Twenty years ago, Cornell University Press published First Person, First Peoples: Native American College Graduates Tell Their Life Stories, also about the experiences of Native American students at Dartmouth College. While many of the writers do return to their tribal communities after graduation, ideas about 'home' become more malleable and complicated.'-from the Introduction I Am Where I Come From presents the autobiographies of thirteen Native American undergraduates and graduates of Dartmouth College, ten of them current and recent students.

Education plays a critical role in such lives: many of the authors recall adoring school as young people, as it constituted a place of escape and a rare opportunity to thrive. What tends to bind them together are not cultural practices or spiritual attitudes per se, but rather circumstances that have no exclusive province in Indian country: that is, first and foremost, poverty, and its attendant symptoms of violence, substance abuse, and both physical and mental illness. While many experience a centripetal pull toward a cohesive Indian experience, the indications throughout these essays lean toward a richer, more illustrative panorama of difference.

'The organizing principle for this anthology is the common Native American heritage of its authors and yet that thread proves to be the most tenuous of all, as the experience of indigeneity differs radically for each of them.

Mi Voz, Mi Vida by Andrew Garrod