I’ve been going to school off and on for eight years now. It may be another four years before I get my master’s degree in education! My gram laughs and says, “You’re going to be an old lady by the time you finish school and start working!” I just laugh along with her.
The title is a song that has been skipping in my memory since I realized my feelings trumped my view: specifically the view of a barren, arid, desert landscape I passed through from a happy place to a place I have been in, pondering my emotions.
Four tribal colleges who are grantees in the Kellogg Wakanyeja “Sacred Little Ones” Early Childhood Education Initiative met last week in Boulder, Colorado. The teams came from across North America, including Ilisagvik College, Barrow, Alaska; College of Menominee Nation (CMN), Keshena, Wisconsin, Northwest Indian College (NWIC), Bellingham, Washington; and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI), Albuquerque, New, Mexico.
The American Indian College Fund will award 16 scholarships to first-generation, first-time Native tribal college students through a $100,000 grant from the Walmart Foundation. For more than a decade, the Walmart Foundation has funded Native student scholarships through the American Indian College Fund.
Cass Lake, MN-The Board of Trustees of Leech Lake Tribal College has announced that Dr. Donald Day, Director of the American Indian Resource Center at Bemidji State University, has been selected as the next President of the College, effective August 13. He will succeed Dr. Ginny Carney, who is retiring in August after more than a decade of service at LLTC.
My hometown, Unalakleet, is an Inupiaq village located in the Norton Sound region of Alaska. We get a great deal of wind in our area because Unalakleet is located right on the coast: the Bering Sea. The town consists of about 750 people year-round. Most residents are of Inupiat Eskimo descent. The non-Natives that reside in Unalakleet are mostly teachers.
We all have our favorite activities and pastimes that magnify the summer season. Among the most common are reading novels while swinging in a hammock under a shade tree, watching the sun dance with the branches, sippin’ on an ice- cold- fresh- squeezed big gulp size tumbler of lemonade, jumping out of a tire swing into our favorite swimming hole, and letting our sweat drenched hair form their own string.
Last week I accompanied five American Indian College Fund Scholars to the United Health Foundation’s Annual Diverse Scholars Forum in Washington, D.C. These students have been supported by the United Health Foundation with scholarships to pursue degrees ranging from physical therapy and exercise science to nursing and health occupations.
I remember the cold winters we had in the past, but this winter most likely beat the record low. Temperatures below zero are very common for Alaskan winters. Our winters typically last from mid-October to the end of May. This year we didn’t get our first snowfall until early November, so we thought maybe “Global Warming” was finally taking its toll. Boy, were we wrong! It wasn’t until January that the cold really hit us. It slapped us in the face!
I am Therese. I just completed my first semester at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I am on Create My Canvas Path, majoring in studio arts and museum studies. My Native affiliation is what I refer to as “mixed media”-Native, Mayan, and Mexican.
