Sioux Valley graduation honours hard-working group of seven

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This article was published 28/06/2013 (4691 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Framed portraits of past fresh-faced Grade 12 graduates hang on a wall inside the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation High School office.

The total number of graduates has now reached more than 65 since the school’s opening eight years ago and although they may have left the halls of the small high school on Louise Avenue some time ago, former students are still very much remembered and celebrated by principal Kevin Nabess.

“We’re having a lot of success as a school and as a community promoting the high school program,” he said.

Thursday’s intimate graduation ceremony and gathering inside the gymnasium saw seven students walk across the stage and receive their high school diplomas.

“Everyone knows each graduate on some level because they know them usually by first name,” Nabess said. “They worked hard right until the very end. Some of the students pushed hard at the end of the year to achieve this goal.”

This year, the school had nine potential grads but two students chose to stay back a year to earn extra credits, Nabess said.

Although graduation is celebrated by the school and the small community, it marks a bit of a sombre time for Nabess.

“We will miss them dearly … we’re a smaller school so we get to know our students more on a first-name basis and we see them come in as a Grade 7, 8 student going up to the high school and then eventually becoming a more mature young adult with their goals and dreams ahead of them and they share these things with us.”

Graduation also marks a special occasion every year for Sioux Valley Dakota Nation Chief Vince Tacan.

“It’s encouraging to see kids succeeding and that’s what we’re trying to shoot for all the time so we’re happy with the work the staff does here,” he said while glancing at the past grad portraits. “You don’t always hear the positives in our communities all the time, so this is one day that’s always good.”

Tacan said he hopes his presence at the annual ceremony encourages students to continue their education and choose a career path.

“I see the need for nurses, accountants, those kinds of things in our communities so I’m always trying to get the students to look at that as a career choice.”

He also encourages students to work outside the First Nations community before deciding to come back.

“I find that the employees that we have that have gone and worked here and there with varied experience seem to be a little more capable, a little more flexible and they seem to have an idea of how to work within policies and how to think creatively and develop their own solutions.”

But he admits that there are still a “whole set of factors” in the community that prevent youth from attending school.

“We don’t have the funding that we need to accommodate all the students,” he said. “A lot of people want to go to school but we just don’t have the funds to do it, so it’s very important for us to have the success with the ones we do fund. We don’t want to waste any of the funding we have and so far we’ve been pretty lucky in succeeding and supporting our students that way. I wish we could sponsor all the students that apply but that’s why we have to work creatively with our education team to come up with a different strategy.”

Since the Grade 7 to 12 school is given a base amount of funding each year dependent on the amount of students, Tacan said it’s important for community members to understand that if one student drops out, it could affect the rest of the class.

“We budget for teachers, we budget for supplies, we budget for transportation all that … the community has received that information so they get it that you have to be committed in order for us to offer the programs that we need to offer … thankfully we’re starting to see people be more serious about education.”

The importance of education is something that class-voted valedictorian and graduate Blake Wombdiska said he understands.

“This isn’t the end of our education. We can still learn more,” he said. “Education is what you need in life … it’s a really big thing you need … many people don’t see that.”

Wombdiska said he plans to further his education at Assiniboine Community College.

This year, the high school is also saying goodbye to one of its longtime staff members. Sherryl Maglione has taught English and sewing at the high school for the past six years and plans to move to B.C. for another teaching position. She said the students have become like family members.

“It has been a wonderful learning experience about the Dakota culture and the sharing that they have shown me all through the years,” Maglione said. “The students have provided me with a real sense of family … I felt like they’re my children, too.”

» lenns@brandonsun.com