Wichita ? A Wichita State University student has been crowned Miss Indian Nations and plans to use the title to help youths balance their lives in Indian and non-Indian cultures.

“Monday through Friday, I’m a school student at WSU,” said Ponka-We Victors. “Friday to Monday, I’m in my traditional clothes, speaking my own language and eating my own food.”

Firsthand accounts of life in the Chuichu Village of the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona and elsewhere motivated her, she said.

“Even though they were surrounded by their own people, they lost a sense of who they were,” said Victors, 25, of Indian youths. “Therefore, they turned to drugs, alcohol and suicide.”

She said reaching out to the young will be a main purpose of her tenure as Miss Indian Nations.

“If I can just motivate a child out there, or somebody that’s really depressed to get them help, then I think … I did my job as a goodwill ambassador for all Indian nations.”

Ponka-We Victors, 25, a Wichita State University student, was crowned Miss Indian Nations last weekend in Bismark, N.D. She plans to use the title to help youths balance their lives in Indian and non-Indian cultures.

Victors is the 14th Miss Indian Nations. The contest is coordinated by the United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, N.D. Besides the title, Victors earned about $3,000 for her studies.

Her English name is Jessica, but she prefers the name Ponka-We, honoring her mother’s roots in the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma. The culture she lives also draws on her father’s Tohono O’odham Nation roots.

Victors said she would also like to encourage Congress to improve the federally funded Indian health care system that serves a large number of the uninsured. She was motivated in 2005 as she sat in a congressional hearing watching lawmakers discuss cutting funding for Indian health care services.

“I saw the lack of representation of Native Americans there on the Hill, and they’re supposed to be making decisions for us?” Victors said. “Most of them have never been on a reservation.”

Victors earned a biology degree from Newman University in Wichita in 2005. She’s working on a master’s degree in public administration with an emphasis in policy at Wichita State.

“We’re educated,” she said of Indian women. “We’ve got goals and plans. … and a vision for our Indian people.”