Young Innovator Profile: Geneva Wiki

Geneva Wiki is fighting the flu. "You're seeing me at only about 75 percent of my normal energy," says the director of the Klamath River Early College of the Redwoods, in Klamath, California. It's a formidable 75 percent. Two of her teachers are absent, so Wiki, a 30-year-old Yurok Indian, darts between the school's three classrooms, her bobbed hair swinging.

More than half of the 30 teens attending this public charter school are Yurok, and more than two-thirds are American Indians. As young as 13, they have all taken college placement exams and are co-enrolled in high school and the local community college, working simultaneously toward secondary school diplomas and college credits. The idea behind this innovative project, part of the Early College High School Initiative largely funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is that low-income, minority, and otherwise disadvantaged young people at risk of dropping out are encouraged to stay in school and get a free, nonintimidating taste of college. There are now 147 such schools in the United States in 23 states and Washington, D.C., 11 of which are specifically for American Indians.

"This is the front line of our civil rights movement," says Wiki. "Past generations struggled first over rights to fish and hunt, and then to govern ourselves. Now we need to work on reclaiming ourselves through education." Wiki helped establish schools for the Early Colleges for Native Youth program before she was tapped, in 2003, to be deputy executive director of the Yurok tribal council. (Settled along the Klamath River, just south of the Oregon border, the 5,000-member tribe is California's largest and poorest.) As deputy executive director, Wiki began talking to parents and community leaders about starting an early college high school on the reservation. The idea was popular — and was eligible for a Gates Foundation grant. Soon after getting one, tribal leaders and parents asked Wiki to be the school's first director. It opened in September 2005 in rooms in back of a convenience store, just off redwood-lined Highway 101.

In addition to math, science, English, and social sciences, Wiki's students study the Yurok language and such tribal skills as carving redwood canoes, catching eels, and making acorn soup. Some educators — including Wiki — believe that such knowledge can make the difference in combating an American Indian dropout rate of more than 4 in 10 nationwide.

Wiki's family are "regalia holders"—keepers of ceremonial treasures used in Yurok rituals. Her great-grandmother was famed for her basketry; her aunt was president of the National Congress of American Indians. "I always knew strongly who I was and what I was supposed to do," Wiki says.

The school has made considerable progress in the two years since it opened. Last year's daily attendance was up — to 92 percent from 70 percent the previous year — and 48 percent of students passed a placement exam making them eligible to take college-level English, up from 4 percent. "It's something you always hear about the schools on Indian lands, that we could do it better if we were in charge," says Wiki. "And as a matter of fact, we can."

This article is excerpted from "Making the Grade" by Katherine Ellison, which originally appeared in SMITHSONIAN, October 2007. Katherine Ellison is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author. Her most recent book is The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter, published by Basic Books.

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