Postcard from Chief Dull Knife College

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Littlebear, 68, has a doctorate in education from Boston University and is fluent in Cheyenne; he teaches evening courses in it. He refers to tribal colleges as "underfunded miracles." With a meager $4.9 million budget provided mostly by the Federal Government, his school operates on a thin shoestring indeed. But Chief Dull Knife College perseveres, holding out hope for a new generation of Northern Cheyennes. More than half its graduates now go on to four-year schools. One of them is Jennifer Wooden Legs, 29, daughter of the college-board chairman, whose academic career was postponed by five horrific years of meth addiction. ("Very awful stuff, very hard to get over," she says.) Jennifer, a single mother, will graduate next June, and plans to study psychology at Montana State University in Billings and then "come back and help." Chief Dull Knife College, she says, "turned around my idea that I couldn't make something of myself or give my kids a better life. I'm still surprised. I never thought I'd be here."

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