Academy students present research findings to Congress

WASHINGTON—June 28, 2011—While other Native American high school students this summer are playing basketball, baseball, soccer or creating art, Dominic Peacock of Acoma Pueblo is preparing to present solutions to problems that plague his community to Congress.

Peacock, 17, who will be a senior at Grants High School, wants more diabetes prevention programs and youth activities after discovering that American Indians are 177 percent more likely to die from diabetes when compared with other Americans.  He’s also hoping that this will be a partnership effort.

“I think it’s up to us to rethink our approaches by first assessing our communities to understand the root causes to help us to end this epidemic,” Peacock said.

Peacock is among 17 Native American students who are taking control of their destiny with the aid of the Summer Policy Academy, a program of the Leadership Institute at Santa Fe Indian School in New Mexico.  The students will present their research and recommendations to Congressional staff members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and New Mexico’s delegation, as well as and key American Indian advocacy groups, at 10:30 a.m. today in Room 628 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Regis Pecos of Cochiti Pueblo, Leadership Institute co-director and chief of staff for Rep. Ben Lujan, D-Santa Fe, Speaker of the New Mexico House of Representatives, said the academy is designed to challenge Native American students to articulate their own vision for what they would like to see their communities look like in the next 50 years.

“We know we face tremendous challenges, many of which have deep roots in our history.  But we also recognize we now have the means to become the architects of policy-making and decision-making guided by our core values,” Pecos said.  “The challenge for our students this summer is to envision how we restore the health of our people with a healthy mind, body and spirit, and restore our communities to the vibrant communities our people deserve to be a part of.”

Conducted in partnership with the Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs at Princeton University, Pecos helped create the program four years ago out of a need for Native people to understand the impact of state and federal policies and its compounding effects in hopes of charting a new course.  He would like return to the set of core values his forefathers used to overcome some of the worst policies ever conceived to destroy Native people. “This must be about how we celebrate and honor all those who have gone before us,” Pecos said.

More than a 100 New Mexico Native American students have completed the academy, which is conducted in three segments.  Students in the first year receive an introduction to state and federal policy, and participate in a mock legislative session conducted in New Mexico’s capitol to understand how a bill becomes state law. Students spend a week at Princeton the second year to examine policies more fully and make presentations on Capitol Hill.  Students in the third year participate in internships in tribal, local, state and federal government or related fields.

Peacock, who is in his second year of the program, has been working with American Indian experts in areas of community planning, education, health, water and law this week to help him and his fellow students create a vision reflecting on community values of tradition, language and cultural preservation. In addition to learning about the termination era of the 1950s where the federal government began ending the sovereign status of tribes, Peacock also learned about Miguel Trujillo of Isleta Pueblo, a Marine veteran who sued the state of New Mexico for the right to vote in 1948 although the federal government had granted citizenship to Native Americans in 1924.

“What surprised me the most in learning about all this is that the history of Native Americans has been unjust,” Peacock said.  “There hasn’t been a lot of peace between the government and Native Americans, and that’s what really got to me. You don’t read a lot in the textbooks about how Native Americans have been unfairly treated. In my history there has been a lot of bloodshed.”

Casey Douma of Laguna Pueblo, who is an attorney for his tribe and has been involved with the academy for several years, said the program also looks at building young leaders.

“The question is how do we utilize the strengths of our people when there is so much emphasis to we leave those behind?” Douma said, adding that it’s up to communities to grow their own leaders.  “They are raised by our communities, raised with all the things that are important with, our values translating into actions as adults.  If we do a good job in raising people that possess these qualities, when the time comes for them to confront obstacles and challenges they are quick to rise to the challenge by developing themselves to maintain those things that are important, as well as learning new things that education provides to meet those challenges.”

Many students, young leaders, who have graduated from the academy, which was part of a Harvard University Honoring Nations award in 2010, have go onto college in related fields, including law.  While some students will chose careers outside of law and policy, for Pecos, this is the first step in having discussions toward overcoming barriers that stand in the way of a progressive, positive future for Native people.

“If this is going to really be a period of self-determination, then we have to affect a whole new generation of leaders and move away from just simply replicating programs that bring us away from our core values,” Pecos said.  “If we do nothing, what is likely to happen? Will we contribute to our own demise and complete what the federal government could not achieve?  It would be ironic if we contribute to our own demise in this period that history will define as the period of self-determination.”

For more information about the Summer Policy Academy or the Leadership Institute at the Santa Fe Indian School, go to www.lisfis.org.  Or find the Summer Policy Academy on Facebook.