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Yesterday was such an eye opening and blessed day. We were all lucky enough to witness and be a part of a new way of learning our history. It mostly consisted of Canadian history, with First Nations indigenous people that lived and live throughout Canada. To briefly explain, there were blankets laid out all over the ground but none were ever overlapped. Each blanket represented a territory of different indigenous people located in Canada. We were given scripts and different pieces of paper, to read and hold on to while we all stood on different pieces of land. The story line started from the beginning, before the white settlers came. It moved through the trust and cooperation between First Nations people and the Europeans. Next was treaties, which tragically started the beginning of a story that wouldn’t be truthfully told in the future to come. After that, was the forced movement of indigenous people onto reservations. On smaller plots of land than they had before the colonization. Then disease swept the country and killed of many Native people, this was one of the reasons we had colored paper. White paper represented the ancestors that were lost to disease and sickness. Sadly it wasn’t the end, white people weren’t satisfied enough with this, they wanted our people to be extinct but because it was too expensive to go to war with NDNs, they put us in boarding schools (residential schools) instead. Sexual abuse, Physical abuse, and mental abuse was prevalent in these government created schools. They were created to change us into “civilized humans” or be as close to white as possible. Another reason was to assimilate us into the Catholic or Christian religion because no other religion was allowed to exist. These schools continued until 1996, that was the year the last NDN boarding school shut down. The effects linger, and continue to effect indigenous people throughout Canada and the United States.

I am going to leave it there, because it is a hard subject to talk about. Although I do believe that all Native American youth need to be exposed to our true history, whether its with the blanket exercise or with some other form of information.

I believe that this blanket exercise needs to be taught and role played by every tribe or reservation in Turtle Island. With a similar style but more knowledge on every history in America and Canada.

Hy’shqe

Panamea

Thank you,

Katherine Jefferson (Kat)

by: Tyvon

All the summer programs that I have attended I would have to say this is my favorite because it teaches a lot about responsibility, teamwork, friendship, and hard work. This program is very unique because of its location, and people which I’ve never experienced before. For everyday I stay here my connection with all the members, mentors, staff, and the elders of this program grows stronger. When I first arrived the people were very welcoming and full of excited energy like they’ve pride and effort into this and I can tell that the people, that work here and help us, love their jobs and they leave such a positive impact. Whenever we do any kind of work it is to continue building all four aspects, that I have mentioned earlier, like for example the elders and mentors put so much work into this program in order to make it such a positive place. This program has done so much in such little time to educate all of us so very much and that is why this is my most favorite summer program.

Day 3: we woke up and started the morning with Aztec Martial arts and we started by practicing what we remembered the day before which was learning about the discipline, self control, a defense routine and how the martial art correlates and aligns to animals, orbital cycles of stars and planets and mathematics. But anyways, Hector and john who were the people teaching us these martial arts showed us about the center point in a persons energy and balance which is their belly button, i will finish this blog later…

since we have done the blanket activity i feel like i have gotten closer to everyone because they have trusted me and other with  they emotions and what had happened  to they in the past. i have not gotten to know everyone in personal level but i am looking into getting to know everyone in a personal level. also another thing that i liked was how we all got together yesterday morning and did the indigenous games. we all encouraged each other and had fun. the pool time we had was fun. when we are in the pool we just hang out with others and have fun. we played marco polo. i tried swimming to the end of the pool. i didn’t make it to the end but i am going to keep trying. today at pool time we played volleyball and that was fun.

I have been having a great time so far. I keep on getting closer to everybody but I don’t know everyone that well. I already feel like we are all a family. We have been going into the pool, learning Aztec math and just writing. We made a necklace out of soap stone. We also got closer together in the circle and I felt honored that they actually had the strength to tell things that would also be hard to talk about.I also learned about what happened to our ancestors hundreds of years ago. Today, we had a blessing in two separate groups, i haven’t really ever experienced anything like that. We also got to swim again but it was a smaller group that went swimming because everybody else went to town to get frozen yogurt. This morning was really great too, but we had fun, we played volleyball with a huge beach ball. I took my shoes off and placed on the grass. The connection with the ground made me feel much more connected to mother earth, because my feet started to dig into the ground, and every step i took while in the dance I was excited to see what we would do. When dancing i was turned around in most of the moves because everyone else would be going one way and then i would be going the other. The dancing really brought up my mood from being tired to feeling energized. I also learned that dancing was a big part of our culture, i don’t really know this kind of stuff because no one in my family has taught me anything about my culture. So i am thankful to be here and learn what i have been wanting to learn.

Yesterday was a very memorable day for me, it was very inspiring day. I would never have guessed people that came to this program would have been through such trauma. I think the exercise really brought us closer, and it was a good ice breaker!To hear everyone be so open and emotional really hit home for me.

At dinner me and belmont had a very brief conversation. I told him were im from , but on a deeper note i told him more on my perspectives on my culture & traditions as a cherokee. Growing up i was raised as a jingle dress dancer in the arena along side with my younger brother daniel who danced as a fancy dancer. Looking upon  my yunger self it was a clear fact that i was an indigenous 7 year old, who danced my heart out every single time i was in the urina. As me and my brother grew , so did our knowing on our culture. Around age 10 my mom began to question herself on a religious note if worshiping the creater and other spiritual symbols was the write thing to do, as a christian.

I remember my mom filling black bags with our regailia. She didnt fold it or nothing she just threw it in the bag. She took off the dream catchers from the walls because they were still hanging. She got all the jewelry that she ever made. Because she used to bead so all of her little tuppleware were filled with beads. She shoved them in the bags on top of the regailias and the dream catchers. She tied the bags in a knot and me and my brother were right there. We walked down to the car like we didn’t want to go but we had to. My mom opened the trunk. I think there were two bags. One at a time with doubt in her eyes, she was really hesitant. Then we drove to food-for-less quietly. We pulled up by the trash can. She got out of the car, while me and my brother were still sitting in the backseats. And I still remember when she was walking to the trunk she gave me a glance before she opened it. She got out one bag and she was looking at it while she was walking to the trash like her mind was filling up with all these memories. Everything was coming back to her, i mean it never really left, but you could just see the hurt. She knew that she put a lot of time, energy and faith in it. Because every time before we danced we prayed. In our regailias we danced for god. When she threw the first bag you could tell she was in that mood of okay there is no going back now. And she was really sorry for us because she knew that we didnt want to get rid of them. By that time we were already crying. She got out the second bag. Frustrated really because she didnt want to do it anymore. She got the bag and was dragging herself there. She looked slumped like a mother. All of our dancing, everything we have ever ever done, every single bead, every single cut, every single feather, everysingle tare, every single design was in that bag. All of our memories all of our faith and all of our dignity was in there. Because that made us who we were. She was basically throwing us away. You could tell that it hurt her as a mother. Because we were dancing in that bag and she was just throwing us away.

She got back to the car and we drove away from our culture and who we were.

We would like to start by thanking all of the students. We have tackled some pretty tough subjects over the past few days and you all have made wonderful, powerful contributions to every conversation and activity. We have also celebrated and come together through music and song, prayer and Aztec dance.

Today we would like you to blog on anything and everything you want. It could be something that has happened so far, or something you’re feeling and experiencing in this moment. You could dive into a single moment and describe it, how you felt both emotionally and physically in that moment. Describe your surroundings, the smells, where the sun was in the sky. A small moment can make for a big story sometimes.

So let’s recap…

• We’ve done some creative writing with Shelva and started brainstorming and researching colleges.

• We’ve begun to develop our voice with a couple of blog posts

• Vicente has shared some lessons on the Nepohualtzintzin

• Vicente and Coyo shared Aztec Dance

• We colored and beaded with Auntie Julia

• The blanket exercise

• Soapstones with Auntie Julia

• Clapper Sticks with Auntie Julia

• Spirit Game: Pride of A Nation

• Free time and self care

• The pool

• Probably lots more…

So don’t hold back, push yourself! Explore something by writing about it… never know what you might learn.

-Gina and Genna

Today was my first day of my second year at Pitzer’s Native Youth 2 College program, Being back on campus brought back tons of amazing memories that I had last year. I choose to come back because last year i had such an amazing time with old and new friends; From learning about my culture to being given so many beneficial insights on pursuing a higher education. I am most excited about hearing from other critically thinking indigenous youth and elders. I don’t think I am too nervous about anything because everyone in the program is pretty welcoming and respectful. My mentor is one of my long time friends Tekpatl who was a former menti and is now a mentor, something  I look forward to trying when I am eligible. My favorite part of today was reconvening with friends that I hadn’t seen since last year, catching up while making clapping sticks with elder Julia was my favorite part of the day. THE FOOD, I forgot how delicious pitzers dining hall was; the alfredo pasta was amazing. A couple of my mentors are vegan and they influenced e to start up with being vegan so I decided to join then so all my meals from here on out will be vegan. Back to the clapping sticks, the sticks to me mean the sharing of traditional knowledge that’s been stripped from our people for 525 years. Soooooooooo I’m pretty tired and I gotta be up at 6:45 with my buddy D-Money, Goodnight.

Hello again! I am so happy and humbled that I received the chance to participate again at Pitzer Pipline, being able to see all the new faces as well as other peers that attended last year is so awesome. I did start my day late but thankfully I was just in time for the opening ceremony which was  a really  great way to start the program/day. Then I immediately connected and reconnected with other peers, then finally I was able to unpack all the unnecessary clothing and personal items that I brought and sadly said my goodbyes to my mother. Overall the activities were so much fun and did push me out of my comfort zone as well as to meet even more students and also the whole day was just another great day and I am ready to continue and be open minded as well as a risk taker through out the program.

Hello,

My name is Alyssa Saige Flores. I am Tohono O Odham and pima. I am continuing on my 3rd time attending the program. I am most excited to go to Wishtoyo and  participating in surfing. I am looking forward to learning about the common app, and all things I can grasp about college as I will be a senior next year. My mentor is Neeka she is super cool and I’ve learned that she is always happy. My favorite part of today was meeting my cousin for the first time today and bounding together as we made out clapper sticks. today has started off good and ended amazing I hope the rest of the trip will be the same.