Below is my brief conclusion to The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue (2012), a book that I co-edited with Oregon State University Press. The conclusion, titled “An Open Vault,” recalls my experience as a graduate student at UC Riverside conducting research at the Sherman Indian Museum in Riverside, CA.

As I reflect on the power and capabilities of Artificial Intelligence, a topic dominating today’s news and social media, I am reminded of the importance of our personal stories and voices, which cannot be created truthfully or accurately by programs such as ChatGPT, Grok, and many others.

“Tell your story,” I often say to my students, “nobody can tell it but you.”

I hope people enjoy reading the following story (click image), written before most of us knew anything about this phenomenon called “AI.”