Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ideal Conditions for Sustained Youth Wellness
24 Plays6 months ago
What are the ideal conditions for sustained youth wellness?
In episode 3, “Ideal Conditions for Sustained Youth Wellness”, we hear from:
- Dr. Antonia Darder an internationally recognized scholar, artist, poet, activist, and public intellectual who introduces us to a "language of love"
- A Q&A with Dr. Sara Chase Merrick, a critical scholar and community leader about her work curating youth language models within her Hoopa community.
- A reflection by Professor Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, exploring the types of mentorship and grief necessary to sustain youth wellness.
Drawing From the Well is hosted by Tiffani Marie and is produced by Jon Reyes.
Music by King Most.
DFTW is supported by Community Responsive Education, continue the conversation at youthwellness.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Maya Angelou's Influence
00:00:03
Speaker
As a child, read Maya Angelou's I Know How the Caged Bird Sings. I read it from cover to cover. I'll never forget. there's so much going on in that.
00:00:14
Speaker
There's countless adages, riveting quotes within the memoir. But what I remember now as an educator was a relationship between Maya Angelou and Mrs. Bertha Flowers. And young Maya Angelou meets Mrs. Flowers at an extremely fundamental time in her childhood.
00:00:38
Speaker
She meets her right after she is raped by her mother's boyfriend.
Maya Angelou's Silence and Support from Mrs. Flowers
00:00:43
Speaker
And young Maya Angelou is forced to testify in court against him. And before the night ends, he's found murdered.
00:00:52
Speaker
And Maya Angelou believes that Her words killed her attacker, and so she stops talking, and she's sent to Stamps, Arkansas to live with her grandmother. I'm guessing it's her mother's attempt to piece together an unraveling that no child, let alone any adult, should experience.
00:01:17
Speaker
And it's in Stamps where she meets Mrs. Flowers, who engages really important pedagogy. that intervenes within the toxic stressors that Maya Angelou is experiencing.
00:01:30
Speaker
And so when I think about young Maya Angelou with Mrs. Flowers in Arkansas, I have a strong connection to the story. In part, it's from nostalgia. My childhood was curated by a legacy of Southern love.
00:01:49
Speaker
ah type of multilayered and complicated teaching and love and care that would pause time, really, for long enough to holistically care for my needs.
Pedagogy and Youth Wellness
00:02:03
Speaker
And it was motivated, I believe, by and urgency that would ensure that I lived and not just survived, but that I lived an abundant life.
00:02:15
Speaker
So when I think about Mrs. Flowers and I think about my great grandmothers, I bring them together in this conversation, not simply because they were all black women, and not just because they were all educators in their own right, and not even because they were all from Arkansas.
00:02:33
Speaker
I call attention to their seemingly rare pedagogical practices because through reflection, ah realize that they're not really that rare.
00:02:45
Speaker
In fact, what they did, what my great grandmothers did, how they cared for me, how they showed up for me, how Mrs. Flowers showed up for Maya Angelou is consistent with what we know helps young people to access their wellness.
00:03:02
Speaker
And those practices are consistent across most indigenous communities. I'm reminded of a past guest, Maestro Teo, who summarizes so much of what I'm talking about really into four main beliefs and teachings.
00:03:20
Speaker
And he says that if we're going to do this wellness work, we have to remember. And every day we have to act as if these statements are true. We have to believe these things.
00:03:32
Speaker
And that is that every child is a blessing. that we all have a sacred purpose and all of us have wisdom and medicine that comes from our cultures, our histories, our people, and that we must commit to the journey of ongoing healing, cleansing, and rejuvenation.
00:03:56
Speaker
But when we're in the academy, when I'm in grad school, when I'm in PD, we look to isolate variables that explain particular social phenomenon, like the singular approach that facilitates wellness for children.
Exploring Factors Sustaining Youth Wellness
00:04:12
Speaker
And I would suggest in my own healing, the healing of young Maya Angelou, these things that helped us to access wellness are not the result of one variable or one practice.
00:04:24
Speaker
Rather, The factors that curate youth wellness are always about the right people intervening and centering these sacred teachings at the right time.
00:04:39
Speaker
And today, we'll focus on just that.
00:04:47
Speaker
Welcome to Drawing from the Well. I'm your host, Tiffany Marie. This episode will focus on the factors that sustain youth wellness. For the next hour, we'll hear from internationally recognized Freyrian scholar Antonia Darvin, who will introduce us to a language of love, its functions, and its outcomes.
00:05:11
Speaker
We'll hear from youth expert Cheyenne, who guides us through the ways in which a caring adult showed up for her at a really important time. We have critical scholar and community leader, Sarah Chase Merrick, who reflects on her processes of curating youth language revitalization models within her Hupa community.
Community and Pedagogical Philosophy
00:05:33
Speaker
And finally, we'll hear from Professor Allison T. Diago Cubales, who closes this episode with an exploration of the types of critical mentorship and grief necessary to sustain youth wellness.
00:05:51
Speaker
You know, this is a pedagogical process, that life is a pedagogical process. So we're always learning. We're always engaging others. We're always involved in trying to understand our world.
00:06:03
Speaker
We're always creating theories and philosophies. You know, one of the things that always leaves me so frustrated is this notion that the only philosophers are somehow at the university.
00:06:14
Speaker
Some of the most you know incredibly brilliant and most spot on philosophers are folks within communities. If they're a seamstress, they use that as ah their lens for coming to a ah philosophy of life.
00:06:28
Speaker
If they fix a car, they're coming you know from the standpoint of that work, that they can tell you some really intricate understandings about life through whatever their particular lens is And I think our capacity to listen and to engage people with respect and a sense of openness and ah real honoring of the wisdom and knowledge that people carry and that often the humility to not know and to be able to say, i don't i don't I don't understand that. Help me understand how you're seeing the world with I'm not quite getting that.
00:07:05
Speaker
It is a way of coming to the world where we understand that fundamentally, my strength comes from being with you. My capacity to be empowered is not just an individual process, but it is from a relationship I have with others. It is through that relationship with others that empowerment happens.
00:07:28
Speaker
It is through the relationship with others that I have a true sense of myself. I can't have a sense of myself in a vacuum. I don't believe in the I think therefore I am. I believe that the way that I know myself is through you, how you know me, how we mirror for each other what we see in each other.
00:07:48
Speaker
The capacity to do that is through the force of love. Love creates in us. It's the place, it's the energy that we exchange. It is that opening, that force within us which opens us to receive one another, to learn from one another, another and to be with one another.
00:08:08
Speaker
And that fundamentally is a communal process. It is not something that you can do just as an individual. You must do it in community. So I always think, you know, that if we're going to talk about a pedagogy of love, for example, it immediately says we're starting from the place of our connection to one another.
00:08:28
Speaker
You know, our communal connection. And from there, we're learning together. So that sense of love and loving is a powerful force.
00:08:39
Speaker
It inspires in us a kind of courage rich to stand up for ourselves and each other and to be willing to risk. Often we don't talk about it that, but to do this work, you all are risking. There's a risk to do this work.
00:08:53
Speaker
You know, in subtle ways, but also in some, you know, not so subtle ways in terms of knowing that some people just are going to dismiss you, that you're going to have to be willing to step into places where sometimes people are not going to understand you.
00:09:09
Speaker
Even within the community, they'll be surprised because in our communities, they're so used to people coming in and just, you know, their forms of raping communities, as far as I'm concerned, you know, taking from communities And essentially never truly giving back.
00:09:25
Speaker
So when you come in you come in with heart and love and intention and purpose. There's got to be a relationship, right, that is established within the community that essentially speaks of love.
00:09:39
Speaker
So we cannot express love outside of relationship. That's my take on it. So when we talk about love in the classroom, it means that teacher is willing to have a relationship with the students.
00:09:52
Speaker
If we're talking about work in the community, we're willing to have a relationship with folks in the community. We're willing to be at one with them. That for me represents one of the most powerful illustrations of what it means to love and to bring love to our work.
00:10:18
Speaker
My sophomore year high school, my mom and dad were like going through their own like relationship battle. And like that kind of took a big toll on me because i wasn't used to my parents like fighting or arguing like in front of me.
00:10:32
Speaker
During that time, my dad was going through his dialysis where he just started. And I found out that his kidney was at 3%. And so like a lot in my head was taking over me and then like my own personal battles with my mindset and what was going on within my head and dealing with the situation like got to an end point where I felt like I wasn't able.
00:10:55
Speaker
to like be my true like happy self at school and like be present. I felt like my body was there but my mind was just kind of like being taken away and teacher noticed.
00:11:10
Speaker
The first thing that she had said to me was like how are you doing and throughout that time I was like no like I wasn't trying to like tell anyone like what was going on with me. until like my mom and dad were getting to a point where they were breaking off their relationship and then everything became more like surreal to me. Like, this is gonna be my reality. like They're not gonna be together anymore.
00:11:30
Speaker
Because of this, it's causing more stress on my dad. he doesn't need that with his health issues. And so, it's just like, what is left of me? i felt like it was the end of the world. and my mindset was just so negative.
00:11:42
Speaker
But the thing that got me was my teacher. There was a small room in the school that she had took me, and we both sat there, and she like let me explain the hurt that I was feeling. like She made me tell her how I feel now, I felt yesterday, what I need, and what I want to do from here on out.
00:12:03
Speaker
And like those questions that she had asked me like really put into perspective like my feelings on like what happened, what is going to happen, how do I feel about it, what am I going to do from here on out.
00:12:16
Speaker
But it wasn't even just that. When I was sitting there and I was like really just being very vulnerable, like her like putting her arms around me and like telling me, like no one has the right to make you feel like you need to act a certain way when you are dealing with the situation or like when you're dealing with anything. like No one has the right to make you feel like you need to act in a way that's pleasing to them, but what's pleasing to yourself. And then from then on, I felt like I was able to make a choice for myself.
00:12:45
Speaker
I felt like i was really stuck in this like hole that like I couldn't really get out or like I felt like there was no way to like see past what was in front of me. But it was just because of like her act of kindness and like you know when you can kind of feel someone's love for you, it hits different and you feel it.
Introduction to Sarah Chase Merrick and Indigenous Education
00:13:12
Speaker
Next up, we Sarah Chase Merrick, who will walk us through what it means to move from a theory of love of people and land and culture toward a practice of it.
00:13:28
Speaker
All right, we are here with the one and only Sarah L. Chase Merrick, who's going to bless us with her voice, her wisdom, her presence today.
00:13:40
Speaker
And so if you could just open up by telling us who you are where you come from and what you believe you're here to do in your life. hey young sarah chase merick holia natinu alta shinaak alta Hello everyone out there My name is Sarah Merrick. i introduced myself in, natanuui mihammawei which is the Hupa language.
00:14:05
Speaker
And so I am from Hupa. And I'm also from shinneco the shinnecock Indian Nation in what is now known as Long Island, New York. So those are my two kind of communities. And every time that I introduce myself in more formal settings, I do begin and kind of honor the language, which is directly tied to who I am and kind of why I'm here. i can do a little more background on the Western notions of what I do as well.
00:14:32
Speaker
am an assistant professor in the Department of Child Development at Humboldt State. I have a PhD in education with a designated emphasis in indigenous language revitalization from UC Berkeley. So both my personal and political and passions and academic work really do come together, which definitely have tensions, but have the same kind of driving force of really wellness and wholeness and fostering that for Indigenous youth broadly. And then specifically, i think, more focused at looking at Nautinokwe, Hupa youth.
00:15:08
Speaker
through language resurgence, through but epistemological resurgence of lifeways, of practices, of relationships, of, you know, relationships to people, but also to land and other beings and things like that.
00:15:22
Speaker
And so I come at that really from a lineage of being the direct result of speaking English, right? That I'm speaking English and not, not in English, because of colonialism and because of colonial policies of schooling, right? That it was these boarding school institutions that led to me not speaking the Hupa language fluently.
00:15:45
Speaker
And so always aiming to kind of do that resurgence work and doing that specifically with children. my purpose is to work with language, teaching and working with children to speak Kupal language. And so to bring those things back together and repair in whatever ways I can, those ties that colonialism continually attempts to sever.
00:16:04
Speaker
And you get at this just talking about boarding schools and the relationships of colonization to language. And you and I met in school as well. So we have a pretty interesting history of both analyzing some of these histories that you've just engaged together.
00:16:23
Speaker
And then also right before COVID hit, thinking about ways in which we could collaborate on some of our work around wellness, around young people, and around particular forms of indigeneity. And so i'm hoping that you could talk a little bit more about your people's relationship to schooling and how particularly you and you as some representative of your community understand this project of US schooling.
00:16:52
Speaker
Definitely. So just a little more background because I'm sure a lot of folks don't know where Hupa is. So Hupa is in far Northern California, about two hours south of the Oregon border and about an hour inland from the coast.
00:17:06
Speaker
but That's where I grew up on the Indian reservation there.
Challenges in Hupa Education
00:17:10
Speaker
And as I mentioned, our kind of language in the standard way of thinking about language and language endangerment would be seen as highly endangered because we do at this moment have so few first language speakers and those speakers are not actively passing that on to children.
00:17:28
Speaker
And so we enter that present day through direct ties to schooling and our relationship to schooling. And so because of our location in what is known as the United States, we really were one of the last Indigenous communities in this place to be heavily influenced by settlers. And so I'll give you a little bit of a counter example to that.
00:17:52
Speaker
My mother's people in Long Island, New York, that's, you know, really heavy colonization settler contact in the 1600s, where in Hoopa, we're talking about after the gold rush, so the 1850s. So we're really talking about 200 years difference than other places in what we call the U.S. today.
00:18:12
Speaker
And so because of that, we did have a lot of time to continue our traditional practices of knowledge transmission, right?
00:18:22
Speaker
Our traditional ways of passing on knowledge through elders, through the land, to our younger generations. So it was after these initial boarding school policies in the US that first started Hoopa unofficially that hey, we're going to make this school, all you Native people need to send your kids to the school.
00:18:45
Speaker
And nobody did, right? They were like, why would I send my kids to this place? I need to stay home. And we've done these processes literally for thousands of years of knowledge transmission. So why would I send my children to this place?
00:18:58
Speaker
But then in the latter part of the eighteen hundreds Settlers are starting to be frustrated that Hupa people are still Hupa people and they're not becoming, quote unquote, civilized in the ways that we want. And so we need to make these boarding schools mandatory and to not give families a choice.
00:19:13
Speaker
So literally going to homes and ripping children away from their families. My grandmother was taken to Riverside, California, to the Riverside boarding school, which is hundreds of miles away from our traditional territory. And so not only taking the child away from their family, but also the physical land so that they're completely separated from their family, who they are and that relationship to land and kinship.
00:19:40
Speaker
So she was taken away to Riverside. My grandfather went to a boarding school that was a little closer, probably like 50 miles away from Hoopa, but still that kind of taking away from the people.
00:19:52
Speaker
My aunt always tells this really great story about how when her great grandmother was in her house, right, all of a sudden these government agents come and say, we're going to take your daughter away.
00:20:06
Speaker
and she says, no, you're not. And she literally picks them up and throws them over the fence. that refusal of you are absolutely not taking my daughter to this institution. And so really as a direct result of that refusal, my aunt is able to continue to speak Hupa and then continue to pass that on to me and pass that on to other folks.
00:20:24
Speaker
And so having this violent relationship to schooling, schooling becoming mandatory and schooling really positioning being Hupa as a problem, that definitely takes place in the boarding schools.
00:20:38
Speaker
There was a boarding school in Hupa as well. And so there's stories of people that went to the boarding school in Hupa that talk about punishment for speaking Hupa. They had a basement at the bottom of the school that they would call a jail where they would put you if you spoke Hupa language. And so being criminalized, right, for being Hupa and speaking Hupa.
00:20:58
Speaker
And you can literally to this day see the physical indentation on the land on a reservation of where this quote unquote jail was for speaking Hupa language.
00:21:10
Speaker
And so we all in our community know this history and live it, right? That these are literally my parents' parents. So it's really not that far away. I think folks like to talk about, you know, this was such a long time ago and the black and white pictures and all those kinds of things, but it really wasn't that long ago.
00:21:26
Speaker
And there are folks today that, you know, this was their parents as well. think a lot of educators are aware of the history of boarding schools and kind of a general idea of what they were and what they did.
00:21:37
Speaker
But then that's kind of where the critique stops, right? That it's like boarding schools were these terrible things and then everything was great. And you know Native people could be Native people and schools really loved Native children and wanted the best for Native children. And so if Native children aren't performing in the ways that they want, then that's their problem, right? They're the deficit, they're the issue.
00:21:59
Speaker
And so you can still see that continuation of the underlying structure of schooling, positioning the Hoopa child as the problem, which then plays out in higher rates of punishment through suspension, expulsion, all those kinds of things, criminalization.
00:22:16
Speaker
And really not giving students any type of opportunity to do well in a classroom, to feel welcome in the classroom, even though the school is literally in Hupa.
00:22:27
Speaker
There is in the average kind of classroom, you're going to get a white teacher who is really not going to even recognize that they're in Hupa and the significance of that. And so even being in Hupa, that curriculum and that privileging of white knowledge still really happens today. and so my aunt is really a great example of that and the continuation of that logic because she went to school right after the conversion of the boarding school to the public school and still has stories of teachers is kicking her out of class, calling her stupid for speaking the language, still criminalizing that, positioning her as a problem and her really having you know a bad time in school because of that,
00:23:09
Speaker
And we can see everyday examples of that as well, of students being suspended for saying one or two phrases in their Hupa language. Elders have actively fought to get the language in the school in whatever capacity we could get it there. And so we do have some really ornamental amounts of language in the school, but really not enough to actually learn and be able to speak and to really tap into the power and semantics of understanding those relationships to, you know, one another through the super way of thinking.
00:23:42
Speaker
And so I think because of this is the kind of common discourse among everyone is yes, boarding schools are bad, but now everything is better. There really is a mixture of some folks saying no school is really still bad, still does these same things, still operates in these same logics.
00:23:59
Speaker
But on the other hand, there are other folks who are like, well, you know, you made it right, pointing to me as a quote unquote success story to have gone through and made it through.
00:24:10
Speaker
So it's not the structure, it's the individual students not performing in the ways that they need to.
Hupa Language Revitalization Efforts
00:24:15
Speaker
So I think it really is that's part of What my work has been is starting that conversation through folks. And so that's what my dissertation work was talking to people. What has this thing called schooling been for our people?
00:24:28
Speaker
What is it today? How do we understand this? And based off of all of this, what do we want it to be? Because no one ever asked us, right, that that's the continuation of outside forces coming in and telling us this is what you need to learn. This is how you have to learn it.
00:24:43
Speaker
And so i think collectively folks know that this institution of schooling is something that is against who we are, but we have to have a much more nuanced conversation about the continuation of colonization through these things in much more subtle, sneaky ways that the policy on the surface says, yes, you can have Hupa language classes, but if you treat the Hupa language teachers like crap and you don't give them a classroom and you're expecting them to teach 300 kids, then that's continuing that logic of suppressing the language.
00:25:17
Speaker
What are your larger goals with this work that you're doing with young people and why are you doing it? I started really on this path, I think, in high school of folks in my community just saying, hey, like, I think you should work with language. I think you should work with kids.
00:25:32
Speaker
And so part of my undergrad work was okay, you know, our people have made all of this space in whatever ways we can in the school through these language programs at the elementary as well as the high school.
00:25:48
Speaker
I took Hoopa language from kindergarten to high school. I'm not fluent. And so what's the disconnect here? Right. We have these programs and we were told if we have these programs, then we'll start speaking. But we don't. And we're really continue to be absent the majority of the time from curriculum and instruction in that space.
00:26:09
Speaker
And so then i said, well, what else do we do? Like, what have other communities done that have had much more transformation and success in the ways that they've approached teaching and learning and things like that? So I looked towards Maori people in New Zealand. I looked towards other communities in the US s and Canada who were able to create their own institutions and spaces of learning through their languages and through their traditional ways of teaching and learning.
00:26:42
Speaker
There are always barriers to that too, getting in the nuance of things. But this model, this underlying model of immersion in language and in Indigenous life ways really proved to be successful to other communities.
00:26:57
Speaker
And so that's part of what my writing was. And then some of my mentors said, okay, that's great. You wrote all this stuff, but like, you should just do it. And i was like, what, like, what does that mean? They're like, just do it, just start doing this work with kids.
00:27:13
Speaker
Again, I'm not fluent and I definitely was not even close to being fluent at that point. But I did know something, right? And there were other people around my age range, my sister and cousins and other relatives who loved the language, miss doing language, and wanted to pass that on to our children. And so I just said, hey, you know, they're saying like, these models work, let's see if it'll work for us.
00:27:39
Speaker
So then we did ah week long and we we didn't know what we were doing. And so we didn't want to actively recruit other people's kids. So we literally just worked with nieces and nephews and people's kids, like, you know, my cousin's kids and things like that of just speaking Hoopa as much as we could and fumbling through it in whatever ways that we needed to, but really making that space to honor the language in a way that hadn't happened in a really long time in the community.
00:28:04
Speaker
And in doing that, we, tabulated the amount of hours that they got in that week to what they would get in the entire year in the school system. And it was double that. But in this week of just dedicating that time, they got double than what they would get at the school system.
00:28:22
Speaker
And so that was really successful. And from that, just doing that work with Hoopa children of just being Hoopa and on the land and playing games and being in the language,
00:28:33
Speaker
was so powerful and beautiful and affirming for me of like this is it like this is my thing the writing is fine and i can do that to get the resources but this is really where the work is and it was only a week right and that was my winter break i was across the country in new york after that all the kids were like when are we doing this again when are we doing this again when are we doing this again And I didn't live in the area and I didn't have the capacity to follow up in those ways. And so knowing what it sparked in them and not being able to follow up in that was really hard for me. And so knowing that that's really what I wanted to eventually do. But when I did it, I had to be ready and being able to follow up.
00:29:20
Speaker
So then that was part of the decision and coming back to California for grad school and then starting this work again, feeling more comfortable in, okay, this is successful. Kids love it. We love it. It it really is just as powerful transformational thing for all of us, a healing thing for all of us.
00:29:38
Speaker
Then being able to start working with my aunt and a lot of folks doing linguistics work, asking her, how do you say this? How do you say this? How do you say this? What is the grammatical particle that goes in this place?
00:29:50
Speaker
which is fine, but that doesn't lead to Indigenous life. That doesn't lead to the life of the language. And so i wanted to actively show her everything that you're teaching me, everything that we work on, I'm trying to bring to life again with our children and knowing that I have limited capability in my lifetime to do things. But if we make this active investment in youth, then I think that that can go on much longer.
00:30:16
Speaker
So then within the past couple of years, a grant opportunity presented itself and it was like, okay, we're going to do this now. And we feel more comfortable about our approaches. My sister became the education director. And so we had some more institutional support in the tribe that we didn't have before.
00:30:32
Speaker
So we did it. We did recruit in the community and i think we had maybe 20 kids starting with five and six year olds and thinking about not just translating you know English games or regular school curriculum like the kindergarten standards or something like that, but to start from a hoopla place.
00:30:53
Speaker
And so we started to base our work around traditional stories. connecting those philosophies and those Hupa theories to language and getting that to children. And so that's when we started to, I think, really make that transformational move of not just language resurgence, but really the resurgence of Hupa life.
00:31:13
Speaker
And then just building from there so that camp became an annual thing, continuing work with that same group of kids, that original group who are now think gonna be nine and 10 this summer, and then adding other classes of five and six year olds.
00:31:27
Speaker
And then the next step is to move toward kind of a month of being able to work with folks, understanding our limited resources, our limited time that we have to do stuff and not wanting to overtax the kids too because they still have to go to school, right? And so summer is supposed to be this time of rest and you know whatever freedom they can get to do what they want to do.
00:31:53
Speaker
And so not trying to pile more school on them. How do we make this a space that is not school, that is affirming it can be restful and regenerative for them.
00:32:05
Speaker
So that's really what we've been building towards and just kind of continuing to build more and more and to not try to take on too much. I think if I could, if I felt like we were ready tomorrow, i would open up a space that, you know, the children don't have to go to school anymore, but that's a lot easier said than done, right? That there are all of these different layers of things of resources, time requirements, accreditation.
00:32:33
Speaker
We don't want our kids to be criminalized for not going to school to be in this other space. And so trying to make, I think, ethical movements of expansion and growth in a way that we can maintain the transformative and important pieces without you know losing our original intent and goal and really focusing again on the kind of wholeness and wellness of Hupa children.
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah, and i really appreciate this idea of how you just modeled this process. Because i think sometimes when we have these visions for what we're called to do sometimes I think we believe that it, as you said, should be ready to go as this program that has the funding, has the practitioners.
00:33:15
Speaker
And it's really powerful just to hear that you started with your family. Well, a lot of this is in your community, surrounded by people who know and love the children.
00:33:26
Speaker
who who they're working with. Sounds like there's a lot of effort on adults to find these resources that are necessary to eventually sustain this work. I heard a lot about responding to youth voice and youth need.
00:33:41
Speaker
They said, where is it? And that kind of propelled your urgency. So this episode, we're really looking at ideal conditions for youth wellness. And so before i heard a lot about, as you talked about schooling and really synonymously, I heard a lot about trauma.
00:33:57
Speaker
it seemed as if a lot of what you were saying was around schooling being antithetical to wellness. But when I hear about your work and what you're doing, it seems to be generating and curating really important conditions for wellness. And I'm wondering if you can talk about how it is that your work actually curates these conditions and what do you think are the most ideal conditions for youth wellness?
00:34:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the things you mentioned around finding folks that already loved our kids and not like a weird, I love old children kind of love, but an active investment in their long-term well-being and that relationship of reciprocity and believing what they say and taking that serious and knowing that, you know, us as adults have all gone through, you know, I went to Columbia, my sister went to Stanford, one of our other folks went to Stanford and really had gone through this traumatizing colonial
Cultural Frameworks in Education
00:34:57
Speaker
schooling. And so we have to unlearn a lot of stuff too.
00:35:00
Speaker
And we are continually unlearning. This showed up a lot around discipline and like accountability. We would have a child running around the space and we're trying to do this lesson and they're running around and just doing these different things, which would be read as disruptive in the school and instantly be removed the child from the space. They're being disruptive. They're being defiant. They're being all these things, again, positioning it as a problem instead of, hey, what's going on you know with this individual child? What do they need? Can we have this conversation with them around you know what's going on? what do you need?
00:35:37
Speaker
I think one of the ways that this really came through and really speaks to the importance and centrality of the language is the language really does give us an alternative framework to understanding relationships and responses to things.
00:35:54
Speaker
Say a child is mad in a school system and your automatic response is, this child is mad, how do I get them to calm down? What are the things that I need to do to get this child to calm down? And what are the things that they need to do to calm down?
00:36:07
Speaker
In natin huay mechane huay and way to say mad is that my spirit is hurt. That requires a completely different response, right? It is not how can i calm this child down?
00:36:20
Speaker
What is the root of the hurt? And how do we start to do that repair work around that? Letting the child really guide and let us know this happened. And this is why I'm responding in this way. How can we set up things in a different way and begin to do that work of healing and So I think of also another example of a student that there's the school on the reservation, but then there's also a school within the district that is seen as a quote unquote better school because it has more white students. And so it has more resources and it has all of these other things.
00:36:53
Speaker
And so some people go to that school. And so this particular student went to that school. And there was a Indian Day celebration. And so a lot of folks from the community were able to come in and do a presentation around traditional songs and ceremonies of the local tribes.
00:37:10
Speaker
and she's really ceremonially active and so she like loved that and had a great day and really liked the presentation. And then you go from the like assembly space to the classroom space and some of her white peers were making fun of those songs like to her and just mocking them in all of these different ways.
00:37:29
Speaker
And instead of the teacher really doing anything about it, she just said, oh, you know, kind of waved it off. And so that was super traumatic, obviously, to the child, not only in the immediate moment of these white students doing this thing, but really a denial from the students and the teacher of her existence.
00:37:49
Speaker
These songs are really central to who she is and how she places herself in the world. And these people are out here making fun of her. And so there was that example. And so she came to our camps and because she was at this other school, she didn't have as much Hupa language instruction time there as she would have when she was in Hupa. So she hadn't done Hupa language in a while.
00:38:09
Speaker
And so she was feeling really nervous because then we have this original class of students that we had been following. So we've had them for you know three years. And so she was feeling kind of self-conscious, like, do I remember Hupa? Like, I don't really know.
00:38:22
Speaker
And so bringing her back in of like, yes, you do. And this is who you are. And it's not a space to feel guilt or self-conscious about, but this is yours to kind of take up in whatever ways that you need to.
00:38:35
Speaker
And one of the pedagogical approaches that we use is singing. teaching language through singing and teaching relationships through language. We song about emotions and checking in on one another and how are you feeling today?
00:38:49
Speaker
You could tell at first she was really shy and reluctant to participate, but by the end of the day, her face lit up and she was singing really loud and really enjoying herself. So after that day, she made a comment to her mom who then related that back to me that this was so fun.
00:39:05
Speaker
School would be so much more fun if we could just sing and do hoopla language all day. I feel so happy. i haven't felt this happy in a long time. And so I didn't know that story about what had happened to her at school. But later when I was able to follow up with the family, the mom told me, you know, she had this experience.
00:39:22
Speaker
And so I think that really does highlight that antithetical trauma and complete disregard and disrespect of Indigenous lifeways, specifically around songs in the school, and it really being the central pedagogical approach and everything that we do really being singing and affirmation of who we are as Hoopa people in Hoopa, in the space that we try to create through our programs.
00:39:49
Speaker
For this particular child, it seems as if when they were with you, they were seen as sacred. and significant and is a part of a body or a community of people with purpose and power. And it seemed like the kind of its juxtaposition of their time in school, they particularly in this setting were definitely isolated and um really was polar opposites of what they're experiencing with you. mean, the other really powerful aspect that I'm hearing is a lot of just this passing down of medicine and wisdom through
00:40:28
Speaker
your processes and practices of language revitalization.
Holistic Care in Indigenous Education
00:40:31
Speaker
And then I think this other part that was really powerful, I think sometimes it's seen as like extracurricular is our children's happiness.
00:40:40
Speaker
And it's interesting to me because as a person who's been in schools for so long, I sometimes feel guilty when I am doing things that make me happy. Because there's language for it, like you're off track or you're not focused.
00:40:55
Speaker
It was so powerful to hear about that young person and saying, I would be so much happier if I could do this all the time. As we close there, I'm interested in whether or not you have certain final words that you want to share with our listeners, like what should they be walking away with, questioning, understanding, or even reconceptualizing about their work, particularly around wellness with young people.
00:41:22
Speaker
Part of what I wanted to get also with the framing around love too, is that not only do we have a love in these spaces for the children, but I think amongst the educators, we also have a love and support and responsibility to one another.
00:41:38
Speaker
You know, we talk about students being isolated, but if you think about, you know, indigenous educators or basically non-white educators. And so in this model, we really do love one another and love the language too, right? Like we love what we're teaching and we love how we're teaching it.
00:41:54
Speaker
We're not having to teach to whoever's outside standards, but really our standards are centered around wellness. Our standards are centered around happiness. for grants and things like that, they're like, what are your evaluation methods? And what are your outcomes? And what are all of your assessments and all of these things and this obsession around assessment that happens. And so my assessment, quote unquote, is really how is the child doing? Are they happy? Are they healthy?
00:42:25
Speaker
And thinking about healthy, you know, obviously mind, but the body pieces too, right? You know, we do yoga, we try to do like different breathing exercises and we feed them when they're hungry we feed them especially because folks rely on school lunches so often in the summer sometimes that's a gap that we fill but not only do we feed them but we feed them good foods we feed them good quality foods but hupa foods right we bring in elders to talk about traditional harvesting and we have them be a part of that process and so they get to see
00:43:00
Speaker
How do I, you know, grind acorns? How do I make acorn soup? How do I cook fish traditionally? And being able to eat that and and feel good about that process through the language and through all of those different things.
00:43:13
Speaker
Thinking about ideal conditions for Indigenous children more broadly, I think it really depends, right? Like I think that I work with my own community for a specific reason because I know them and I love them and i definitely have a lot of kind of unlearning work to do, but have that investment and connection long-term there.
00:43:34
Speaker
Recently I've been doing, it's been really interesting trainings with, largely white teachers in the county of schools that I know are notoriously racist to Indigenous children and really schools that I had my first encounters with racism through sporting events and things like that going to these spaces.
00:43:55
Speaker
And so it's really interesting now to kind of be doing these trainings around having them understand this colonial context and their place in it that they, you know, whether or not they want to believe it, they really are a piece of this.
00:44:09
Speaker
which isn't to say that non-Indigenous spaces can really foster wellness for Indigenous children. i don't know the answer to that question, but I do think they can and should actively work against making it more violent, right?
00:44:23
Speaker
And so part of that is just being very honest about, I'm inheriting this colonial institution. And so by me not questioning the curriculum, by me not questioning my disciplinary policies for Indigenous students,
00:44:39
Speaker
by me not questioning the absence of indigenous knowledge and language in my classroom. I'm continuing to reinforce these things. And so I think the context of whether it's being able to do this deeper work of wellness with our own communities versus kind of mitigating some of that violence because our kids still are there, right? We do have to have that conversation of, yes, we want to divest from this structure of schooling, but where are our kids?
00:45:09
Speaker
So what is the kind of meantime work that we need to do? And and that's how I feel too of, again, i would love to pull all the, you know, Native kids out of school tomorrow, but what am I going to do? And am I ready to kind of take that on? And so,
00:45:24
Speaker
doing whatever work I can in a really deep and meaningful way and then trying to mitigate that damage along the way because they do still have to be in these schools. And so how can I, as someone who does have this social capital now of being a professor, kind of have those conversations with folks and there are Hupa and indigenous teachers, I think, who have been doing this work in their classrooms as much as they can.
Community-Specific Wellness Approaches
00:45:50
Speaker
so I think, you know, thinking about those contexts for wellness is definitely place and time specific. And so just kind of thinking about what it means for a broader audience of where are you in relation to the people, to the place, and what are you willing to do or not do?
00:46:08
Speaker
And if you're not willing to kind of go against what's been happening, then maybe you shouldn't be there. Maybe you need to go somewhere else.
00:46:17
Speaker
Thank you so much, Sarah, for jumping in with us today and blessing us with your grace, your power and your presence. Thank you for having me.
00:46:35
Speaker
Sarah reminds us that our investments in education should not be conflated with investments in schools. And that our moves toward wellness and specifically youth wellness must continue to disentangle the two.
00:46:52
Speaker
Allison continues this conversation with a reflection on mentorship, slowness and grief as vital components
Allison's Journey Through Grief and Acceptance
00:47:00
Speaker
within this differentiation process.
00:47:12
Speaker
So I'll start off by saying I'm super nervous to do this and I'm actually really used to being vulnerable in sharing my wellness journey and my practices and usually doesn't scare me much but today i feel particularly nervous. And I'll say that I think I've been feeling this nervousness for about two years.
00:47:38
Speaker
I've been struggling with my grief and especially my mourning. But I felt like the need to talk about this work. And then what I mean by work, I mean my work in grief, my work in mourning and my work for myself.
00:47:52
Speaker
And I felt like it would be important to share that with people. I think a lot of people know me in different ways, and this might be a different version of Alison today. And so I'm hoping that people will lend me grace.
00:48:05
Speaker
And that's kind of my theme for today too. I have a friend that some of you might know, his name is Jeff Duncan Andrade. And in a conversation with some of the teachers that we're working with, he was talking about this thing called the bridge between grief and grace.
00:48:25
Speaker
And he said that bridge was acceptance. And that's kind of my theme for today's podcast is really thinking about the notion of acceptance in this notion of grief and grace.
00:48:38
Speaker
So the three dedications of this presentation are all in memory of my ancestors, but today I wanna speak about three ancestors. Dr. Dawn Bujulano Mabalon, Professor Ramon Quesada, and my grandmother Inay Agrippina Mendoza-Gose.
00:48:58
Speaker
So this podcast, this moment right now, I'm kind of focusing on the notion of eulogies. I guess I've kind of gotten good at it. And so there's something really powerful about writing ah about a person's life, legacy, and what they meant to people who loved them.
00:49:19
Speaker
And so I decided that I'm going to share some eulogies today, including my own, and I'll start there. Last April, during Poetry Month, I decided to write a eulogy about me, but this time it was about focusing on my imposter's self.
00:49:39
Speaker
The Imposter's Eulogy in Progress. On the morning of the 11th day of this month, the 11th is significant, actually. It's the day after 10th.
00:49:51
Speaker
the day after my best friend passed. But this eulogy is not about Dawn. So on the morning of the 11th day of this month, I woke up and I mourned her.
00:50:02
Speaker
Her passing was not an accident. It was intentional, purposeful, and came at a time already filled with immense grief. But this is the right moment.
00:50:14
Speaker
She's been wanting to die for quite some time and only holding on because she was waiting for me to let go. I can't exactly remember when we met. I think it might have been in elementary school when we would compare ourselves to the popular girls with golden hair, sky blue eyes and perfect lives.
00:50:35
Speaker
Or it could have been in middle school when teachers realized we weren't part of the model minority. Maybe that's when the inferiority set in. But I do remember when we reconnected in high school, when we became cheerleaders, we finally got into the in crowd.
00:50:52
Speaker
Well, I thought we were in the in crowd, but in actuality, we learned how to play the in game, but we never had home court advantage. I will say that I believe we became best friends while attending community college, got even closer when we transferred to UC Berkeley, and were the closest we'd ever been while getting a PhD at UCLA.
00:51:18
Speaker
But it didn't end there. She came with me to SF State, And then was my role dog and all my pursuits and even my defeats. A lifetime together, she was always there for me, maybe more than I was there for her.
00:51:32
Speaker
I watched her most vulnerable to her most guarded interactions with herself. She feared success as much as she feared failure. Worst was her fear of disappointment.
00:51:45
Speaker
She lived a life of struggle. And there were times when all I could do was bear witness in silence. I remember she would walk into a room, almost any room, the story would repeat itself.
00:51:58
Speaker
She would look around, her stomach would turn, her chest would tighten. She harnessed all her power not to faint, to refocus. She would use her imaginary checkoff list.
00:52:10
Speaker
noting people's credentials, accomplishments, the people they knew, the list of events they would attend, the list of conferences they would present, the number of protests they would lead, the number of accolades they would receive.
00:52:26
Speaker
She would do this till it became crystal clear that she could never do enough. She could never be enough. And people could never see her as enough.
00:52:36
Speaker
She lived in the shadow of men, shadows of all the men in her life, men that she loathed and men that she loved. Their shadows, whether or not intentional, were insurmountable and institutional, so much so that she accepted her place and apologized on their behalf.
00:52:58
Speaker
She would make excuses about why people would listen to them and not her. She would make excuses for why they got the recognition that she so often deserved. But it wasn't just about men.
00:53:11
Speaker
It was also about those women. who thought they were better than her or sometimes threatened her or would go out of their way to compete with her. There were even times when she would play along and compare herself to them.
00:53:25
Speaker
In her mind, there was always a better mom, wife, sister, daughter, cousin, teacher, scholar than her. She never felt smart enough, pretty enough, fit enough, cool enough, down enough, generous enough, self-sacrificing enough, never good enough.
00:53:41
Speaker
But let's not blame the victim in her passing. Despite being birthed from the intimacy between imperialism and capitalism, she was raised in patriarchy. She lived through neoliberal times of post-colonial residue.
00:53:56
Speaker
She was a devout believer in Bahalanah. She practiced the culture of hiyah and was the enabler of all kinds of dominating and consuming fragility.
00:54:07
Speaker
But it wasn't her fault. That's who she was taught to be. Despite all of this, she was my armor and my bolo knife, my protector and confidant.
00:54:22
Speaker
All at the same time, she knew all my demons by their first name and all my colonizers by their last. She knew all my secrets and my dreams, and she knew how I wanted to be seen, how I wanted to be heard, and she taught me how to fake it till I make it.
00:54:39
Speaker
I will always have nostalgic memories of our adventures in academia, in our activist circles, or even in the art world. All of the above, she and I struggled through it all.
00:54:52
Speaker
I never went anywhere without her because she gave me comfort. It was clear to me that most people didn't know you like I did. Today, I give back myself the grace that was stolen from me.
00:55:08
Speaker
I celebrate my life with you, even if there were unbearable moments of pain. Our history is embedded in pain plus love equals growth.
00:55:20
Speaker
But our relationship has evolved to become pain plus love plus reflection equals liberation. And in this liberation, i embrace you, my imposter, because now you are my ancestor too.
00:55:34
Speaker
I will mourn you. i will love you. ah will have conversations with you through the wind, and I will hear your teachings. Although I will miss you dearly, imposter, rest assured, I will never forget you.
00:55:48
Speaker
And no matter how long it's been since you've passed, you will always be with me. Goodbye, my friend, until we meet again.
00:55:59
Speaker
don't know if I've read it like that before, where it's like the whole thing. So I hope that that was clear. And I hope that it told you a little more about me.
00:56:11
Speaker
A friend of mine, Rachel Paras, who is the, i think, the creator of Radical Embrace, she said, i am holding on the thought, today i give myself grace.
00:56:26
Speaker
I feel like I have to say that to myself all the time or else i will be swallowed by the grief, to be quite honest.
00:56:38
Speaker
This thing of imposter syndrome is kind of funny because it has followed me everywhere. And as you can see through my poem eulogy, that it is really with me still and that it is something that I'm going to struggle with. And I think I've really just allowed myself the grace and forgiven myself for feeling it.
00:56:59
Speaker
Just so we know, imposter syndrome is this idea of severe inadequacy or self-doubt. And sometimes people feel like they're a fraud. People who have it are always scared that they're going to get outed or people are going to figure out who they really are.
00:57:15
Speaker
Although this is often referred to being in people's work context, for some of us it's in all parts of our lives. The feelings of being an imposter show up in our educational experiences, our community interactions, our service providing, and even in our activism.
00:57:33
Speaker
It can even be present in our family responsibilities and our relationships with ourselves. Imposter syndrome can also be reproduced and imposed on others through the projection of self-doubt, practices of self-deprecation, and we know very closely the notion of oppression Olympics and even woke Olympics.
00:57:55
Speaker
But the imposter should not be the blame for the syndrome. That's my main point here. It's often rooted in hegemonic systems of oppression and powers, systems like white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism, and capitalism.
00:58:12
Speaker
We embody these systems and they manifest into colonial mentality, self-hate, and of course, imposter syndrome. This can be the root cause for stress, anxiety, and depression for some of us.
00:58:26
Speaker
The feelings of being an imposter are isolating and overwhelming and when unattended can be consuming and for some of us life-threatening. So it means a lot for me to say that today my imposter has passed away and in some ways committed suicide.
00:58:46
Speaker
This is most significant because it takes a lot of courage to do that. It's a courageous moment in my life, the courage to mourn my imposter self.
Balancing Legacy and Personal Identity
00:58:57
Speaker
And to me, this is an act of self-love.
00:59:01
Speaker
So when I think about all of this, I think about Dawn because I feel like it's important to note that this was not a eulogy for Dawn, but this was a eulogy for a part of me that had to die with her.
00:59:15
Speaker
It had to. Because she was the one who told my story. She was the one who held the ba'on. She was the one who held my courage. And I had to take all of those things back when she passed.
00:59:29
Speaker
And I had to be responsible for myself. Some people would say this is like schools. Where at some point schools have to die and you need to take responsibility for your own education.
00:59:44
Speaker
And in many ways, that's how I see this connection. this grieving for Dawn. I love Dawn. I love, and I still continue to love her and I miss her every single day.
00:59:56
Speaker
But I know that I still have to live and I still have to figure things out for myself. And it has not been that easy. Her passing was so public.
01:00:09
Speaker
People who loved Dawn, her family, me, my family, she helped raise my own child. She was like our sister.
01:00:21
Speaker
We mourned her. We grieved for her. The community grieved for her. Even people who didn't know her grieved for her.
01:00:34
Speaker
The hardest part about all of that was that oftentimes I felt like I had to hold other people's grieving because she was my best friend.
01:00:46
Speaker
And still till this day,
01:00:49
Speaker
And i feel like the heaviness of all of that has been consuming and sometimes has not allowed me to do my own grieving.
01:01:00
Speaker
So I'm still working through that. I'm still feeling all kinds of stuff. I think what i want people to understand about my grief is I need my time and I need my space and I'm knocked on.
01:01:16
Speaker
She was such a powerful force in our community, but i I'm not her. And I think sometimes people think that I need to pick up the pieces where she left off.
01:01:33
Speaker
And that has been hard for me because she did hold a lot of my strength, but she also held my insecurities because when i struggled, she would pick things up for me.
01:01:47
Speaker
And the hardest part about the mourning or the grief at this time is that I don't always know how to pick up the pieces that she left.
01:01:59
Speaker
And i also have a lot of pieces that I have to carry on my own in my own life. Things that are hard for me to hear. Important.
01:02:10
Speaker
When people say to me things like, wow, Dawn is really speaking through you. It's hard because i it makes me feel like I don't have my own voice sometimes.
01:02:23
Speaker
or when people say, I wish Don was here. Usually after something I didn't do perfectly or that I didn't do the way they wanted me to do.
01:02:35
Speaker
and and to me, that's hard to hear because of course I want Don to be here. ah do. But I also feel like sometimes it's important to recognize that I'm also still here. 2018 was a tough year for me, folks.
01:02:53
Speaker
Don's passing wasn't the only passing that year. i also lost my mentor, the one for without him, i would not be in the position or any of the positions that I'm in.
01:03:06
Speaker
His name was Ramon Quesada. And people often ask me why i decided to become a teacher. And I have all kinds of fun answers, but to be quite honest, I had a lot of teachers who hated me and that's why I became a teacher.
01:03:23
Speaker
And I also had one teacher who loved me. So I wasn't the best student in high school. I didn't do what I was supposed to do, or at least what my teachers told me to do. i was very distracted. i didn't like school and school didn't like me.
01:03:39
Speaker
I can laugh about it now, but it was painful back then. I struggled. I spent a lot of time hanging out in the parking lot at the school versus in class.
01:03:50
Speaker
I loved actually going to school because I loved seeing people and hanging out and all that stuff. But the minute I would be in a classroom sitting in a desk, I would completely shut down.
01:04:04
Speaker
And so I didn't do well. I often blame myself for that, not realizing what kind of systems were embedded in the schooling system.
01:04:15
Speaker
And I didn't do well. So I ended up having to go to night school and summer school for a couple of years, just so I could graduate high school. I graduated high school with a 1.8 GPA, 1.83. I should put the three there.
01:04:28
Speaker
It's important. Pushed me over the edge. I graduated though. I got to walk with my friends, wear the gown. play with the beach ball in the stands.
01:04:39
Speaker
We drank in the stands. We had all kinds of fun graduation. yeah, it was worth the night school and summer school. But I mean, I graduated and I thought from that point, i didn't know what to do with my life. I really just wanted to be a dancer and i didn't know what to do.
01:04:54
Speaker
But my mom and dad told me that I had to go to college. This was a thing, right? You have to go to college.
01:05:02
Speaker
Some people think that Filipino parents say that to have their children gain a better life. And I think that part of it was, yeah, about getting a better life or gaining a better life or um becoming somebody in the world.
01:05:18
Speaker
But my parents are really practical. They said the reason why I needed to go to college was because i needed to get health insurance.
Educational Turning Points for Allison
01:05:28
Speaker
In my family, health insurance was gold.
01:05:32
Speaker
My dad was a janitor at Kaiser Permanente, the hospital. And so to get health insurance on my dad's plan, I needed to take 12 units at a college.
01:05:45
Speaker
And so that's what I did. i ended up going to Ohlone Community College. Ohlone, yes, like the land that we're on.
01:05:54
Speaker
And i think about how significant that was, that moment, the decision to go to community college. Because really I wanted to just be a dancer, maybe get a job, you know, do some stuff out in the world. But if it wasn't for attending Ohlone College, I really would not be the person I have become.
01:06:15
Speaker
I landed in this class because the counselor said to take transferable courses. So I landed in a transferable course called the Introduction to Ethnic Studies.
01:06:27
Speaker
It was taught by a Chicano studies professor. i remember distinctly when he walked into the room, this big Chicano dude with a low voice, and he went in there and he told us on the very first day of class, he said, all of you, especially you, the darker you are all of you have experienced racism.
01:06:49
Speaker
And he goes, let me just be sure. How many of you experienced racism, right? So he asked this question. And of course I did not raise my hand because I was like, didn't experience racism.
01:07:02
Speaker
I think back to that moment and how silly I must have looked. Most of the people were raising their hands, but I was like, nah, you know? And then he starts explaining what racism is, you know, like from basic stuff, like, you know, that we know now, you know, name calling, you know?
01:07:18
Speaker
Being treated a certain way because of the color of your skin, not being afforded the opportunities because of the color of your skin, not being allowed to live the kind of lives that are our birthright.
01:07:32
Speaker
And when he started explaining it, and i'm like, oh yeah, I guess I've been called names before, you know, like bonsai. I'm not even like, you know, Japanese, right? And like, I started saying things and I started remembering, you know, like moments.
01:07:48
Speaker
And I just remember getting emotional. I didn't cry. i didn't cry back then, you know, like, but I was feeling all kinds of different things and I started listening more. And then from this discussion on racism, you know, by mid semester, he was talking about imperialism and he was talking about all this stuff and these big words. And he's like, in this class, you're going to find your self-determination. and I'm like, whoa, what is this dude talking about? Right?
01:08:14
Speaker
And I just tried to listen. I just tried to be there. you know like We wrote this paper. This paper was assigned to us by him, of course. And it was about our experiences with racism. And so I wrote this paper and i kind of dabbled in poetry back then. And so i I threw him some poetry in there and I was not a traditional academic writer. i still am not.
01:08:37
Speaker
And I turned in the paper and the following week, He said to me, as I was walking in the door, he was like, Alison, I need to talk to you after class.
01:08:48
Speaker
I was like, oh shit. Every time a teacher would say that to me, I would be sent to the counselor or the principal or I'd be in trouble. And so I was like, okay, what did I do? And he said to me, look, and he handed me my paperback.
01:09:05
Speaker
And on the paper had this big letter A on it. And I was like, looking at him like, okay. And he's like, you got an A. And I'm like, thanks.
01:09:18
Speaker
Did not know how to react to him. And he's like, you're a good writer. I'm all, thank you you. know, so awkward around that. I'm still really awkward around accolades or any kind of compliments.
01:09:31
Speaker
Then he said, look, you have the potential to succeed. And I said, what are you talking about? And he's like, what are you going to do with your life? What are you doing here at a community college? Where is this all going to go?
01:09:43
Speaker
And I said, I don't know. He's like, do you want to transfer? what do you want to do? and he And I said, I really don't know. said, I really didn't think past today. and he was like, look, let me help you out.
01:09:55
Speaker
And so he basically walked me over to the EOP counselor at our community college. Her name was Maria Elena. And basically told her that I needed support.
01:10:09
Speaker
And from that point, then she helped me. And then she connected me to a counselor at this place called UC Berkeley, an affirmative action counselor.
01:10:22
Speaker
And then next thing you know, i get a phone call after applying to UC Berkeley and i was shocked because this woman called me and said, look, I want to let you know that you're going to go to UC Berkeley.
01:10:40
Speaker
And I said, what? And she's like, look, you're going to go to UC Berkeley. I said, oh, no, no, no, no. no i you know I just applied because my teacher told me to and my counselor said. and And she was like, you have to go to UC Berkeley because you got it.
01:10:53
Speaker
And it was complete shock because I thought of UC Berkeley as a place for smart people and I didn't really see myself as such. So i end up going to UC Berkeley with the help of Ramon Quesada, Maria Elena, and actually many other people.
01:11:09
Speaker
And from that place, I was like, okay, this place who I feel completely loss I needed to figure out, you know, who I was and this is where the imposter comes back in, you know, like I was feeling like, you know, like I needed to consistently fight my imposter self.
01:11:28
Speaker
And I often blame myself for not doing well sometimes. And i remember thinking back, you know, like the one thing that I know that I feel home in is this place called ethnic studies.
01:11:46
Speaker
So when I was at Ohlone, while I was with Ramon Quesada, we fought for ethnic studies at Ohlone. And then when we got to Berkeley, and I'm talking about me and my imposter self when I say we, we fought for ethnic studies at UC Berkeley.
01:12:01
Speaker
became a student activist. And then, of course, at UCLA, we had to do the same. And so i went on from Berkeley, went on to UCLA, and then also fought for ethnic studies. And that's really what my life is now. you know like Outside of my work as a professor, I guess as a professor, I'm still fighting for ethnic studies, but in the communities and also throughout the state and throughout the nation, I've been fighting for ethnic studies.
01:12:28
Speaker
And so that's my work. And I owe a lot of that to Quesada for inspiring that. But see, the the interesting thing about it is I could attribute it to him in terms of the content in which I teach, right?
01:12:44
Speaker
I can attribute this idea of my love for ethnic studies to Ramon Quesada. But what I think is really important to note is that Ramon Quesada didn't just...
01:12:58
Speaker
give me the love of ethnic studies. He allowed me the opportunity to learn how to love myself. And that's the part that sets him apart from people.
01:13:11
Speaker
Because he also taught me in the way that he approached me, in the way that he told me that I had the potential to succeed, he taught me the kind of teacher I wanted to become.
01:13:22
Speaker
Sure, I wanted to become an ethnic studies professor like him, But I wanted to be a professor that was loving, that told their students that they had the potential to succeed, and then helped them get where they wanted to go.
01:13:38
Speaker
To me, that's what I really learned from Ramon Quesada. And ah really thank him. Again, I'm so grateful that I had him in my life to not only show me that ethnic studies was what every child deserves, but also that every child deserves a teacher like that.
01:14:00
Speaker
A teacher who is not only going to teach them content, which I think is important, sure, but also to allow them space or spaces where young people or not so young people can learn to love themselves.
01:14:17
Speaker
So that was my second dedication, right? My first one was Don Mabalon, of course, Ramon Quesada. And then I have a third dedication.
01:14:29
Speaker
This one is the most recent. On September 7th, 2020, I lost my grandmother who was 101 years old.
01:14:41
Speaker
So going talk a little bit about my inai. This is a story about her resilience, and but that word resilience is sometimes funny to people. But I do want to say that her resilience is coupled with resistance.
01:14:54
Speaker
So my grandmother, i imagine as a mother scholar, and I like to say that I was raised by mother scholars. Important to say that. I also want to say that the line between life and death has become so much shorter in this time of crisis.
01:15:13
Speaker
As a mother scholar myself, everything is a lesson plan. Even during a time of tragedy of death, even in a time of mourning, even when we are quarantined in our homes, there is still wind, which means there are still lessons.
01:15:32
Speaker
I was raised by mother scholars, not the ones with PhDs, but the ones for whom generations have held our family together. The ones who identified and analyzed problems, the ones who created and implemented plans of action, the ones who held circles to discuss and reflect on our purpose and then start all over again the next day.
01:15:54
Speaker
They had their own revolutionary cycles, their own revolutionary praxis cycles that responded to their historical moments and raised and nurtured whole, resilient and resistant Pinays, who then created not only communities of resistance, but then communities of joy and love.
01:16:17
Speaker
These Pinays outlived the men in their lives. They sacrificed their minds, bodies, and souls just to ensure that we had food on our table, roof over our heads, and they were the ones who carried our teachings from generation to generation.
01:16:32
Speaker
Imagine Inai. She had nine children with my grandfather. Her first and her last sons were angels, Mariano and Angelito.
01:16:45
Speaker
They passed away when they were children, but both continued to live in her heart. Inai had the fortune of raising seven children to adulthood, including my mom. Tragically, my grandfather passed away at the age of 59 from a heart attack.
01:17:03
Speaker
And this broke my Inai's heart. Despite the pain that she felt losing Tatai, she knew that she had to be strong for her children. She, my mom, and my auntie, Marín, picked up where my tátai, my grandfather, left and worked to support their siblings.
01:17:23
Speaker
Imagine having to raise that many children after losing the love of your life. Like her mom and her aunties, Inai was fierce, strong, and resourceful.
01:17:37
Speaker
She never gave up. Prior to Tatai's passing, him and Inai supported my mom through college, and then my mom came here to the United States. Some attribute it to the Immigration and Reform Act of 1965. I attribute to my Inai.
01:17:55
Speaker
My mom was able to use her degree, sure. But it wasn't her degree that taught her how to be in the United States with courage. Immediately after my mom and dad became citizens, that's its own own process that I won't talk about today,
01:18:13
Speaker
They sponsored Inai to come to the US and in 1974 my grandmother came here and she was one of the people who raised me my entire childhood. She created a village within our own house and created a village, you know, like amongst my cousins and our community.
01:18:30
Speaker
The women in my family created communities of resilience and resistance and that's what I learned from them. And so not only am i professor or that I do scholarship, but I'm also part of this community called Pinay and Pinoy Educational Partnerships.
Allison's Advocacy in Ethnic Studies
01:18:47
Speaker
And I really have my grandmother and all of my aunties to thank because they helped me understand what I needed to create. And this thing called PEP is this community, this loving community of radical educators who are teaching ethnic studies to young people.
01:19:07
Speaker
And we say this often in pep, but they do it for free. This is a voluntary system that we have created because no one else would teach our children what they needed to know. So we had to do it ourselves.
01:19:20
Speaker
And so I think about that and the power in that. And I also think about the power in PEP because we don't teach alone. That's the one thing that I think that the way we've created schools to have singular teachers to me is one of the reasons why we have failed.
01:19:39
Speaker
Because in PEP, we teach in barangays. in teams of several people at a time. And there's something so powerful about teaching in that way.
01:19:52
Speaker
And also for students to see teachers teaching in communities. And so when I think about PEP, as I think about the love that Inai was able to share with all of us and teach us how to teach each other in our own household, that's what I see when I'm working with PEP.
01:20:11
Speaker
I feel like it's really important to think about that because even though I'm the founder of PEP and I'm one of the directors, they teach each other in PEP. And then they teach young people how to teach each other. And there's something very, very powerful about that.
01:20:26
Speaker
And so I dedicate my life with Pep to Inai. And I think about all the things, you know, like that I talked about in the podcast today, whether it be about Dawn and how she was able to bring out my courage, and how her passing also allowed me to write a eulogy for my imposter. And I think about Ramon Quesada and how he told me that I have the potential to succeed, and how he taught me not just about my ethnic or cultural identity, which I do think is important, he gave me a space to learn how to love myself.
01:21:03
Speaker
I had to teach myself how to love myself. So all of those things along with Inai creating spaces, spaces where people could love themselves and spaces in which we could teach ourselves and that leading to pep, all of these eulogies that I've shared with you today have really been moments of my transformation.
01:21:28
Speaker
In all of my stories of my ancestors that I mentioned today, Don Mabal and Ramon Quesada and Inay, I think the main learning in my grief was that although I relied on each of them to hold a part of my courage and grace, their passing has allowed me to see what I have in me.
01:21:46
Speaker
I've had the courage and grace all along. They just saw it and cared for it. And in many ways, I'm just learning to do that for myself.
Educational Practices for Youth Wellness
01:22:20
Speaker
Today's episode has attempted to lovingly and urgently remind us that any pedagogy, site or project that claims to center youth wellness was worked to ensure that every child is treated as a sacred being.
01:22:37
Speaker
The words of Antonia Darter and youth expert Cheyenne push us to move away from the practices that merely honor selected children, often those who conform to frameworks of whiteness.
01:22:51
Speaker
Their testimonies remind us that we are called to move toward practices and frameworks necessary to ensure that every child is seen as a blessing and valued for having a sacred purpose.
01:23:05
Speaker
The greater challenge, as Maestro Teo poses, is how do we see the sacredness in children who are different than us? Sarah's practices around youth language revitalization tap into what she calls ah resurgence of life waves.
01:23:23
Speaker
Her work reminds us that we all have wisdom and medicine that come from our cultures, our histories, and our people. And these wisdoms are grounded in thousands upon thousands of years of wisdom that's connected to the natural world and about connection to each other.
01:23:43
Speaker
And that our wellness and our young people's wellness must be bound intimately with these wisdoms. And finally, Allison's powerful testimony bounds many of our components of this episode around love, around language, and even pulls in our last episode around death and grief to remind us that grief is a language of love.
01:24:12
Speaker
Some would even suggest that grief is the final act of love. So Allison's words teach us of the fourth teaching for Maestro Tale toward the sustainability of youth wellness.
01:24:27
Speaker
And in order to achieve those ends, we must commit to the journey of ongoing healing, cleansing and rejuvenation. And so much of that must be dedicated to spending time to heal, grow, to learn and to give back.
01:24:48
Speaker
We learn from our elders that there's nothing wrong with our young people. That really their wellness is contingent upon our wellness.
Closing Thoughts on Education's Purpose
01:24:59
Speaker
And it's so many of these practices, whether was for Mrs. Flowers' intervention of Maya Angelou, or even Sarah's work around language revitalization,
01:25:10
Speaker
So much of this happened outside of schools and pushed us to really remember the difference between schooling and education. We see schooling as ah system of order or compliance that rewards how well we demonstrate, how we regurgitate the rules of white supremacy.
01:25:32
Speaker
And education is not this way to achieve upward mobility that pushes us to isolate ourselves as as a type of intellectual elite. But really we see education as a means to acquire the stories, the languages, the songs, the wisdom necessary to sustain ourselves.
01:25:56
Speaker
So as we close this episode, we return to a critical question that emerged in the previous episode. Is this education that we speak of, is it possible in the institution commonly known as schools?
01:26:15
Speaker
Are schools dead?
01:26:18
Speaker
We ask, what does it mean to love children in such a way in which we are willing to take seriously our grief over the failure and ultimately the death of schools?
01:26:34
Speaker
And what are we willing to move toward to ensure that all children are seen and treated as blessings? And how do we get there?
01:26:58
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode of Drawing from the Well. I'm your host, Tiffany Marie. This podcast was produced by John Reyes. Join us as we continue the conversation at youthwellness.com.