Poverty-fighting friar speaks at Haskell

A retired Capuchin Franciscan friar who spent 50 years fighting poverty on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in southeast Montana had some plainspoken advice for Haskell Indian Nations University students Monday.

Rev. Emmett Hoffman

“To get whatever you want in life, you have to be willing to take chances and to think outside the box,” said the Rev. Emmett Hoffmann, speaking with a group of about 35 Haskell students, staff and alumni at the university’s Cultural Center and Museum.

Hoffmann will address a similar gathering at 3 p.m. today at the Haskell Library. The session is open to the public.

“I think it’s awesome that he’s here,” said Courage Elk Shoulder, a Haskell sophomore who graduated from the St. Labre Mission school that Hoffmann started in the mid-1950s.

Hoffmann, 78, urged the students to realize that the worst thing about poverty is not the lack of money, it’s “having to live without hope.”