Author: jassonmurgo

Today was a really fun day! I woke up really tired, I did not want to wake up at all. I knew we were going to have danza with Vicente and I didn’t want to move my legs. Something about him always motivates me to participate. We ended up doing danza for about 30 min or so. It was fun doing danza again so thank you Vicente for reminding about my culture. Then we had Shelva’s last class. It was really fun writing my essay, even though I kinda hate writing. Shelve makes it fun and she is just so nice. Sometimes she screams at us and she’s really scary, but she has to do what she has to do. She deserves all the respect possible so thank you Shelva for making me write an essay I wouldn’t of done. Then I had Vicente’s class, which is always my favorite. The Nepohualtzinzin is just so awesome to use. Im’a go back home and school to show everyone my knowledge. Today we played the board game patoli and it is really fun! Never knew our ancestors had such fun board games. I also have to keep in mind this game is sacred just like the Nepohualtzinzin. So I thank you again Vicente Candonache for showing and spreading your knowledge to this group and spending your time with us.

Today I got to sleep in for one day! I am sad we didn’t have indigenous games, but everyone needed the rest. I woke up with more energy than usual so thats a good start! I enjoyed the writing class today because I got to elaborate on my ideas and actually start on my essay. I am excited to see my final product. Its not easy to write about a theory and philosophy so I need all the help I can get. Lucky, my mentors got my back! Thanks if you read. The hardest part is fitting my ideas and stories to a small paper. On the positive side, I shouldn’t be struggling with ideas, but just organization. I feel like my essay is unique and thats how it should be.

I really liked the talk with Joshua Hathaway. I knew some of the concepts he spoke about, but I am really grateful that he elaborated more on them. He spoke about the religion of Christianity and it got me thinking. Do the people who follow Christianity know about their history? If so, why do they continue? I don’t judge religions or will tell anyone to stop their religion, but I want to know why. Its a religion that was brought form Europe and was spread through genocide and assimilation. Many indigenous people died because these European idiots said it was the right they had from god and their religion. He also said something that hit me hard, considering I am catholic and indigenous. I took no offense just to clarify, it just got me to think. He said that it wasn’t the man Jesus Christ to die for us, it was our ancestors. That got me to think about my beliefs.

Wishtoyo:

Wishtoyo is always an amazing experience. I learn so much about tradition and culture. Like always, the Wishtoyo village welcomed us with a song. I forgot how it went, but I remember it was pretty cool. During these three days, we cooperated with each other in every way, except the dishes. For some reason nobody wanted to the the dishes. I learned a few songs here and there, but I can’t take too much knowledge so I forgot some stuff. My favorite experience at Wishtoyo was the sweat. In the beginning, I didn’t think it would be too hard and I almost died (Not literally). I don’t know how hot it was in there, but I didn’t matter because the hotter the better. I got to bond with my brothers in a very special way. I can talk more about this, but I want to respect the experiences and events that happened in there, whatever happened at the sweat stays in the sweat. Still can’t believe I was at Wishtoyo’s first sweat! It a really huge honor to be there with such amazing people, especially Mati and Luhui for making all of the Wishtoyo experience possible. I wanted to thank all the elders that were there, they taught us many things. I like how they didn’t really repeat the thing we did last year, but instead they had new activities for us prepared. My favorite activity was surfing. It was my first time surfing and I don’t want to brag, but I’m kind of a pro (Besides the fact I fell like 5 times). I also want to thank the cooks for making such awesome food. My favorite was the little macaroni thing that was in the huge bowl. It was so amazing I wanted a third bowl! Anyways Wishtoyo has taught me so much in terms of traaditio  and the ways of our people. It also gave me a bad sunburn behind my neck and back, but it doesn’t matter because every once in a while now it reminds me of what happened at Wishtoyo.

After Wishtoyo:

Yesterday when we came back from Wishtoyo, there was a class of music scoring for films and video games. This was one of the best ones. The guy Ben Florio was really awesome. He really made me think more about the films and video games. I never really noticed the music behind these things, I just kind of thought they were thrown in there. In reality, there is a place for every string, drum, or flute. Its all about timing. He also used one of my favorite scenes from One Punch Man, an anime, as an example for his class. I also had a good laugh while he played the scene of Harry Potter when Dobby died. He’s such a funny elf! Then today, Indigenous games was really fun. I hardly ever want to wake up for indigenous games because I am not a morning person, but whenever I am there, he finds a way to wake me up and keep me energized. We played the game called Flower Wars where we had to capture the staff from the person holding it. There was a lot of running involved in that exercise and I love running. It is one of my greatest talents. After that, we did the common applications workshop with Shelva, but I don’t know what happened so the seniors were sent off to another activity to learn about college admissions through the common application. Then I ended the day with a good talk with my homie Vicente, the creator himself. He told us story and he showed us the medicine here at the college.

Today was a really productive day, especially the whole morning. The morning was pretty intense with all the Shelva classes. Since I came last year, I didn’t have to create a common application so instead I brainstormed on my essay for the application. I feel like my topic can either be really good or really dumb. My prompt said to write about an idea i’ve challenged in the passed or just talked about. I made mine about the idea of existing. First I was just going to talk about me and the different ideas of existing, while also talking about what shaped my beliefs, but I connected it to something else today. During Shelva’s class, she showed us a video that said some people did not know native people existed. That is what made me choose my topic. I want to talk about this issue in my essay. What is it to exist? How do you get recognized? What can the indigenous people do to exist or just anybody? If it is about doing something extraordinary or being something important, what can I do to exists? In a few 100 years, you won’t be remembered, so will you exist? The only way you can get remembered is if you were important. I also saw the connection with this in the Nepohualtzinzin. The Nepohualtzinzin would’ve been forgotten and wouldn’t of existed, but technically it did. It just wouldn’t because we won’t remember it. Anyways I think you get the point.

Something we did today that connects me to my own personal story is the Nepohualtzinzin. I love math and just the idea of the Nepohualtzinzin is amazing. I feel like this Nepo is just improving my math skills which will help me later for engineering, which is what I want to do. The Nepohualtzinzin is also part of my childhood because I’ve been at the same school for years. We’ve always been taught to count the Nepo, but in 3 days I learned more than what I learned in 12 years! This will also help me with my programming. Ive been trying to program a Nepohualtzinzin  for the past year. I did this for my personal project last year. Its an honor having vincente around, he has so much knowledge, he is probably the creator himself.

So far I feel very comfortable with my peers.I am really glad we were able to talk in a group about very intense topics. Everybody in the group is very mature and took everything really well. I feel in a safe place when I speak, just as everybody else. After the activity with Elder Gary, I took some time to reflect. Everything that happened in the past is really traumatic and I can now see the effects of those events. We talked about personally issues or events that had happened in this activity and that really helped the group toped up to each other. The atmosphere was intense, mostly everyone was crying. When I talked I was nervous, but something about the room made me speak up and talk. Maybe it was the positive energy within my group.

Before all that, we had indigenous games in the morning. It was really fun to spar with each other. Even though I lost most of my games, it was still really fun and interesting. Many people last, but I really liked how everyone took the L in a nice way. I think we do a really job at following instructions and meeting our goals. We ave gone over discipline and unity. So far, we have achieved those goals. We practice discipline within the practice of indigenous games and I can see unit outside of the indigenous games.

My favorite part of these two day was making my necklace. I have always wanted an indigenous necklace with a meaning, but they are all too expensive. Now that I made one for free, I can say it has a lot of meaning considering that I made it and how. I made a healing bear necklace, which represents me in a way because I like to help others and help them with their healing. First I got a rock with the drawing of the healing bear. There was no more tools to scrape the rock so I got a really small one. It took a while to carve part of the bear, but luckily my friend Tekpatl let me barrow with big tool for scraping and I made some decant scraping. Then when I got the outline of the bear, I needed to do the gap between the legs. I had to be really carful so I took my time. After I was done, I starting scrapping sand paper on my bear to make it smooth. I later began to use it on the sharp edges so I can give it some curves. Finally, elder Julia put oil on my bear to make it shiny and smoother. That was my process.

This is my second year doing native youth 2 college program and there are many new faces. So far I feel like I’ve known these people for a long time and feel very comfortable. I’m here because I really enjoyed last year and wanted to experience this amazing program again. The part that I am really exited for is Wishtoyo. I really loved to be at Wishtoyo because I feel like I connected with many people, especially with my piers. Wishtoyo overall was an overall good experience and Would do over and over again. I am honestly not nervous about anything. Actually I know we are going to surf so I am nervous about that. For the next two weeks, I hope to have really good relationships with my piers and mentors. I also hope to learn a little more about myself in terms of my culture and other culture. I am going to try to be open minded with the topics and everybody. My mentor is Belmont and he was actually my mentor last year. We know each other really well. I consider him my friend and a person I can share my thoughts with. Hopefully we can do more stuff with Belmont, such as activities. My favorite part of the day was making clapping stocks. I love to create thing, especially from scratch. I like the idea of making something that’s almost useless, to something that can be used everyday in the next few weeks. The lady (forgot her name) who helped us make clapping sticks is really nice and I remember her from last year. I am really looking forward to having more activities like this, such as building and crafting. Today we also had a talking circle with Julia Bogany. We talked about the rocks in our life. Not literally. It was about who we look up to and who you look for when you want support. It was a really good talk and I’m surprised everybody participated that much on the first day. The clapper stick doesn’t have a meaning for me, yet. I feel like that is something I need to figure out in time. Anyway today was a good day although I am really tired. laters!

During this program, I was not comfortable with being in a group because I didn’t know anybody. Going further into the program, I made certain connections with students and teachers. This made me more comfortable with them and motivated me to wake up every morning. The schedules were always so intense and kept me with exhaustion. Even though we got little free time, I still think it was a good learning experience. My favorite part was going to Wishtoyo and Limuw because it felt so natural. I had this white shirt that smelled so dank. I wore it because I didn’t care and felt free. I really liked making the declaration because I felt empowered. We didn’t finish, but we will continue to work on it. I believe that Wishotyo and Limuw. I appreciate all the mentors for keeping us safe and getting us to bed so early. I wanted to thank Scott for putting this program together. I hope I come next year.