As we draw near the 10th year of your passing, I want to tell you how we’re doing, because I remember that you called me every day to check on me. I know that you check on your children every day, too, even now. Today would have been your 44th birthday.
First of all, we miss you so deeply. We remember your sense of humor, your devotion to your three babies, your talents in the kitchen, your ability to draw people to you, your friendliness to everyone you met, your high vibrations, and your empathy toward others.
Your children are doing well. Korbin is moving up the ladder at Walmart, and he continues to cook at Coyotes, because that’s where his friends work. He loves cars, and he plays in Pokémon tournaments. Shawn is a wonderful daddy to his little girl, Nova. He is thriving at work as an HVAC expert, and he’s supervising a crew, too. He is going through a rough patch, and he tells me every time we talk, that he misses you dearly, and he wishes you were here to give him advice. Nova is thriving and seems to be a happy little girl.
Sam is in school and doing well. Her lowest grade is an A-. She is a wonderful mother to the happiest little boy I’ve ever met. His name is Finn.
I know you’d be the best grandmother for these babies. Finn loves to talk to the big portrait I have of you in my living room. He senses that you are his grandmother and that you are special.
As you know, we went through some terrible times last year, but we came through it, because we are strong. All of my GC friends were there to support us during the whole time. Your children have your strength. I see you in them every day. They learned how to be strong from you, and that is what has carried them through the tragedy of losing you, of watching their own daddy struggle with addictions, and through having a “grandpa” who only hurt them all with his deceit and selfishness. Oh, how I wish you were here to ease their pain. Please go to them in their dreams. That would help a great deal.
I know your friends miss you desperately, too! They continue to celebrate your birthday, and none of the Village misses your children’s big events, like graduations, birthdays, births, and the like. I still have some of your recorded voice, so I listen to that every now and again. I continue to ask why a wonderful young mother would be taken from her children in at the prime of her life and at the serious developmental stages of her children? You were the heart and soul of your family and of your friend group, the Village. That’s why they called you, “Mama Bear.”
Your Brother will likely light a fire in your memory tonight. The children and I will go out to dinner and reflect on your legacy.
Finally, I think of you every day. I ask for your guidance of your children. I love you, dearly, Riki, and I hope you are resting in Power!
I am a geographer specializing in human systems. My passion is studying underrepresented populations so that I can assist in their integration into the communities in which they live. I studied Human Ecology because it is a wonderful blend of the disciplines of geography, anthropology and sociology. No matter the context in which I find myself, I am an observer of humans in their environments and how the influences in those settings build and nurture sense-of-self, sense-of-place, and sense-of-direction in educational, familial, and community settings. My work focuses on the cross-cultural and intercultural traditions of multi-lingual populations acculturating into their receiving communities and being successful in educational arenas of higher education. This work includes gathering, analyzing, and writing about health, well-being, and environmental/social connectedness in their communities. My research focuses on Minority-majority, rural, Midwest communities. My role as director of intercultural learning and academic success at Kansas State University allows me to discover more about myself as I work with others in their paths to self-discovery in their own interactions with students and families who come from different parts of the country and the world all converging in educational spaces. Recently, I lived, worked and played in Southwest Kansas, a region marked by Minority-majority populations centers (56% – 68%). Some of my research results are used to address poverty, low educational attainment, poor health outcomes, and cultural norms in multi-cultural settings. I work to assure a representative sample for my research, so I engage in multi-lingual research (English, Spanish, Burmese, French, Tigrinya, and Somali). Building trust and relationships is the key to my success as a multilingual researcher. Presently, my research takes me in the micro-communities of populations represented by nine African countries (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Senegal, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Somalia, and Cameroon), seven Latin American countries, and six Asian countries. Yes, it is rural Southwest Kansas, and many of the densely-settled and frontier rural communities act as receiving centers for refugees and other displaced populations, because of the availability of jobs.
I am the recent recipient of National Geographic Society’s Research and Exploration grant to introduce Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to females of color. This inter-generational, intercultural class hosted middle school, high school, and adult females who learned the basics of GIS with a variety of applications from remote sensing to city planning to Google Earth, and to Pokémon GO! By the time the young ladies finished the class, they were able to build cities, map their communities, log trips from their countries of origin to the Midwest. I am in the mid-year of the grant funding, and my target for completion was July 2018. I have new funding to extend this work to new cohorts.
Currently, I work at Haskell Indian Nations University on an NSF project: Rising Voices Changing Coasts addressing climate change in Indigenous Coastal Communities in Alaska, Puerto Rico, Hawai'i, and the Louisiana Gulf Coast.
I am a mother, grandmother, sibling, friend, banjo player, and a geographer dedicated to studying humans in their environments.
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Human Ecology: People, Foods, Travel, Culture, and Social Justice 