VERMILLION -- For Sandra White Shield, the American Indian Journalism Institute has served as a rebirth.
“I view this as being a turning point in my life,” said White Shield, a resident of Porcupine, S.D. “I’ve always been interested in writing and I saw this as an opportunity to further something I had already started.”
White Shield applied to the institute after watching a film about it in one of the classes she attends at Oglala Lakota College in Kyle, S.D., but didn’t think she’d be accepted or that she’d be able to get time off work to attend.
“In my life I generally found that it’s hard to do what I want to do as opposed to what I have to do and generally what I want to do gets put on the back burner,” White Shield, a mother of five children, said. “So to be accepted … I was just pleasantly surprised and very gratified.”
Her employer at Oglala Lakota College, where White Shield is an assistant to the director of the graduate studies program, encouraged her to attend the institute and arranged for her time off.
Upon graduation, White Shield hopes to continue to give back to her community on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and said she feels that journalism is a great way to do that.
“How I write will hopefully bring a new knowledge to people,” she said.
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