By Bill Loftus
Photos by Mark LaMoreaux
As a first grader growing up in the middle of the Navajo
reservation, Rudy Shebala could track his horse for miles, even through
cattle or horse herds, by studying distinguishing hoof marks. At high noon, he
loved to ride as fast as the wind, reveling in the sweat, smells, feel, and speed.
In the third grade he was sent away to school. “When I got homesick, I’d buy horse magazines and bury myself in them.”
By the 1990s Shebala had gained national stature when he led the Nez Perce Tribe’s horsemanship program, including an effort to breed again Appaloosas similar to ones the Nez Perce owned when Lewis and Clark met them.
Today Shebala is on the threshold of being the first Native American in at least 20 years to earn his bachelor’s in animal science from the UI. In hot pursuit is his daughter Lautiss, a pre-vet sophomore, first photographed on horseback at age 6 months. Another daughter, Timena, is a senior at Moscow High.
Rudy Shebala’s USDA multicultural scholarship helped make it possible. When first invited to apply for the MSP scholarship, he thought, “Wouldn’t that be something!.” Even more important to him than time to study without financial worries was that the University of Idaho thought he was a worthwhile investment. “We all think we’d like to do something, but sometimes it takes other people to say, ‘Yes, you can!’”
While Shebala has always known horses, he’s now learning “how much I didn’t know, things like genetics and breeding formulas,” he said, taking a break from working with horses at the university’s Northwest Equine Reproduction Laboratory.
Initially Shebala thought a bachelor’s degree would be it. “But now I see I still have so much to learn,” which is why his latest goals include earning both master’s and doctoral degrees. His long-term goal is to help lead a restoration of the western way of life focused on a traditional agricultural foundation, especially among Native American people.
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