Appalachian Studies and the Native Student: Resource or Refuge?

Appalachian Studies and the Native Student: Resource or Refuge? by Ricky Cox Originally, I had intended this paper to be an overview, a kind of survey of native Appalachian students' reactions to and attitudes about Appalachian Studies courses. I wrestled with this for a couple of months and found myself faced with a common problem in Appalachian Studies or any study involving people. I found myself trying to classify, to group, to stereotype Appalachian students. It is difficult and, I think, unwise to attempt to identify the typical Appalachian student, just as it is hard to find that average American family with 1.8 children. What I've finally arrived at is more of a personal view of Appalachian Studies. While I believe that some of the ideas and feelings expressed here will have meaning for some of you, I do not claim that they apply to all native students or to any except myself. I grew up in Floyd County, Virginia, about sixty miles west of Roanoke, on the eastern edge of Appalachia, and I go to school. In my half-hearted search for the typical native student I decided that I am most definitely not this elusive person. I was twenty-six when I began attending Radford University full-time as a history major, so am subject to the condition quoted by Cratis Williams in describing 32 Appalachian people, "...when one chances to leave for the outside world before his personality has become set in the mold of his culture he is likely to climb far." (Williams p. 498) I'm afraid I've waited too long. Maybe I am set in my ways and perhaps my perceptions and expectations of Appalachian Studies have been colored by the ambivalence demonstrated by my late arrival. I came back to school because I felt I had missed something and I knew if I did not come back I would always regret it. Still, it was a struggle, giving up my job and trying to explain to family and friends what I was doing. I suppose they thought it was a mid-life crisis twenty years early. I did finally make the commitment but not without a lot of self-doubt. Consequently, I think that my involvement with Appalachian Studies has been, in part, an attempt to reconcile the two very different environments of school and work. Now, let me tell you a little about Appalachian Studies and a native student. You may notice a few we's and our's thrown in for variety, but I have no real right to use them. I hope, though, that some of you can accept them and maybe even feel a part of the I's and me's that appear far too often. I suppose the proper way to go about answering the question posed in the title of this paper is to examine each alternative closely, weigh their relative merits, pull everything together, and then tell you in the last paragraph that I still don't have an answer. However, I can see far enough ahead to say now that there is an answer. Appalachian Studies is both a resource and a refuge for the native student. It is a means for the native student to get around the old apples and oranges problem. It offers a way to compare lifestyles that revolve around two different concepts of success. I will attempt no definition of this difference but I will offer as an example what I consider to be the most visible and painful conflict experienced by those of us who are at least exploring the possibility of seeking our fortunes in the wide world: To go or to stay? It seems sort of senseless to spend time and money preparing yourself for a career that will never be pursued if doing so means moving beyond easy driving distance of home. I like to think that education is valuable and desirable for its own sake, but the fact remains that people expect us to "do something with" an education and we expect the same of ourselves. We feel pressured by the mainstream notion that we must reach our fullest potential and...