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MISS INDIAN WORLD: Fulfilling a lifelong dream
Red Lake beauty queen talks about her dreams and relentless battle to succeed
By Elisa L. Rineheart
Published Friday, April 15, 2005
She dreamed of becoming Red Lake's beauty queen, and she did, twice.
She visualized a successful college career, and she graduated with a 4.0 grade point average from the former Northwest Technical College with a degree in early childhood education.
What Delana Smith, 2004 Miss Indian World, never imagined was that she would bring a message of hope to Red Lake reservation children when they needed it the most.
Smith, 24, a member of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, spoke Thursday about her life experiences to a crowd of about 50 people in the Commons of Northland Community and Technical College, East Grand Forks.
Smith, a Head Start teacher at Red Lake, made the crowd laugh, cry and cheer with her eloquent and unscripted storytelling and her traditional jingle dress dancing.
When Northland invited her to be a guess speaker as part of Indian Images Month, organizers asked her to talk about hope.
Sharing her personal life experience was her idea.
"I spoke about my life because that is what I know, and I can speak from the heart," Smith said.
Demographic statistic
She spoke about the low self-esteem of her teenage years. She said it was a byproduct of being discriminated against in a Minneapolis school and being physically abused by her boyfriend at the age of 18.
"I couldn't stand to look at myself in the mirror," said Smith with a trembling voice and teary eyes. "I didn't like the girl that was staring at me on the other side."
She spoke about her battle to build strength and character in the face of demographic statistics predicting that she would become an American Indian failure.
She spoke about her transitioning into womanhood with a renewed sense of direction and ethnic pride.
She spoke about how her mother, the director of the Red Lake Head Start center, taught her to keep her head up high, look at herself in a positive light and take pride in her culture.
And when the crowds of children and students asking for her autograph dissipated, she spoke about her involvement in Red Lake's recovery efforts after the March 21 school killings that shook the reservation.
"Personally it was really emotional," said Smith, who teaches four- and five-year-olds at the Head Start Center. "I knew some of the victims."
Smith said that Miss Indian World donated money to the families of the victims on her behalf.
The National Head Start also donated food for spiritual dishes, a Native American funeral offering.
"Before you eat, you put small pieces of food on a plate and you put it out there for the loved ones that have passed on so they have some food as they go into the spirit world," she said.
Smith said she knew three of the shooting victims. She said she was devastated for the families of the teens she knew and for her co-workers who lost family members in the tragedy.
"We were listening to it on the bus radio as it was happening," she said, stopping for a moment to regain her speech.
"We heard the students call for help over the bus radio," she said. "I felt hopeless."
New dream
That frustration has turned into hope and a new dream, she said.
At the pageant last April, Smith won the audience's heart with a skillful animation of the dream catcher history, but it was her commitment to reinforcing true native American values to the new generation what won her the Miss Indian World crown, she said.
Her reign ends April 30 at the Gathering of Nations powwow in Albuquerque, N.M.
Smith has arranged for her students and some of their family members to take a 24-hour bus ride to Albuquerque to witness the event.
Her sister is making new costumes for all of the children. She said she wants to have them on stage with her as she hands down the crown to the upcoming queen because she wants them to know that "if they hold on to their dreams, chances are they'll come true."
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