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NauenThen

From the vault

I was an activist all the way back in high school.

And early to understand the usefulness of a concocted quote. We wrote that, the few of us "radicals" who were at the meeting, but I was the only one who would put my name to it. "My parents would kill me" is what I remember everyone else saying. After this article came out in the Argus, I got hate & "turn to Jesus" mail from around the state.

I remember around the same time going door to door in a driving rainstorm trying to get people to sign a petition to free? reconsider? Thomas White Hawk, in the state penitentiary for murder. People were very polite to a bedraggled baby-faced teen but no one signed.

So many memories of my early activism. A girl in my class who declared that all the Indians were drunk. "And don't think I'm prejudiced. I'm not—it's true." A fund-raising walk (for Indians from South Dakota and India, if I recall correctly) I organized and walked the whole route in—on crutches. Sneaking out with my boyfriend Ken to drive to Vermilion to hear Julian Bond.

That girl was me. That girl was not me.
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