Nicole Pelt is on track to be the first person in her family to graduate college.

The 20-year-old Diné student is in her senior year at the University of New Mexico’s Albuquerque campus. She chose Native American Studies as a major because she wanted to learn about potential solutions to the impacts of colonization, like a widespread lack of clean, running water on the Navajo Nation.

“It means everything to me to get a degree,” Pelt said, adding that her mom enrolled in college but didn’t graduate because caring for Pelt and her sister and attending classes and studying became unmanageable. “Everything I do here at UNM, it’s not just for me. It’s also for my family.”

Her plan is to become a teacher, possibly at a local tribal school, and earn a master’s degree, most likely in Indigenous education.

But she almost didn’t make it.

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