A Native Professional Story

In my life journey so far, I benefited from several native individuals who helped guide me at different points in my life.

These were in-person conversations where ideas were exchanged and advice was given on “what to watch out for” or “nuggets of knowledge” based on experience & wisdom from being there before.

With the power of the internet & time-shifted learning, we now have a opportunity to share our “native professional story” with many more native youth than talking to each individually.

Now that I’m back in Albuquerque, and among more native professionals, I’m going to interview and collect the success and failure stories of today’s native professionals, leaders, and business owners. I strongly believe that the things we did wrong (failures) are just as important as the things we did right (success).

I’ve decided to create a new category on this Blog to highlight this effort, so now on the left side you will see “A Native Professional Story” link and be able to click it to see the latest interviews available. As more individuals are interviewed a page will be created to house the list and their areas of knowledge and expertise.

First on the list is of Dr George Blue Spruce Jr, a person who dealt with adversity, attained success on many levels, and wrote a book.

I will also be doing a self interview soon, I just need to work out all the questions I want to ask myself and others in the future.

I’m also open to any question suggestions.

This should be a very interesting and fun project to document the stories so the native youth can learn from what the native professionals, leaders, & business owners have learned.

– Dom

Last night I attended the book signing of Dr George Blue Spruce Jr (Laguna Pueblo / Ohkay Owingeh) and was very delighted to meet him for the very first time. The room was full of family, friends, & most of all future medical students. Roughly about 100 people were in the room to hear Dr Blue Spruce Jr talk about his life story. A story he finally wrote down into a book titled “Searching For My Destiny”. I have a previous post on my blog here, which contain some of what I was able to find on the internet about him.

I particularly enjoyed his jokes and how he overcame adversity being the only American Indian among many groups growing up. What struck me most was how Dr Blue Spruce Jr had to develop the independence and sense of self worth to continue alone for many years away from his tribal home. His life dedication and thoughtfulness of others helped craft Indian health policy to benefit not only the tribes he was from but those of so many others as well.

I am proud to have met this man, and I sincerely hope to continue the conversation again.

Dr Blue Spruce Jr and the family allowed me to video the event and share it. Here is the full MP3 audio & download link from his talk (almost 43 minutes long, and 20MB in size), and a highlight video. Enjoy!

– Dom

Full Audio: