Charolette Rae Sage, age 15

Pinon, AZ

I go to the School for the Deaf and Blind in Tucson... I came down from the Navajo reservation to learn about different cultures... On the reservation, everybody's so prejudiced against white kids or other kids who don't look Navajo. They judge you by the color of your skin, so that's why I came down here, because I didn't like that. Because my skin's lighter than theirs... I was born with Albinism, a gene from my parents that was passed down to me.

I don't get along so well with my parents. Because my world and my parent's world—it's like me against them. I have my own little world; they have their own little world. My parents are strict. And I look at things from a different point of view than they do, so... There's always something wrong in a family. People will hide that they have—like, I hide a lot of things that I won't tell people, the things that go wrong in my family. There's people that fight, people that drink, people that take drugs. There's no such thing as a perfect family.

My eye moves on its own – I mean, I don't make it move. I wish I could make it move by myself. It moves around, then people think I'm moving my eyes and they think that I can't see them. But I can see them really clear... It's like I can't see really far distance like the other people can. I have to look at things a little bit closer than most people do... People always wonder if I'm colorblind. I say, "If I were colorblind I wouldn't be wearing matching clothes to school!"

At our school there's never been a girl that played football... I'm visually impaired and all the boys are deaf and we have to sign together and it's hard, but I've had to communicate and have patience with the deaf kids and they've had to have patience with me. So, they encourage me. I encourage them back and we work as a football team. Like, they say that we're all brothers, even though I'm a girl.... when they see my hair long, and then the football helmet over it, they give me more of a challenge, like they know they can easily tackle me 'cause I'm a girl. I play with the boys.... don't mess with me!

I believe in God, Jesus. Then in my own culture, which I believe in too, I believe in spirits and Mother Earth... one I pray in Navajo and one I pray in English. In Navajo I'm speaking more to Mother Earth, the moon, the sun, the sky... I pray for basically the same thing, but sometimes I think one does more than the other. I realize that I get more response on the Navajo side than on the other.

There's so many problems in the world... It would be better if people would just get along or something. Like if Bin Laden and George Bush would get along or something like that. People in all different countries should all get along. They still live in one world.

At school here sometimes I speak my own language, Navajo. Sometimes the school doesn't like it. This year... if they tell me not to speak my language, I'm just going to tell them to talk to my lawyer. This is a free country and you can speak your own language if you want to!