First Lady Michelle Obama delivered one of her final commencement speeches to the Santa Fe Indian School Thursday.
Obama touched on the background of the school, the background of her own family and how it will inform the future of the graduates.
“I heard that when you were first brainstorming about who to invite to your commencement and someone suggested me or my husband, some of you thought that that was an impossible dream, that it just wasn’t realistic to think that people like us would ever visit a school like yours,” Obama said. “Well, today, I want you to know that there is nowhere I would rather be than right here with all of you.”
She did not shy away from the history of the school and what its early years represented.
“As we all know, this school was founded as part of a deliberate, systematic effort to extinguish your culture; to literally annihilate who you were and what you believed in,” she said. “But look at you today. The Native languages that were once strictly forbidden here now echo through hallways and in your dorm room conversations at night.”
Watch the full speech below, as uploaded by the Santa Fe New Mexican. Or you can read the full transcript, as provided by the White House, here.
