Through its teacher education program, Turtle Mountain Community College (TMCC) is meeting the Anishinaabe of North Dakota's educational needs, strengthening tribal sovereignty and self-determination, and positively affecting people's lives. Pivotal to the success of the teacher education program are strongly committed faculty, supportive staff, and the cohort model learning community that TMCC employs. Students compare the model to a family which is unified in purpose and spirit. Perhaps the best measure of how the college's teacher education program is positively affecting the Turtle Mountain reservation and its community can be summed up in this student's comment: "This program has changed my life in an incredibly positive way. It has offered [an opportunity] where there was none."