You see, this older generation of executives, in my experience, loved to ask me how I paid for college, with a twinkle in their eyes and a distorted sense of glee—probably because they knew they ruined the cost of education for all generations after them. When I mentioned I received help from my tribe, weird things started happening. Stories of great-grandma Cherokee princesses I could handle, but not other things, like a former executive asking me if my grandmother was a derogatory slur referring to Native American women.
