By Susan Gallagher

Look around Loyola Sacred Heart High School in Missoula and you’re apt to see signs, in the language of the Blackfeet Tribe, that say a lot about the attitude of freshman Leo Bird.

“Il-A-ka-Ki-Mat” roughly translates to “do your best.”

Teachers say doing his high-achieving best describes Leo’s time at Loyola since he traveled the 225 miles from the Blackfeet Reservation’s hub of Browning to Missoula last fall, moved in with a host family and began studies that will prepare him to enter college in 2013. Academically strong after middle-school years at Browning’s De La Salle Blackfeet School, 15-year-old Leo has excelled while dealing with cultural transitions, and with homesickness that he can soften but not suppress.

“I consider myself an ambitious person and I want to meet my goals,” he said in an interview. “My Mom heard (Loyola) was a good school and she thought I should try it.”

That Loyola is both college preparatory and Catholic was a big draw, said Leo, who was confirmed by Bishop George Leo Thomas last year at Little Flower Parish in Browning, the Bird family’s home parish.

Loyola’s location is another plus. Leo anticipates attending an urban college and expects that being in Missoula for high school will ease that passage 3 ½ years from now. Missoula’s estimated population of 68,200 is about six times that of the entire Blackfeet reservation.

This is the first academic year that a student from De La Salle has been at Loyola, said Jeremy Beck, principal at the diocesan high school. “We’d love to begin a tradition of having high school kids come here (from De La Salle) to continue their Catholic education,” Beck said.

Father Ed Kohler of Little Flower Parish said he finds Leo “a very talented, smart individual” and “I am thrilled that he’s going to Loyola.” Father Kohler is a 1964 graduate of the school, which now has an enrollment of 206, offers 17 honors and Advanced Placement courses and includes volunteer service as a graduation requirement. Loyola reports that 97 percent of its graduates advance to higher education.

Leo enrolled in the fall at about the same time as a Blackfeet student who later withdrew. The start of the spring semester in January brought the enrollment of a third Blackfeet student, De La Salle alumnus Juddson Reevis, who had heard about the experiences of friend Leo.

De La Salle encourages students to apply for Loyola admission “if this is something they want and it’s feasible,” said Brother Paul Ackerman, president of the school that the De La Salle Christian Brothers operate for children in grades 4-8. Ability to handle life away from home is a big part of the feasibility. On the financial side, money from the U.S. Catholic Church’s Black and Indian Mission Office will be of assistance in some cases, Brother Ackerman said.

Leo said he is adapting to life as a member of a minority group in Missoula after years among the American Indian majority in Browning, and has settled into the city’s pace. He now has friends in Missoula but “found it hard to make friends at first, because I didn’t know how to make them laugh. On the reservation, we talk a lot about memories of past things. We can talk about that forever. Here, you need to come up with new material to keep things going.”

He is extremely well liked in the Loyola family, teachers said, and was in the homecoming royalty court last fall. He lives with Brad and Wendy Reid and their two children, one a fellow student at the high school.

In class, Leo “asks questions that are outside the box and demonstrate his desire to learn,” said Loyola history teacher Dave Klein. “He has that critical thinking that we look for.” He has had the benefit of a supportive home life, added Brother Ackerman at De La Salle.

Leo’s parents are Emorie Davis Bird, the planning and development director for the Blackfeet Tribe, and Leo Bird Jr., a chemistry teacher at Browning High School.

“I miss him,” the father said. But he said he and his wife already see effects of the Loyola education, and want Leo to get the academic preparation expected by the top-tier colleges he talks about attending.

“He’s always tested really high,” said Leo Bird Jr. “I’d like to see him have opportunities. There’s no door right now that’s closed for him, as far as I can see.”

Leo, born the third of four children in his family, said he expects that the homesickness he feels daily will diminish, but not go away. There were a couple of times when it swelled to the point that “I felt like quitting and going home,” he said, adding that “you don’t really know how much you appreciate home until you’re not there.”

He is prayerful and finds strength through his faith. He and his parents talk by phone frequently, he goes to Browning as often as several times in a month and his family has traveled to see him in Missoula and at speech tournaments. Leo took fourth place in expository speaking at the state Class B speech and debate tournament Jan. 29-30 at the University of Montana.

“He brings the right work ethic and he has a tremendous voice, very self-assured,” said Matt Stergios, the coach whose Loyola team won the state Class B championship, the school’s 27th in a row. “He’s very coachable, open to new ideas, very, very motivated. I didn’t have to remind him to get things done.”

Leo said his ability as a speaker increased when he was a young boy at the Blackfeet language immersion school in Browning. At Loyola he studies Spanish and said he enjoys the language classes immensely, but remains inclined toward math and science. His takes honors courses in both and wonders if his calling may lie in the medical field.

For now, he’s motoring through his freshman year with “Il-A-ka-Ki-Mat” as one of the tenets that serve him well. The signs at the school went up to further spread the do-your-best message evident daily in Leo’s behavior, said teacher Klein, who uses seven words to summarize his student’s attitude toward learning at Loyola: “Wow! I love it. Give me more.”


Hear Leo in his own words here.


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 26, No. 3, March 19, 2010.