An Interview with Dr. Darryl Tonemah

TC:  It's really interesting to me that you have so many degrees. Could you tell me about that, and perhaps the students that are reading this?

DT:  Education was always emphasized in my family. It was emphasized to my parents when they were young, and they emphasized it to me. Growing up I knew that I was going to go to college. And then when I got to college, I realized how much I liked learning. There's so much information, there's, so much to know. When I was about a sophomore in high school I knew I that I wanted to be a psychologist. My decision was influenced by the community that I was in. I saw a lot of hurt and un-wellness in the community. I didn't know these words at that time, but that's what it was. I talked to my dad about it. I talked about social work and he said there's a lot of paperwork in social work, and I'm not very good at paperwork, so we talked more about it. It ended up I was leaning toward psychology because I wanted to work with people at an interpersonal level. I believe that elders are a great resource for Native people so gerontology was a good fit with my psychology degree. I was also interested in sociology, which is the study of groups, cultural groups. I probably would have ended up having about five majors because so many things interested me, but I had to leave at some point. I wanted to continue my education, it was just a matter of where I wanted going to go, and would they take me. I went to Oklahoma for my masters and Nebraska for my Ph.D. Like I said I have always liked the process of learning and the moment of discovery. That "AH-HA!" moment. You kind of muddle through the process, and there's a moment where the light clicks on, and that's a great moment. I would like Indian young people to experience a lot of those moments. That's why I am here this weekend because it's an opportunity for them to say "Yeah, I didn't know that was out there!" and that light clicks on for them. That's a cool moment.

TC:  You have three different bachelors degrees. Did you work on them simultaneously?

DT:  Yes, same college. It was simple because they were closely related. Some of the classes overlapped. So I could take some overlapping classes, and then just went an extra year.