Youth Leadership Symposium

You people are probably wondering why I didn’t post anything on Friday. I travelled to Dillingham to a youth leadership conference held by the Bristol Bay Native Corporation. I wasn’t the only one to go from my district. I went with Madison Manning (Port Heiden), William Lind (Chignik Lake), Brianna DelKittie (Nondalton), McKalya Anelon (Newhalen), and Kaylynn Hobson (Kokhanok).

A woman named Annie Fritze and a man named Mike Davis did most of the planning for the symposium.

We learned so much and talked about many different topics on leadership. When we first got there, we had a community potluck. We let the elders get their food first and then the youth were able to get their food. After we had some native dancing. It was the elementary with some of the high school. They did a dance about getting rid of a ghost, one about berries, and they even had come up with one in English about basketball. After they were done, a group of older women did a native dance about a man who goes hunting and he finds a seal and then he brings it home and his wife cuts it up.

After the native dances, the kids who went to Culture Camp past out all the fish they smoked, fileted, and canned to the elders of the community. After that it was pretty late so we got to walk around the school until it was time for lights out.

The next day we went into the gym and we got a BBNC bag, a folder containing a few pieces or paper, a water bottle which contained some chap stick and a few other things, a pen, and a syllabus for the homework we would have after. Annie then started talking about things we would learn there and the paper we would have to write. We then got up, got into our groups, and did an icebreaker (can’t ever get away from those) where we threw a ball around and said our names. After that we sat down at our tables and local leaders came and talked to us and we got to ask questions for 15 minutes. After that we listened to some other community leaders talking about different things about leadership and some of the things they had to go through.

After that we had lunch. Once we got back into the gym, we got in our groups again and we had a talking circle, which is where an elder and a group of people would pass a feather around and whoever had the feather would share one of the values that their family taught them.  We then had another icebreaker called Hee Haw Who. Its kind of like hot potato with energy. After that Gene Tagaban, Jack Dalton, and Tyler Arnold talked to us about some of the different aspects of leadership. After all of that, we had dinner and then Gene provided entertainment with storys, flute playing, which I got to help with by drumming. He also showed us a raven dance.

That was just the second day. Our days were very long and jam packed with lots of different things about leadership.

The next day, which I will try and not make so long, we had breakfast, which always consisted of fruit, yogurt, and cereal every morning, Later we had a man named Earl Polk come and talk to us about his life and leadership. After that we had “break out” sessions which is where they are three classes and each group goes to each of them for 45 minutes and then rotates to the next class. After that we had lunch and we had another group of break out sessions. Once we were done with those, Gene, Jack, and Tyler helped each of the groups come up with ideas of things that they could bring back their communities. Before dinner, we got to go to the Dillingham Museum. After thinking of and presenting those we had some dinner. Jack Dalton provided the entertainment that night in the form of story telling. We then had a choice of going to the dance, people could go in the gym or they could hang out in the rooms.

The next day was the last day amazingly. We had some more break out sessions. We had a lot of them, yes I know, everyone had to sit for many hours. We then had a sack lunch, and after we went and had another talking circle, this time with everyone and we passed the feather around and told our name, where we were from and then one thing that we liked about ourselves. After all of that we all started to pack up and bring our bags to the door so we were ready to leave.

After we left Dillingham, we went to King Salmon, where we had to spent the night at our District Office because of how many planes take us to our villages during the day.

Yes, the blog post is extremely long but there was so much jammed packed into those four days that I thought it deserved a long post. I had a lot of fun and it was very inspirational to me.  I will post pictures tomorrow because I took a lot and also there are some videos.