By Angela Heck, United Tribes Technical College Art Gallery and Bookstore Manager
2025-2026 Indigenous Visionaries: Women’s Leadership Program
I was born into a dual-heritage family in Bismarck, North Dakota. As a child, I moved easily between two worlds—visiting my German-Russian family’s farmstead in Solen, North Dakota and my Hunkpapa Lakota family’s homes in Fort Yates, North Dakota, all on the Standing Rock Reservation. This was my normal, shaped by love and familiarity. It was simply my family.
I attended United Tribes Technical College’s (UTTC) pre-school and kindergarten surrounded by peers who looked like me. It wasn’t until I entered the city’s public school system that I was told—directly and indirectly—that everything about me was considered different and, at times, unacceptable. I was one of very few Indigenous and biracial children in the predominately caucasian school system.
As more Indigenous students entered the school system, I was informed by some that I was not considered Native enough to belong with them. For some caucasian classmates, I wasn’t white enough to belong with them either. Indigenous women are often subject to labels meant to define and diminish them—I was called an “Apple” —a designation I did not understand but decided I would not let define me.
Photos of Angela Heck’s family, representing seven generations from her great-great-grandparents to her great-nephew.
At home, my everyday life was shaped by teachings, values, and morals drawn from both cultures and sides of my family. I learned through the way they lived—through their perseverance, resilience, discipline, and quiet dedication, the importance of education and hard work. I learned how to hunt and fish, how to forage and garden, and how to preserve these foods through canning and meat processing. I was taught to respect, honor, and care for the land—Mother Earth—and express gratitude for everything God, the Creator, and the Great Spirit provides for us. I learned to take only what was needed, to be kind to others, to help, share, give, and to understand that I carry responsibilities towards my family and my community—along with the importance and sacredness of being selfless, knowing my actions reflect those who came before me and shape those who come after.
When I began working at UTTC in 2018, I not only realized that I was returning to the place where my classroom education began, but that my sense of belonging remained unresolved. Through reflection, participation in Indigenous activities and ceremonies, being welcomed and surrounded by Indigenous colleagues and students who share my blood and my journey, and through my involvement in the Indigenous Visionaries: Women’s Leadership Program, I am healing from the experiences of discrimination and effects of self-imposed doubts. My sense of belonging is no longer rooted in proving, choosing, or valuing a single racial identity over another. I belong fully to both heritages, both cultures, and both races.
This dual-heritage, biracial, Lakota-German woman belongs simply by being who she is—a citizen of humanity. By walking in the teachings and traditions of all my ancestors, I am bound to them and to this world, and I now understand that I have always belonged.
