When Myia Ferguson walked into her first history class at Stevenson, the teacher asked a simple question: Does anyone know whose land we’re on?
One hand went up. One, out of an entire classroom.
“Back home, we all knew it,” Myia told me with her voice carrying the weight of that moment. “We’d joke about the colonizers, like, ‘Oh, they stole our land,’ you know? It was just part of how we talked.” She pauses. “Coming here and realizing no one even knew we were living on stolen land? That was a culture shock I wasn’t ready for.”
Myia left class that day without asking. Later, when her teacher pulled her aside to check in, Myia's response was direct: “I’m Native. Like, no, I’m not okay.”
That moment was about suddenly being the only person in the room who understood what it meant to stand on someone else’s ancestors’ ground. Because here, at this boarding school in California, Myia isn’t just far from home—she’s the only reminder that home ever existed.
Myia’s heritage is as layered as the land she comes from. She’s Puyallup, Modoc, Cherokee, Blackfeet, and a little Siletz: tribes spread across Oregon, Washington, and beyond. She knows some Modoc language. Her ceremonies follow Puyallup traditions. “It’s just, like, a part of you,” she says when asked about her relationship with her culture. “I didn’t even think about it that much until I came here. Back home, we’d have powwows and assemblies. We’d all talk in our native language—like, I never said ‘come here,’ I always said getki. If I didn’t want to talk to you, I’d say gulaski, like, ‘go away, no.’”
Back in Klamath Falls, Oregon, being Native was not something you explained. It was part of daily life: the words you used, the ceremonies you attended, the first foods shared before teepee gatherings. It was Grandfather Moon, the fire shaped like a crescent. It was knowing which plants heal, which stories matter, which land remembers your people. Coming to Stevenson meant leaving all of that behind. “It was like... you’re the only one,” she says quietly.
At Stevenson, Myia is the only Native student. “There’s one Pacific Islander student," Myia says. “And there are three Indigenous teachers. But as for students? It's me. I’m literally the only Native student here.”
The isolation hit hardest during an assembly. Stevenson had invited an Indigenous speaker, a rare acknowledgment of Native presence. The presentation was slow, Myia admits, but it mattered. What happened afterward, though, stayed with her. “When we were leaving, these people in front of me, I heard them talking. One of them said, ‘Who cares about Indians?’” She stops, her voice steady but sharp. “They were right there at the top of the steps.”
One of the students, Myia notes, was of Japanese or Chinese descent. “It would have been so easy to say something racist back to them. And then how would they have taken that? ”
She didn’t confront them. She was still new, still trying to find her footing. But it hurt. It still does.
In class, the invisibility shifts. When the topic turns to race, Myia becomes hypervisible, the one teachers turn to, the one expected to speak, to educate, to represent. “Teachers only seem to tune in when we’re talking about race,” she says. “Then suddenly I’m the one they want to hear from. I feel like I have to speak for Black and Asian people, two communities that both face discrimination. It’s stressful.”
When her history teacher asked her in front of the class what Native people prefer to be called, Myia felt the room’s eyes on her. “I was like, ‘Why me?” She told them: Native Americans. Indigenous people. It depends. Back home, terms like “Indian” were used casually among friends as jokes and reclaimed language. But here? “When it’s coming from people who are of the same ethnic group as colonizers? It hits different.”
Myia’s strength didn’t come from nowhere. It came from necessity, built in the gaps where parental care should have been. At twelve years old, she was the one cooking for her family. At twelve, she was making sure her brother got to school, that her mom got to work. She did laundry, kept the house clean, and made sure the car had gas. She got a job before her older brother did.
“My mom won’t do anything without consulting me. Like, ‘Miya, I want to move.’ And I’m like, ‘Then move. You need to get out of this town.’ She says, ‘But I don't want to leave you.’ And I'm like, ‘You're not leaving me. I left you.’” Her voice is firm, protective of her mom, yes, but also of herself. “I am not ever coming back to Klamath. I don’t want to. I do not ever want to be back in that town.”
Being confused at first, her explanation became clear as she elaborated on how both her parents struggled with alcohol and drugs, part of a larger pattern of addiction that’s devastated Native communities for generations. “My mom did drugs my whole pregnancy. She didn’t even know she was pregnant with me until three months before I was born.” And through all of it, Myia kept going. She was a straight-A student. She made sure her education came first, even when everything else was falling apart.
When Myia talks to other students at Stevenson, students who’ve never cooked a meal, she feels the gap widen. “One girl told me she’s never cooked a day in her life. Her nanny cooks for her,” Myia says, still incredulous. “But I cooked for my whole family. I had to make sure all our laundry was done. And she’s saying that she doesn’t know how to make mac and cheese in the microwave?”
It’s not said with judgment. It’s said with exhaustion, with the bone-deep weariness of someone who’s carried too much for too long.
Adjusting to the boarding school rhythm has been its own challenge. Study hall feels infantilizing. Mandatory bedtimes feel arbitrary. One night, exhausted, Myia went to bed during study hall. A dorm staff member barged in and woke her up. “He was yelling, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m going to sleep.’ He was like, ‘No, you’re not.’ And I said, ‘Why can’t I go to sleep? I’m sixteen years old. I can tell myself when I need to go to sleep.’”
“Going from basically being the mom of the household to being treated like a two-year-old?” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “That’s a culture shock I wasn’t ready for either.”
Still, Stevenson has given her something Klamath Falls couldn’t: distance. Space to say no. “Back home, substances were everywhere. I tried to quit multiple times and couldn’t. I came here, and it was just... I didn’t think about it. I want a better life for myself. Most people back home don’t get the chance to leave and get that better life.”
When asked what she wishes people understood, Myia doesn’t hesitate. “Discrimination is still a huge part of today’s world. Even back home, my brother, with his long hair, gets seen as Native immediately, and people treat him differently. I can pass as white. But my brother? He can’t hide it.”
She talks about growing up in a household steeped in racism, about learning at Stevenson that the terms she used casually weren’t acceptable. “No one ever put that in perspective for me before. Coming here, you realize there's a barrier between cultures.”
And then she brings it back to now. “Back home, when ICE came through, we all went to the reservations. A lot of my friends got taken. A lot of our close family members got taken. Anyone labeled Indigenous got brought back eventually, but a lot of our Hispanic, Mexican relatives and friends? They’re gone.” Her voice tightens. “If we all stood up against this, we would win. But people sit back and think someone else will do it.”
Near the end of our conversation, Myia stresses, “I’m not the only one who’s experienced this kind of life back home,” she says. “I’m not the first kid who had to take care of their mom and their brother. But I think people need to understand that just because you can’t see someone’s struggle doesn’t mean it’s not there. Everyone’s carrying something. And we should be kinder about that.”
For Myia, who spent years making sure everyone else was okay while barely holding herself together, who learned to perform stability even when everything was falling apart, who still carries the weight of being the only Native student in a school of hundreds, it’s the least we can do.
“If I could say one thing,” Myia says, “it’s to stop discrimination and work together. We’re all minorities in some way. I think we should understand each other a little more.”
She’s not asking for pity, nor to be anyone’s teaching moment. She’s simply asking to be seen. Fully. Honestly. As someone who’s survived more than most people will ever know, and who’s still here, still trying, still building something better.
Myia is trying. The real question is—are we?