Robert Marley (Cherokee-Osage)

If Robert Marley remembers one thing most about his grandfater, it was the belief he held that everything in the world has a purpose. All things, including the land and animals, have a reason for being, he thought; and his grandson, who is now forty-one and an elementary school physical education teacher, didn't remember the lesson until years later.

"I guess I never fully understood what he meant," he says, "until I became more active with the Center." Philosophies of the Native American are continually discussed there, and the resulting awareness can only mean, for Indians like Bob Marley, a better way of understanding their ancestral roots. "It's simply renewed my own sense of being," he says.