 We'll start with Dr. Cynthia Lindquist, who is the president of Kandesca Sitkana Community College and a colleague of ours on the CS committee. Cynthia, take it away. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Hopefully my sound is okay, and you can see me. All right. My friends, my Dakota name is Star Horse Woman, and I greet you with a warm handshake. But I'm on Zoom today from where I live and work in Fort Tot in North Dakota, and if you all don't know, it's 18 below zero right now, and it's warmed up from 27 below when I came to work at 6.30 a.m. So the sun is shining. We're here at work, and I'm really delighted somewhat to be part of this panel and to be part of the discussion. I have gotten on for both previous panels. I'm a little dismayed at following the three prior panelists, yo-yo ma, and I'm like, what am I doing here? Let alone all of you, I'm assuming, have something to do with the National Science Foundation, and you're all probably very, very scientist-orientated or scholars or researchers. And Dr. Lydia, I took the time to reread your bio alone, and I'm like, oh my gosh, what am I doing with these people? It's a little overwhelming, even at this juncture in my career in my life and being a president of a tribal college. But I took a deep breath. I was greatly enlightened by the two previous panels and the words, and we're all here to talk about leadership, leadership development, and that pathway, and how do we get to where we are? And so I'm going to talk a little bit about myself, but maybe more so to the point because this panel is about promising approaches in higher education. Well, and that's, to me, like, a loaded bullet or a loaded comment, really? Are there? Can there be? I've been home as president of Chandaskar Chisna Community College since 2003, so I'm beginning my 19th year as a tribal community college president. I am a tribal member, and I was asked by elders to come home to be to serve as the president. So having been asked that way, it's a cultural context in that, and it's a responsibility that I do not take lightly at all, because being called to serve, as you all are aware, especially because you're all educators, and many of you have been in the classroom. I've gone and I've lectured in the classroom, but I do not call myself a teacher, and I think it takes a very gifted, special person to be a faculty member, to be an instructor, and an adjunct instructor, a teacher. What we do in higher ed and education in general is the heart and soul of change and helping people. So having been called home to serve as the president, it's like, gee, how did I get here? And I don't believe any of us would aspire to these jobs and roles. I know I certainly did not. It wasn't on my radar. I was going to become a human rights lawyer and save the world, or at least for the native peoples. And little did I know, and I truly believe, that Creator puts me where I'm supposed to be, and I fortunately, I've had some really good experiences, political experiences, appointments at the state level and at the national level, which has given me good credentials to do what I do in being a tribal college president. It takes much work to be the supposed leader of a small tribal college, and I think Yo-Yo Ma had kind of ended the panel about making the comment about smaller is good because we're more nimble than we are, and yes, it does get very lonely. It does get very lonely, particularly being a tribal college. There are only 35 tribal colleges and universities, and in the United States, we were established because mainstream institutions, academia, were failing our people. And what's unique about tribal colleges and universities is that we are chartered by our respective tribes. We serve our people. We are very place-based institutions and organizations in that. Leadership, I just looked at some research recently, because I did an opening for the tribal college journal, which you all should pick up and get. The spring issue of the tribal college journal actually focuses on leadership in the tribal college system, and I did the opening remarks for the spring issue. And in looking at the whole topic of leadership, leadership development, the new research is really showing or demonstrating that leaders are made. So what do we do in academia? What do we do in higher ed? And in these systems and these structures and these silos that are everywhere, they're all around us to help that student, that intern, that apprentice. Do we open doors? Do we take time to mentor, to just visit, to listen? And both the previous panels really articulated some good things about mentorship, about apprenticeships, about listening, about humility, and they all play into this and to who we are and what we do. So what are some new approaches going on in higher ed? In the tribal college world, we have a thing called Indian preference, which is a tribal government entity, kind of stems from affirmative action, but not so much. And it's more to do with who we are, where we're located, and Native people have a very different and unique relationship with this country. That's political. It's not race-based. And so how do we help our own people get to be tribal leaders, get to be where we're supposed to be in relative to the various professions and works and employment opportunities that we have in our communities? And it's about developing our own people. And so that's why we have what we call Indian preference in our hiring practices and that. I believe in affirmative action. I believe doors have to be opened. As a female, having come up through the ranks in both the state system, the federal system, the tribal system, there's racism, there's sexism, there's all these things that happen because of systems and structures and learned behaviors that become normalized, that people just assume and think that this is the way it is, this is the way it has to be. As educators, we have a higher responsibility to stop, to question, to articulate, really, is this good? Is this right? And then to open those doors. And for me as a tribal college president, one of the most important things I'm realizing as I try to do succession planning and I do not have tribal members in the pipeline for any of my faculty jobs, even for my job, what am I doing to grow our own? And as much progress as we've made in this day and age, there's like, oh my gosh, there's still so much more work to do. It takes resources. It takes time and attention in that your policies, your practices, in fact, are being reviewed and looked at. And as much as I hate all the acronyms that the federal government comes up with, including DEI, which is not the buzz words, is like, oh my gosh. Coming back to the previous panel, the humanity of everything we do and the work that we do, you know, and always coming back to that. It's about education. It's about different kinds of education in different ways, different levels in that and opening doors and assuring that when we open those doors, the follow-through is there also, whether it's money, whether it's time, whether it's networking and building of those networks and that, that takes time and attention. It doesn't necessarily take money, but being aware and cognizant for me, that's being a leader. It's kind of knowing all these things, facilitating it, making it happen and opening doors. And that's part of why I agreed to be part of CEO SE and the National Science Foundation and sitting with all the scientists and that life's journey is learning and it never ends. And that's one of the things my grandma and grandpa taught me as a Dakota woman and living here on the reservation. How do we find that truth? What is that truth? It's about history. It's learning history, unlearning history, retelling our truths and telling it from our way. I had a friend who, when I was a Bush Fellowship scholar several years ago, who made the comment that she did not want to have to be tolerated. We've been friends for a long time and I'm like, yeah, why should any one of us have to be tolerated? You know, we should have empathy and that should be, and I think it is a natural instinct for human beings. And it's all about that learning, child development, higher education process, which is what we're all about, opening doors, paying attention, listening and learning and growing together. And there's still much, much more work to be done. So Mitaki Awasi, we are all related. Thank you. Thank you very much, Cynthia. As you can see, this is a gathering in which we come together, not only as scientists, but as humans and as people with interests in many, many subjects. And even some of us who are scientists and certainly those who are not have cross-interest, which is part of the point of this day of discussion.