Boise, Idaho
During my last year at Missouri I had an
opportunity to be a highly paid psychological consultant for Project Head
Start. A crack consulting team was gathered from the Midwest and flown to
Boise, Idaho. Our mission was to do some training with Indian mothers who were
being brought-in from the surrounding area. We were to help them improve their
parenting skills.
It was strange being in
Boise. It was a clean and pleasant city somewhere in the West. In fact, that
was just about the extent of my knowledge about the area. I also knew virtually
nothing about parenting skills since I wasn't even a parent at the time, and I
knew even less about Indians. I hadn't even realized that Indian mothers didn't
know how to parent.
Our consulting team put together
some hastily-conceived program based on methods developed by white Rogerians
from
Looking back at it, I think the Indian mothers knew a heck of a lot more
about parenting than we did, and, they were also, probably, the only ones who
had a clue as to what kind of idiocy they were participating in. The whole
experience left me feeling embarrassed and guilt-ridden. They should have just
given the consulting fees directly to the Indians so they could buy food for
their families.
On the positive side, we
were probably seen as such fools that the Indians decided to hang onto their
own culture a little longer and a lot harder.