Felix Valencia is a senior at City High School, a charter school located in Downtown Tucson, where by all accounts he’s a gifted and promising student. Teachers, mentors, and acquaintances recognize in him the potential to accomplish many great things and he has no shortage of options when it comes to pursuing a college education.

However, he struggles with the idea of continuing with school, and he questions whether the university is really the right place for him. “My family is Yaqui, and being Indian has always been a part of who I am,” he says in a radio essay produced for Voices, Community Stories Past and Present ". Being Indian and a member of the Pascua Yaqui Reservation, means that according to census statistics. he has less than a two percent chance of obtaining a college education by the time he reaches 25 years of age.

This unfortunate legacy is not lost on Felix, and he shares with us in this story his struggle to make the right choice. Katie Johnson also recognizes that the odds are not in Felix’s favor. She is the writing director at Voices and she says, “it needs to be clear to Felix that his experience is not a deficit in the college environment.” She tells him “his experience in the reservation is not something the he needs to negotiate and forget.” However, it is this lesson that is perhaps the most difficult one to learn.

Felix is lucky in the fact that he has a place to express his thoughts. It’s with the guidance of mentors like Katie Johnson from Voices, and teachers and staff from City High, that he’s been able to express the conflict that he feels, and to carefully consider his options. He also recognizes that many young people from Pascua do not make it to the point that he now finds himself in.

Story by Luis Carrión