“We want to show them that anything is attainable,” said Marty Whelshula as he walked with seven Rogers High School students on a campus tour of Eastern Washington University on Monday, Oct. 9.
It’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Marty, a Native Education Support Specialist who leads an Advisory class of 20 Native students at Rogers with Academic Support Specialist Levi Horn, wants his students to have experiences that “bring in the contemporary with the cultural.” The field trip provided both.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day honors the truth about the American soil we live on, explained Marty. Set on the second Monday of every October, the day serves as a counter-celebration to Columbus Day. It recognizes the perseverance and contributions of Indigenous people across the United States.
On the campus tour, the high school students learned about different campus resources, student life and activities, and thought about what they might want to study if they pursued a college degree.
They also met at the American Indian Education Center on campus to learn about EWU’s American Indian Studies Program (AISP) and Native American Student Association (NASA). They began their visit with a smudging ceremony, which Levi explained is a cleansing ritual to help set the group on a positive path and to thank the Creator for this time together.
Marty explained that his Advisory class holds smudging ceremonies during the school day at Rogers, and that staff and non-Native students participate as well. “It helps students reset, and they can share their culture with their peers.”
The students also attended a drumming and dancing exhibition organized by NASA at Arevalo Student Mall. The group displayed a teepee on campus, which anyone was welcome to enter. Inside, current Rogers students heard from former Pirates, now Eagles, about their college experiences and what they were studying.
Two NASA students, War Bear and Venessa Pete, also spoke about their experiences and why they helped organized the Indigenous Peoples’ Day event at EWU.
“This is a day for us, by us,” said War Bear. “This is a space and time for us to be ourselves, to dance, to demonstrate our culture, to just be Indigenous people. Historically, we have not always been given this. Historically, many things these have been taken with us and now that we go back to the old ways, the traditional ways, we’re decolonizing, we’re finding ourselves,” he said, before reading a Land Acknowledgement from AISP, which can be read at the end of this article.
Levi, who is also a graduate from Rogers (Class of 2005) and a former NFL player, gave a keynote speech at the gathering about his healing journey that began for him in college. At that time, he began to embrace his heritage and culture, and to grapple with the intergenerational trauma of his ancestors.
“There’s trauma that we still feel to this day. It’s in our bones, it’s in our blood, it’s in our DNA,” Levi said. “As my mom went through her struggles, as my grandpa had his struggles, so on and so forth, the most important stuff didn’t get passed down. The regalia, the songs, the ceremonies, and that’s why we are here today. To get these back.”
Following Levi’s speech, War Bear and Venessa, along with her family drum group Firestone, provided an exhibition of different traditional music and dances as hundreds of EWU students walked though campus. They opened with a flag song, which Venessa’s husband Shonto likened to a country’s national anthem, and demonstrated several different types of traditional dancing, including sneak up dance, fancy dance, and jingle dress dance.
Rogers senior Pauline said she wanted to attend the field trip to learn more about cultural practices from people who are practicing Native cultural traditions. “It shows me that Natives are seen,” she said.
“I think it would be best for Indigenous people as a whole to have recognition,” she said, on her hopes for her community’s future. She is interested in pursuing early childhood education, possibly at Eastern.
When asked what he hopes students take away from the field trip, Levi said, “I want to let them know that they can be proud of being Native American. I want to open their minds to the possibilities for the future, so they know they are able to dream.”
More photos from the field trip can be seen at facebook.com/SpokanePublicSchools.
American Indian Studies Program at Eastern Washington University Land Acknowledgement, July 2020
We would like to acknowledge we are on the traditional lands of the first people, past and present, of this region, including the Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, Kalispel, Nez Perce, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation, and the Yakima Nations. We honor them as the traditional caretakers of the land and respect the enduring relationship that exists between all Indigenous people in their traditional territories and homelands. As a move forward into providing an open future in academics, we will strive to offer more teaching and services inclusive of histories, cultures and traditions to the Native American people of this region. We will continue to explore how we might build relationships with the sovereign tribal nations whose students we educate in hopes to lead Eastern Washington University to be an inclusive space for fostering innovation and collaboration.