(Gentle Music) - We have our origin stories which say that we're from this land since time immemorium.

My people come from this land here in Bismarck, like the Nueta lived along the river right here.

So if people tell Native Americans to go back to their reservation, our people lived right here.

(Gentle Music) My mom's Norwegian and Native American, and then my dad is Germans from Russia, and then Irish.

And specifically I'm Nueta and Hidatsa.

I was born and raised here in Bismarck, North Dakota.

My parents are both Catholic.

I've chosen to pursue a degree at a Catholic institution.

I still consider myself to be Catholic, and I also consider myself to be a practitioner of traditional ways, and I participate in ceremonies.

As an American and as a citizen of the MHA Nation, those two identities are in constant conflict with one another.

You're constantly fighting stereotypes, you're constantly fighting microaggression, and all these external forces that tell you who you should be or what you should be.

I always kind of felt like I had to hide a part of myself when I was growing up.

Definitely a handful of times where I have felt physically unsafe.

I've been spit at before.

In your face racism is still here, and it's still prevalent.

It was exhausting.

For those people it was a joke, and for me, that's my mom.

That's my family, and that's who I am, and I don't want those identities to clash like they have been.

(Gentle Music) So this is actually where I grew up.

You can actually see the house.

This gap.

In 2009, our house flooded, and it was condemned.

People went down there and broke the windows.

There was graffiti on the front door, and I started crying because that's my home.

That's where I grew up.

I have so many memories down there.

We lost everything in the flood, and then we had to move to town, which was very... it was so depressing for me because I just loved living out here.

Part of our creation story says that we will travel up the river until the end of time, and once we go back down the river, it will be the end of the world.

Through my career I fight for indigenous peoples, and I advocate for indigenous education so that we can begin to really authentically understand each other, and heal from those wounds in the past.

A lot of the trauma that indigenous peoples have faced over generations, and it's led to a lot of contemporary consequences, yet this historical narrative is just completely washed away intentionally.

And until we have this firm understanding of what really happened, and we are able to talk about it and heal from it, we're not gonna be healthy... ...or happy.

I would say I definitely have components of indigenous spirituality.

You know, you pray that you have good thoughts and you see good things, and you speak good words, and you hear good things, and that you know, you cleanse your body with the medicine.

And oftentimes we'll go and gather sage, and we always cut it appropriately.

We say prayer and give thanks and offerings when we collect medicines, because if we take something, then we have to give something back you know, to the land.

I can be proud of who I am.

Our peoples and our nations are older than even the concept of North Dakota, or the United States, or North America.

It goes back to "we are the people," and we're the stewards of the land, and we have to do what we can do to build community.

I love North Dakota so much.

I will demand that she be the best that she can be.

That means improving and being open-minded and changing different narratives, which is a struggle sometimes, but I'll just keep fighting.

(Gentle Music)