I read this article in complete dismay. A beautiful native girl who tastefully decorated her graduation cap as most high school students do if they want to, has her graduation cap removed for the “plain” and “normal” look of the schools conformist desire to make Natives the same. Just look at history and you will see for hundreds of years “white” people have tried in vain to make the Natives look and be the same. Why is that? We all should be applauding and welcoming that these kids are graduating and planning a future in many fields and trades!

Exception is the new cultural population that has decided or cannot decide who they are but they all have special needs that the state has gone to a great expense to provide for a population that has just recently decided they want to be different with separate bathrooms and non-discrimination pronouns that is most confusing and changed daily it seems.

And yet a beautiful Hunkpapa Lakota girl just wants to creatively and tastefully acknowledge her cultural background of a thousand years and is denied that right. (It costs the state nothing!!) And once again the proud Indigenous Nation is asked to conform and strip a student on graduation day of her basic self. REALLY!!

Gloria A. Neidigh

Vancouver, Washington