“…’Peace looks like you and me,’ remarked one writer, ‘a 15-gallery view in Zoom, people writing and sharing in virtual spaces connected through the airways and our hearts’…”
“…This is why we do this—for youth to learn ways to better understand themselves and help to change their worlds…”
“…When the pandemic hit our youth we were able immediately to access caring, knowledgeable adults and each other….”
Clara Natanobah teaches at Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is a BLTN Fellow, a third year BLSE student, and a Site Mentor for the SFIS BLTNNextgen site. “Not Another Statistic” was written and performed by the Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS) Performing Arts class under the my direction. SFIS
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When I was asked–allowed–to untie my tongue in What’s the Story?, I began to understand that I was my own creator. I began to peel back my understandings of education and consider deeply what learning was. I worked for two years on multi-media campaigns exploring the experience of gender non-conforming students in Vermont middle in high schools. With that came an endless stream of events that have since changed my life.
During the car ride home, we Vermonters reflected on the immense strength and possibility of NextGen. The Hazhó’ó Hólne’ Writing Conference would shape our social action work in Vermont as well as our personal roles in our communities for the rest of our lives.
For the past few years my younger sister and I have been displaced, moving from house to house, never getting too comfortable or being too sure that we’d sleep in the same bed for more than a week. After being displaced again this past Christmas and feeling entirely alone with the weight of the world on my shoulders, I just mentally needed a place to go, a place where my situation didn’t exist, a place where I could be a kid—something I didn’t have the luxury of doing in my everyday life. I found that in NextGen.
As a group we all proposed ideas to stay in touch and ensure that NextGen survives. We owe that much to the youth that will come after us.
Thanks to the conference, I realized it’s ok for me to be vulnerable with myself, and that the voice of the youth matters. Interacting with the individuals from NextGen really opened my eyes to how big of an impact the youth has on their communities, from bringing families together to write, to showing the importance of monumental institutions like Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, to strengthening the voice of the youth from the LGBTQ community. People really overlook how important it is for the voice of the youth to be heard.
…BTLN NextGen challenged me to not become a better me but to bring out the best of me and to use that and pour it back into my community and the world.
