All children residing in the United States have the right to a quality education. At least that is our collective expectation. Through the lived experience of Yuli, a Native American woman from the Southwest, you will discover, due to her birth on a remote reservation, she was not given the same access to education you or I would expect. On Yuli’s reservation, the school system is managed by the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE). Rather than provide K-12 schooling, the BIE operates K-8 on her reservation and then Native youth who want to go to high school must move off-reservation. This qualitative study focuses on Yuli’s experience as she traversed the educational system offered to her in order to complete eighth grade, earn her high school diploma and be accepted to college. Her narrative gives insight into what she lost, personally and culturally, as a result of the operational delinquency of a United States of America government agency tasked with one duty, providing an adequate, quality education to Indigenous youth across America. This study explores Yuli’s story, educational inopportunity, and the cultural impact of leaving the reservation to attain an education.