On November 22, 2006, Tricia Cruise, SC, a former eight-year resident of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, a Lakota Sioux Reservation, spoke to English Professor Pat Cruise’s Composition II class to help celebrate Native American Month at RWC. The students had read pieces from both fiction and non-fiction Indian literature, among other selections, for the course. As Sister Tricia explained to the class, the Lakotas prefer to be called “Indian.” Sister Tricia, who is the daughter of Professor Cruise as well as RWC Adjunct Business Professor Frank Cruise, revealed to the class what life was like among the tribe who experience appallingly poor economic conditions. She also explained about the high incidence of poor health, alcoholism, and drug use on the reservation.
Nonetheless, she explained, as among all peoples, hope springs for the children, as their parents, usually single mothers, send them to Red Cloud Schools, one of the two private schools on the reservation. Red Cloud astonishingly graduates approximately ninety-five percent of its high school students, while many of them are now attending colleges, especially in the Midwest. In contrast, the local government school graduates about thirty-five percent of its student body.
During her work on the reservation, Sister Tricia was first Director of Development and then Vice-president and President Pro-Tem of the three Red Cloud schools and sixteen-parish system. Essentially, she traveled the country raising funds from thousands of benefactors who keep the organization viable.
She is now president and CEO of Covenant House, the largest child care organization in the Americas, with shelters for teens throughout the USA, Canada, and Central America. Once again, she frequently is flying to dozens of locations to beg for her minorities: Hispanics, African-Americans, and the Inuit. Covenant House was and is still a beacon which never closed during the New Orleans Hurricane.