Miss Blackfeet goes to Stanford

Class of 2012: Miss Blackfeet, bound for Stanford, hopes to inspire other Indian girls

By Chelsi MoyAs a seventh-grader, Sharen Kicking Woman remembers watching the crowning of Miss Blackfeet during Browning’s North American Indian Days in awe and amazement.

“She was a student at Duke (University),” Kicking Woman said. “I never thought real people went to these schools.”

Now, as the reigning 2011 Miss Blackfeet and a Loyola Sacred Heart High School graduate bound for Stanford University in the fall, Kicking Woman hopes that she, too, can inspire the next generation of Indian girls.

“If I can inspire one person to go for it, I’ve done my job,” said the 17-year-old Missoula native.Comment:  For more on beauty pageants, see Transgendered Native as Civil Rights Champion and Yakama Woman on Survivor: South Pacific.

Below:  "Sharen Kicking Woman, graduate of Loyola Sacred Heart High School and 2011 Miss Blackfeet, will be going to Stanford University in the fall on a full-ride scholarship, thanks to the Gates Millennium Scholars Program. Kicking Woman figures she’s ready to live away from Montana, having served as a U.S. Senate page last year in Washington, D.C." (Tom Bauer/Missoulian)