In this excerpt, Laura Switzler relates her experience at boardings school.

Transcript: My mom put us there, me and my sister. I didn’t really care for the boarding school. But, at that age you don’t really have choices in your life—where you wanna go or what you wanna do and… I think it wasn’t all bad, but it, you know, we learned to survive. A lot of the kids would get checked out on weekends to go home, but, for a good part of the time, there was my sister and I and the Brunos, we had to stay at the boarding school clear throughout the whole year; especially if there was too much rain—my grandma and grandpa couldn’t get out.

Bio: Laura Yallup Switzler is a Confederated Tribe of Warm Springs and Yakama Elder.