In this grim political season, I heard a story from my friend Susan Sekaquaptewa who's Hopi. Her home in northern Arizona belongs more to the 16th century than the 21st. There you drive two hours over open desert to get basic groceries. Ancient dwellings made of stone and mud sit perched on far flung mesas.
And things are old. Hopi society had been thriving for 800 years before the Puritans set foot in Plymouth. They don't need to be told who qualifies to be an American.
One recent morning Susan was driving her boy Atokhoya to school. Six years old, he wanted to know where he would go after elementary school and Susan explained that next was junior high, then high school.
"Then I go to college?" Atokhoya asked.
"Yup," his mom answered. She and her husband had been speaking to their son for years about college. But in their world few people go on to higher education. In that forgotten corner of America the outside world and fancy careers feel as remote as the moon.