Sam believes that the very fact that there are so few Indians here now gives Harvard the chance to develop a really good Indian program eventually. "You can start from scratch," he says. "People are more open to ideas here. Back home, you've got a lot of rednecks who think they already know everything about Indians."

What Harvard has to learn, as Sam sees it, is that "you can't treat an application from an Indian simply as any other application, or even as any other minority application. The same goals simply don't apply. For instance, all this business of a professional career as the end of your existence--you know, you make a lot of money and you have a sweet life--Indians don't see that as the ultimate good. Their ideal is to make a contribution to the community. Of course, that's not true in every case--you have some people who are just looking out for themselves--but I think you do find a sense of purpose by and large, a desire to do something in the future."

"Everything here is oriented towards whites," he says. "Or if it's not oriented towards whites, it's not oriented towards blacks. So where does that leave Indians?"

Clark Morres

Clark Morres says he is "exactly one half" Indian. On the dresser in his room there is a collection of photographs of his relatives, half of them Indian, half of them white. On one wall, he has tacked up posters of nature scenes and Elton John; on the opposite wall there is a drawing of a grim-faced Indian, with the inscription, "All we ask is to be allowed to live in peace--Dull Knife, Northern Cheyenne."

Morres readily admits that he "went to a middle-class school in a middle-class community." But, he adds quickly, "I know what I want to do. I want to go to medical school and work as a doctor on a reservation."

Morres has not been active in AIH because, he says, he hasn't "gotten around to it." Later he volunteers more of an explanation, a trifle defensively. "Now that I'm here, it would be a waste of time for me to spend time working with AIH, because I have to prepare for what I'm going to do later on. It's an individual thing. I'm not the kind of person who can speak to large groups of people. I feel better about working on an individual basis, and investing in myself. But I have no desire for wealth or money."

He doesn't feel out of touch with things that are going on back home--something that Jim Sam sees as a problem for Indian students--because his father, a Paiute Indian and the executive director of the Nevada Indian Affairs Commission, keeps him well informed. "He's given me a million books to read," Morres says.

There have been occasional conflicts between his white mother and his Indian father, Morres says, but nothing very serious. "Indians are very magnanimous, and Dad's always inviting people over," he offers as an example. "Sometimes that's a little hard on my mother. Also, Indians are as a rule very clannish."

Morres came to Harvard after taking a year off, during which he "bought a bus pass and traveled 30,000 miles in two months, visited 30 different schools, worked in New York City for a month, stayed here at Harvard for two months, and worked as a page in the Nevada State Legislature." Once he got here, he found that, in some ways, it was easier to adjust to Harvard than to high school.

"In school, I felt I couldn't have my white friends at the same time as my Indian friends, but here I don't feel that. Back home, everyone knew where everyone else came from. But not here--it doesn't make any difference," he says.

Although he seems to have slipped easily into an all-white milieu, Morres feels he still retains his identity as an Indian. "Nowadays it's more than a matter of blood to be an Indian--you have to think like an Indian." And Morres thinks he thinks like an Indian. For instance, he says, Indians are more used to "listening rather than talking--and I think that's one reason I don't jump into the discussion in my Gov 30 section."

And as for the future, Morres is not likely to forget that he is an Indian. "The reservation is not a lovely place to live," he says. "I wouldn't pick it. But that's where the need is right now, and that's where I'm going to go."

Sue Williams

Ten years ago, the Navajo reservation in Arizona where Sue Williams lives had no lights and no paved streets, and people got around by horse and wagon. Now, she says, things are a lot better--nearly everyone has a pick-up truck and some new houses have been built.