Jacqui Giago ’08
Passionate about changing Native education, Jacqui Giago ’08 returns to Our Lady of Lourdes this year as a first and second grade teacher in Lakȟóta language immersion. She loves building lessons off what her students want to learn and seeing their “aha” moments.
“Having native teachers — someone who looks like you as a teacher — has a huge impact on kids. It’s one of the big reasons I wanted to become a teacher.”
Ashley Pourier ’08
Ashley Pourier ’08, whose paid internship after college catapulted her into curatorial training at the Heritage Center, loves the “rabbit holes” her research takes her down now as curator — the twists and turns of unraveling the stories behind the Indigenous artifacts she collects and the permanent collection she maintains. For answers, she turns to scholars, the center’s resource library and reservation community members.
“I get to explore these questions: How do we clean feathered headdresses? How did the Plains people design hair bone breastplates with perfectly cylindrical shapes? How did nomadic tribes even travel wearing these heavy breastplates?”
Marsha Tibbitts ’81
Marsha Tibbitts ’81, a former class president and basketball player who rejoined Red Cloud in 2019 as Sacred Heart Church’s community outreach minister, kept the church’s community meals going and the food pantry stocked during the pandemic to get supplies to people when they needed them most.
“God helped me get through so many trials in my life. It makes me happy to help these people and give them what they don’t have.”