Growing up in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, I had a wonderful life, one that I have not experienced anywhere since, even after living in nine countries.

One of my fondest memories growing up in Rwanda was seeing everyone participating in community-building activities. This happened every Saturday at the end of month. People work together in cleaning streets, planting trees, and take care of each other by facilitating productive conversations and actions that are beneficial for the society.

As a child growing up in refugee camps, life taught me that many things were impossible. My older sister, Claire, taught me otherwise when her strength and resilience made the impossible possible in the way she worked, behaved, and took control of our lives.

Growing up, many of us are taught to place limits on what we can accomplish while on earth. We tend to think of things in binary form: either as possible or, more frequently, impossible.

Last year, I twice voted against the Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations bill because it did not adequately fund education in general, and Native American programs specifically.

There's a big difference between France and the U.S. In the U.S., immigrants must work to live. In France, they're taken care of by public finances. In France, there are millions of unemployed people already. We cannot house them, give them health care, education... finance people who keep coming and coming.

As early as 1681-82, a group of Abenakis had accompanied the French explorer La Salle on his historic voyage down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. By 1700, many Abenaki and Iroquois Indians spoke French and had some European education, and some were literate in French and Latin.

Yes, I learned history at school; I know everything about apartheid. My dad, he bought the books about it, stuff like that. But I just move on with my life. It's completely different for me.