Growing up on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, Small Rodriguez was aware of the dangers she faced. “We always knew to take care of ourselves, watch for people around you, because this has always been happening, this has been an issue for hundreds of years, and a lot of Native women always have to have really extra safety precautions, because you're always at higher risk of being targeted, and so myself growing up in that really carried me to where I am now.”

She picked up plenty of other experience along the way starting with time as an emergency dispatcher while she was still in high school. And at 17, she became the first female member of that tribe to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard.

“Not many Cheyennes go in the ocean,” she said with a laugh. But she had been inspired by both her Mexican-American father’s open-ocean swim lessons, and a female Coast Guard rescue swimmer’s words of encouragement.

Small Rodriguez spent six years enlisted, three of them helping with search-and-rescue missions off the Oregon coast. She left in 2012, and set her sights on the University of Montana for higher ed. “My mom went here, a lot of her friends and a lot of Northern Cheyennes that came up here, they loved it,” she said.