On the day we left campus, I woke up at 4 in the morning to get ready. I was excited and cranky at the same time. I was worried about not using any of my electronic devices for the two days but once I got there, it felt as though I was at home in a different environment. Although it doesn’t make sense in what my emotions attachment to that place was, it was an incredible experience. When I heard we are doing some abalone pendants, it reminded me of my great uncle. He does those pendents so impeccably that if attempted to duplicate, it will come out differently than the actual product. I don’t know how many times he’s done those magnificent pieces of tapestry but he seems as though he’s done it thousands after thousands of times. There are no words to describe my attempt into doing those pendent except terrible. My piece seem as though they were scribbled on there by my baby brother. Maybe Joel could even do better than me. I don’t mean to criticize myself but Id rather be honest to myself. I tip my off to you Uncle Ervin. (If that is, you’re reading this)
During a ceremony, Montie made an eloquent speech of this world’s turn to becoming more modern. There are barely any people that actually respect the environment and habitats of animals. Sure there are people that make some sort of an effort into making the world healthier and a better place to live in but our airs are still polluted and animals’ habitats being destroyed by lack of water and fires and demolition for commands of more housing and so on. There are various of things people can change to make things slow down but the damage has been done and the Earth has been affected devastatingly enough. That little inspirational speech made me realize the reality of this sort of thing but that doesn’t mean our culture can die along with this event. We can still keep out Native culture alive and stop dwelling on the past.
I love last night’s story telling because no matter how much Montie tried to make his story seem scary and true, most of us were laughing…. especially me. I didn’t find any of those stories scary except Pedro’s if he actually told the scary version. He thought the details of contents were too “scary” for all of us. Oh well.
nativeyouth2college.org 