Henrietta Mann, Endowed Chair, MSU Native American Studies
May 10, 2003

Today, May 10, 2003 is a life changing day that stands between your past and future. As graduates, your joy is our joy, and we are especially happy with today. Your graduation is so significant that in indigenous traditions it warrants a "praise song" in recognition of your achievement and TRIUMPH over illiteracy. (TREMOLO) I send out the tremolo of honor and courage to each of the four sacred directions, to the Sky Father Above, and to the Earth Mother Below. You are the Generation of Spirit, of ALL Possibility, and of Hope.

In native cultures, high achievement was acknowledged with an eagle feather. Consistent with this tradition, MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY bestows symbolic eagle feathers upon you in the degrees you carry as you leave this place of higher education. Your degrees attest to your competence, skills, experience, and knowledge. After years of study, hard work, perseverance, and sacrifice, you are leaving on a long journey into an unknown future of great expectations AND the unexpected. It is a time for considerable optimism and for embracing this new time in your life.

Today is the day of fulfillment-the fulfillment of dreams, intellectual aspirations, educational goals, and hope. You stand at an open door and the future awaits-a future that is as vast and magnificent as the Montana Big Sky. Your educational journey may have seemed endless at times, but you are now credentialed degree carrying MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY BOBCAT alumni, as marvelous and American as your mascot. You have danced your last dance as students-a stately Victory Dance. You will dance to a different drumbeat as men and women involved in on-going lifelong learning, careers, family, and living as responsible citizens. In your evolving and changing roles, dance gently, dance happily, dance peacefully, and dance reverently.

Over your lifetime, you have become accustomed to change in the recurring circles of days, months, years, and seasons. You have experienced repeatedly the cycles of life in a predictable AND sometimes unpredictable world. You are graduating in the third year of a new millennium, a new time of hope and challenges. You are aware of the process of change and renewal just as you were reborn and renewed each morning as you woke to greet a new day, and to feel the sun's life giving warmth and power. Here at MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY, you have studied about life and FOR life.

As you begin the journey, we cannot tell you what to pack in your survival tool kit, ONLY that it should be light. It should, however, be full of all you need for the LONG BREATH OF LIFE, and for success, respect, and dignity. You should have extra reserves of self-confidence, stamina, compassion, and patience. We send you out with confidence in your commitment to changing the world and making it a sanctuary of peace. We entrust you with the task of making the world into a place that truly and respectfully honors the diversity of humankind, religions, cultures, and lifestyles, as well as a place that celebrates in thanksgiving the power of the body, mind, heart, and spirit. As you begin this new phase of your earth dance, remain continually aware of the interdependent relationship of life, in which all things exist AS co-equal and divine partners in the great medicine lodge of earth. Remember to always remember that all life is related and that you live in a gigantic ocean of relations.

In walking the Road of Life, indigenous wisdom keepers teach that the most important journey a person can make is the fourteen-inch journey between the mind and the heart. This is requisite for living a balanced life that bases its decision making on both the critical intellect and the loving compassionate heart. This results in harmonious, balanced thinking that has the potential to positively impact your life and that of future generations. Such thinking also acknowledges our historical and cultural gifts from the past. Thinking with both the mind and heart is life insurance for the yet unborn children of the world, the four racially different BUT RELATED children of this good earth, whose ancestors you are.

Today, our awesome task of educating you is finished. It is finished in beauty. Know your destination. Walk carefully and mindfully. Confidently assume your responsibility for all life. Never forget MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY, your academic home. As you leave, we give you four final gifts to place in your kit bag for your incredible journey ahead:

1. The gift of believing in yourself.
2. The gift of the water of life and the goodness of earth.
3. The gift of good fortune, success, optimism, and joy. AND
4. The gift of humility and abundant simple things of life.