First-year
student, a Native American, promises herself to blaze trail for
others
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Eva
Ballew on getting accepted to Harvard: "I thought about all
the doors that could open not just for me and for my family,
but for the Potawatomi children." (photo by Rose Lincoln/Harvard
Staff Photographer)
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In the first week of
her College life, Eva Ballew '22, who grew up in a rural town of
3,000 in southern Wisconsin, promised herself always to stay grounded
and to do everything she could to blaze a trail for others.
Ballew was admitted to
10 colleges, including Dartmouth, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown,
and Northwestern. To decide among them, the first-generation college
student displayed a maturity and perspective beyond her years.
"When I was accepted
to Harvard, I felt it was the first step to the rest of my life,"
said Ballew, the daughter of a Native American man and a Hungarian-American
woman. "I thought about all the doors that could open not just for
me and for my family, but for the Potawatomi children."
A descendant of the Pokagon
Band of the Potawatomi tribe, Ballew feels strongly tied to her
indigenous heritage. Among her dearest memories is attending pow-wows
in southwestern Michigan, where the tribe of 5,000 has had its headquarters
since it was federally recognized in 1994. On her cellphone she
has an app to learn the Potawatomi language.
While Ballew credits
her family and her high school academic adviser for supporting and
inspiring her to do well in school, she recognizes that her path
is uncommon given the high dropout rates among Native Americans.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, only 67 percent of
Native American students graduate from high school. "College is
not an outlet for most Native Americans," Ballew said. "Our high
schools need to do a better job in helping native students think
about college."
At Harvard, Native Americans
make up almost 2 percent of the student body, said Shelly Lowe,
executive director of the Harvard University Native American Program.
Ballew's arrival here, Lowe said, is part of a recent trend among
some Native American students.
"We're seeing more Native
American students applying to 12, 15 colleges, including top institutions,
and that was never done before," said Lowe. "The fact that Eva got
admitted to 10 top colleges is remarkable and shows a shift in how
families and students are thinking about college.
"There is a lot more
information for Native American students, but also for high school
counselors, tribal communities, and community members, who are being
educated on how to encourage students to look at colleges," she
said.
Ballew hopes other Native
American students follow in her footsteps and defy the statistics
that show her peers lagging. Centuries of hardship and generational
trauma have marked the lives of indigenous people in the U.S., and,
"I don't think our society recognizes that the trauma still continues,"
she said. "Until it's recognized, I don't think we'll be able to
progress as a nation."
Ballew's family's story
is no exception to trauma. When Ballew's grandmother was 4 years
old, she was taken from her family and placed in a boarding school
as part of the government's attempt to assimilate indigenous children.
At the federally run school, Ballew's grandmother, who had been
named Zada, was renamed Elizabeth. Years later, when Ballew's older
sister was born, her parents named her Zada to honor the matriarch.
"They suppressed the
native side in my grandmother," said Ballew. "My father never knew
about his native heritage until he was 20 years old. There was a
fear of being Native American, of feeling proud of your indigenous
heritage."
To some extent, times
have changed. Over the past decade, there has been a revival of
Native American culture and pride, which was galvanized by the 2016
protest movement to prevent the Dakota Oil Pipeline from being built
on indigenous land. Tribes are pushing to reclaim and preserve their
languages and to change the narrative that portrays them as victims,
mired in poverty and despair.
"We have endured many
hardships, generation after generation, and we're still here, even
though many people, including some of my high school mates, don't
believe we exist," Ballew said. "We're still here, fighting the
good fight."
In her high school in
the town of Raymond, Ballew was the only Native American student,
and many of her friends didn't know about her background until she
shared it with them. "People have a depiction of what a Native American
person looks like," she said. "When people saw me, they saw me as
white."
At Harvard, Ballew plans
to concentrate on government or history, an interest sparked by
a trip to Montenegro in high school. She hopes that her education
will help her community, and Native Americans more broadly, find
better educational opportunities.
"I want to help my community
to get to a place where success is a possibility and education is
a real opportunity," said Ballew. "I want to be the same person
that I am, but wiser and better prepared to take on the world and
fix the injustices I see. I promise myself to never forget where
I came from."
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