“To be an urban Indian,” Falls Down told McCarthy, “you’ve got to keep those two worlds together, but also separate at the same time.”

All three students reported that multiple generations of extended families had provided them encouragement and protection during their successful high school years. Each of McCarthy's co-researchers completed a scrapbook upon graduation; all three were on display Thursday evening.

The three students also identified knowledge of Native history as what McCarthy called “a protective factor.”

Not Afraid, a member of the Crow Tribe who attended Senior, Hardin and Lodge Grass high schools, told McCarthy she learned lessons of the Cherokee Tribe’s suffering and misery along the Trail of Tears when her school band played a musical piece featuring a plaintive passage highlighting a cavalry bugle.

“It was powerful for Kayla,” McCarthy said, “to learn another tribe’s history.”

While students have generally benefited from Montana’s Indian Education For All mandate, some Native students expressed discomfort when their teachers “expected them to be experts, or to explain history from a tribal perspective not their own," McCarthy said.