Clarence Smith was fresh off a 24-hour bus trip from his Blackfeet reservation in Montana to the Flandreau Indian School in South Dakota in the late 1980s, where he was sent by his family in the hope he would receive a better education.
“On one of the first days of class, a white social studies teacher stood before our class and told us that we were lucky Columbus had found us, because otherwise we would still be living in teepees,” Smith said.
He gazed down at the pair of LA Lakers sneakers he got just for his new school. If it weren’t for Columbus, he would still be in moccasins, he recalls thinking. Many years would pass before Smith began reedu…
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