On July 9, Julisa Lopez, a member of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, will attend the first-ever White House Tribal Youth Gathering at the nation’s capitol. The all-day event will provide Native American youth from the contiguous U.S. to Alaska “the opportunity to interact directly with senior Administration officials and the White House Council on Native American Affairs,” according to a White House press release.
The gathering is an outgrowth of President Barack Obama’s 2014 Generation Indigenous (Gen-I) Initiative, an effort by his administration that focuses on improving the lives of indigenous youth, a segment of the U.S. population often plagued by abject poverty, broken homes, high rates of teen suicide, and an over 50 percent high school dropout rate.
Lopez, who recently completed her first year of undergraduate work at the University of California, Santa Cruz — where she’s majoring in both psychology and critical race and ethnic studies (CRES) — said she hopes her participation in D.C. will spur legislative changes that address the aforementioned challenges and obstacles faced by her fellow youth.
For years, the 18-year-old from Fresno has been actively involved in her tribe, performing as a tribal dancer since the age of 6 and, in 2012, resurrecting the Amah Mutsun Tribal Youth Council, on she which currently serves.
An extension of the tribe’s governing body, the youth council’s purpose is to assist the tribe’s youth in relearning its indigenous past and preserving its culturally identity through exposure to tribal history, language, story-telling, traditions, etc. Lopez realizes the challenges the council faces in achieving its goals, but she’s undaunted by them, stating by telephone “we’re barely in the stages of relearning…but it’s not discouraging to me at all.”
Lopez’s decision to attend UCSC has brought her closer to her indigenous roots both literally and figuratively, as the Amah Mutsun are “direct descendants of the aboriginal Tribal groups whose villages and territories fell under the sphere of influence of Missions San Juan Bautista…and Santa Cruz,” according to the tribe’s website. Lopez’s lineage extends from both missions.
While at university, Lopez’s schedule included a CRES course requiring students to deconstruct California’s History-Social Science curriculum for 4th grade, one synonymous with a mission project that typically requires researching various facts about a mission and often involves building a scaled-down model of it.
Soon after enrolling in the course, Lopez explained that she contacted the mother of a 4th-grade cousin, who had opted out of her son’s assignment due to its cultural insensitivity. Lopez then created an alternative assignment with the help of her fellow classmates, the boy’s mother, and his teacher.
In another CRES assignment, Lopez examined the disappearance of her tribe’s footprint on the land, evaluating how invasive non-native plants, barbed-wire fences, and paved roads have played a role in that process.
Of her time in the course, Lopez said, “it gave me some time to focus on things that I probably wouldn’t have thought about.”
In addition to her course load, Lopez works at the university’s American Indian Resource Center, where she’s the center’s event coordinator, and volunteers at the 55-acre Amah-Mutsun Relearning Program at the UCSC Arboretum during the academic year.
Last spring, Lopez was approached by Valentin “Val” Lopez, the tribe’s chairman and a distant cousin, to apply for selection to next month’s historic White House Tribal Youth Gathering. At Val Lopez’s urging, she applied last minute, completing the Gen-I Challenge—a process that involved demonstrating a positive contribution to the Native American community within 30 days of the applying—submitting an on-line application, a 250 word statement of interest, and one letter of recommendation. Despite her latent interest, she was quickly invited and readily accepted.
The two issues on which Julisa Lopez will focus on in Washington are education and foster-care, areas that “hit very close to home” for her, as mentioned in the tribe’s recent press release on her scheduled trip.
On education, she explained that her time in the CRES program had really underscored the importance of equality and equity in schools, especially in courses like history, where one must always be cognizant of “whose truth is being told through these histories.”
The issue of foster-care is extremely personal for Lopez, as her mother’s difficult childhood stemmed in part from poor foster-care. Lopez has also witnessed first-hand the toll the system takes on the young. Several of her cousins reside in foster-homes, and despite the support provided by tribal members, the tribe is powerless to help them.
A letter written by the tribe will accompany Lopez on her trip. Addressed to Obama, it introduces the tribe and lists several bulleted “items of interest and importance to” the tribe, including the federal recognition long denied to it and “how the true history” of the tribe “is never told,” Val Lopez recently said by telephone.
The chairman added that the tribe is very excited about Julisa Lopez’s participation at the July event, stating “we [the tribal council] have high hopes for her as far as tribal leadership in the future.”
Lopez is very much looking forward to her time in Washington. Nearly 1,000 Native American youth, ranging in ages 14 to 24, will join her. “It’s going to be nice to be surrounded by so many natives,” she said.
Editor’s note: BenitoLink will provide a follow-up article on Lopez’s trip.