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These past two days have been wonderful connection with the rest of the kids at this program, with this i would like to share what happened. On Thursday July 13,2017, the day started off so energetic with our indigenous games with Hector  and Josh. These games empowered me and helped me gain such important values such as discipline and unity. I enjoyed making the soap stone necklace with Julia although it did take me longer to finish than everyone else but at the end i loved doing a hand on activity. Although we did many activities this day I would actually say that the activity that had such a huge and powerful impact in my life would have to be the blanket exercise with our brothers and sisters from Canada.

The blanket exercise was basically a visual representation of the struggles and the impacts the European men had on the lives of the indigenous people of Canada. While the exercise was going on I felt such an anger in me not only because of how the indigenous people were affected but on how it is affecting all indigenous people today especially the other students in this program. Once the exercise had ended we all got to share our thoughts and feelings on what we felt an/or saw. while going around I got to hear many unfortunate storied of my fellow peers about how they were affected and there families were affected as well by the colonizers. I was heartbroken and surprised to hear these stories from them because you don’t really expect to hear those stories from people. I am very happy for this exercise which helped me connect and have more trust in these wonderful people here in this program as well as take my anger and use it to go back home and find more ways to help our people regain what was taken from us many many years ago.

Today July 14,2017 was a day of connecting and sharing with the rest of the young ladies in this program. Once lunch ended boys and girls got separated to have some time to connect in between gender groups. In our session we spent time doing arts and crafts with our elder Julia. We began once Julia set the individual bags with beads, wire and 4 loose chains in them. Once we all had our own bags with beads I began to add one by one of my beads onto my wire, with every bead I put into my wire I felt a connection being built with the rest of these beautiful and strong young women who were sitting besides me. While hanging the 4 loose chains onto my bracelet I felt thought of 4 women traumas and that is what each of the loose chains on my bracelet mean. Once we were done wit our bracelets we all picked one paper with a beautiful design on the front and an inspirational quote on the back. While doing this we all connected by dancing, singing and being very silly. Before this happened we got an amazing opportunity to spend three hours with ur aztec math teacher Vicente, during these three hours we did danza and Vicente shared some amazing stories with us that I will keep in mind. I appreciated everything we did today and want to give thank to everyone for really trying to connect.

Peace and Love Christine

This day is a well deserved day, my friend and I went to breakfast at the cafeteria. I wasn’t hungry enough to grab a big plate so, I instead fixed myself a decent bowl of cereal and then headed to the table to chat.

first off I wanted to say that the Aztec dance is a great way to start off my morning with Vicente and Coyo. I would like to give respect to them as they help me learn the teaching of this dance and the meaning of it. Not only that but Vicente and Coyo also taught me how the Nepohualtzintin was created. Another thing that he taught me was that the Aztec value the sun and were highly educated before the Spaniards colonized Mesoamerica.  I am glad that Vincent taught me this valuable  lesson, if i didn’t know about this I could’ve live my life not knowing about the Nepohualtzintin knowledge and their sacred way.

Another exciting thing was that i spend my time with the girls on beading a cute bracelet and coloring with Julia. I would like to give thanks to Julia for coming down and showing us on how to bead.

After that Marissa and I went on a trip to Yogurt Land. Inside the store is very cool compare from outside and the Van ( including the A.C ). The plaza, also known as “The Village”

Friday July 14th                                                                                                              – Marisa Sosa

Yesterday was a pretty energy shifting day, the whole group became much closer and I know this will only enhance our level of engagement during the rest of our workshops and talking circles. For example today during story telling with Tata Vicente I really felt moved by hearing stories that originate directly from my ancestors. Tata looked at me, my brothers, and sisters as if we were his children and he was telling us a bed time story; Our ancestors signed treaties that would lead us to adopt catholicism just to protect our families, traditions, and knowledge. Our great leaders knew that so much more would be lost if we didn’t give rule to the Spanish empire. My blood boils with anger when I hear that other native people assimilated and embrace the catholic church. Now that I understand why they assimilated, I don’t feel as disturbed by something that once enraged me so much. Later in the day the males participated in ceremony, where as the sound of the drum got harder the beat beat of my heart did as well, and my voice during prayer became medicine for the reminder of the atrocities our people continue to face today. Later when we had free time students either went to the village for frozen yogurt or they went swimming, both seemed a little too chaotic for me especially after an exhausting day so I decided to stay with Nana Julia, Tata Vicente, and Alejandro, and just colored, listen to the trees dancing in the wind, and enjoyed the company of proud indigenous people (something I don’t get to do often).

I woke up in such a good mood. I was able to get more sleep which made me feel rejuvenated.  After breakfast, we had a danza circle that I was really excited for. Elder Vicente taught me different steps of doing danzas I thought I already knew. It was a really fun and interesting time that I spent with the group. After that, we had lunch that was delicious. Then, boys and girls were separated into their own talking circles at different locations in the Pitzer Campus. The talking circle was very informative and really opened my eyes about my surroundings when it comes to how men or I treat females. I felt very happy and relieved to have had that conversation with my brothers of the program.

Finally, a group of us went to the village near Pitzer Campus. I went to the comic book store with some of my new friends and I was very excited to see so many comics. I purchased the newest comic of The Flash that looked very interesting and action-packed. Then, we went to Yogurt land that was nearby and joined up with the larger portion of the group. We had laughs, but we had to leave to check out the rest of the village because of the shortage of time. We passed by a record store that I had to go into. I felt like a kid in a candy store and found so many CD’s that I wanted. I eventually decided on about six that were some of my favorite albums. On our way back to the campus, our driver, Violet, allowed me to put on a RATM CD. It was a very relaxing and joyful day.

Yesterday was a very long day. In the morning we woke up before seven to play indigenous games. After winning three matches of the Aztec games with Hector, I felt exhausted, knowing there was only one more person to play, Tlaloc. As his arm came swinging down I had milliseconds to react to try to block. His arm has a lot of sweat after he also played three matches before. As my arm made contact to block it slipped off and he took the last point to win the game.  We learn though the experience of playing that no matter if we win or lose, we still respect each other and don’t feel like gloating during those games. Although I have learned to us the Nepohualtzintzin when I was younger school. Our Elder Vicente has brought perspectives on it. I thought it was for counting but my mind was completely blown when he thought us how easy it is to find the square root. This was shocking because we had never been exposed to higher math and realizing how advanced our ancestors were. We meet with our elder Julia to create necklaces. After being gave soap stone and a metal sander we sat down for 45 minutes to work. My hand started shaking before being half way done. The edges were fast to carve off. Once the stone  was smaller if you carved it to fast you could easily mess it up.

I was able and honored to participate in the native blanket experiment. The main idea of this experiment was to show us the hard times our people went through. The way they demonstrated this was by having everyone stand on blankets. The blankets resembled native land. So they had Scott as a european colonist who was going around doing wrong to the native people. Then it came to my time to die. What I mean by this was they had given me a yellow card to resemble the indigenous people who had died from small pox. This effected me greatly because it allowed me to step in the shoes of my ancestors and see what they faced. In the experiment I was able to see and experience the struggles that my people and ancestors have gone through. This was a very emotional experiment because I was able to physically see what my ancestors went through with losing their land. I felt that I was able to create a stronger bond with my fellow peers after the experiment because we were able to share our struggles that we’ve been through and see that we aren’t alone. We all have some sort of struggles that we’ve been through. The key concept is that we need to see how much struggles our people have gone through and understand that when we say things are today, we need to look at the situation again. What I mean about this is that the things that we go through may be hard but not as hard as the things that our ancestors have gone through. We can’t put ourselves down because our people are still fighting today. They haven’t stopped and this shows dedication and commitment to reclaim our land and show today’s society that we won’t stop until we have what we want. I also was able to show my emotions with out being judged, because in today’s society we are taught that us native men can’t show our emotions and we need to be tough. It felt so beautiful to be able to cry and know that I had people there for me and they weren’t going to judge me. I felt connected with them because there was so much energy in the air. At the end of the day I was able to accomplish one major thing. I was able to be one with myself and make a commitment. That commitment is only for me to know but I feel that I have come to a realization that I am not perfect and we all have struggles in life and I just need to accept that. I was so happy to have this experience and I am looking forward to having more experiences like this again.

Over these 4 days I have learned more than i could possibly imagine. In each activity I can see many different ways and opportunities that I can express myself as a native american.  When I was little I used to dance for my tribe Gablieno Tongva, and I can barley remember how I danced or where i danced, but when I started to learn Aztec dancing I remembered and I felt in that moment how small I was and how important the culture is to me. I was also interested in the Aztec math, and how there was different connections to the way that the Aztecs shared with animals. I also, got to make a story out of a picture. As i was looking at the picture i saw happy faces from native americans that had many struggles and battles that they faced, but thier spirit was stronger. The story i created made me feel lucky to be here, and i appreciate all of the adults who came out to teach us youth. Recently i have been learning indigineous games, and how our people used marcial arts to defend themselves in many different ways. As i was doing the different exricises in the indigineous games i felt strong and i was not just recognized as a women who takes care of the house hold and kids, I thought to myself that I was very strong and independent. I also got to learn about what type of person i am communicacial wise. I was in beetween being independent and being a collectivist. Later on in the evening the youth students did a blanket exricise with Sylvia and Gary Scow from Canada. This blanket exricise impacted me the most out of these 4 days, because so many people got to share thier personal expierences either when they are younger or what they are going through curently.  I cant imagine how much guts it takes to share that with the 40+ people in the room. I am now more self conscious and aware of my surroundings. Each person in the room had a story to share that touched me one way or another. I was also touched when my Nana was sharing about my position in blanket exricise, and how i did not get to come home in my role. That on its own opened my eyes on reality. Also, there was quite a bit of blankets/land on the ground when we first started and as we went through the story more and more pieces of land got tokent away from the canadians, and thats also reality. The youth students are here to make that next generation better and more aware of natives, because we are here to make the reality back to how it started. Another thing that touched me when when i heard about how many children got damaged, and how few got to go to school, or even speak thier own languege. This was my second time doing the blanket exriscise, but each time someone does it they gain more knowlege about the anscestrial history for us, and things they went through. These past days have been such a great expierence for me. Ive gained more knowlege than i can possibly imagine, and i hope to keep learning in our remaining time.

• Marissa Aranda

The day started very well with Hector Pacheco teaching us his cultural games. Learning how to properly strike an opponent and block their strikes were very important. The game implemented these actions along with the rule of having each opponents toes touching while turning in a circle. The objective of the game was to touch the others head and that would be a point. The first one to three points won that leg, but there are two. Later on in the day, we carved soap stones of different animals, with Elder Julia,  to create necklaces. I carved my soap stone of a bear.  It was a really relaxing atmosphere and I enjoyed spending time on this activity.

Towards the evening, we did the blanket exercise with Elder Garry and Elder Silvia that was based on the taking of land from tribes in Canada.  It was a saddening and heartbreaking experience to be involved in this activity. Their was so death and misery that was mentioned. I could only imagine what the native peoples of Canada had to through. Once we finished, we had a talking circle about what our thoughts, connected experiences or opinions about the activity. What was shared in the circle was so powerful but very emotional and numbing. At that moment, I felt so close and trusted by my peers which made me very happy. TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY.