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Canku Ota |
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(Many Paths) |
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An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America |
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April 19, 2003 - Issue 85 |
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Shiprock Students, Elders Team Up |
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by Jim Snyder - Shiprock Bureau,
Farmington, New Mexico Daily Times
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SHIPROCK
- Shiprock High School was chosen by the Environmental Protection Agency
to host an Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement pilot program.
Only two other sites in the country were chosen in Montana and Philadelphia. The
program brought Shiprock science students from Rick Espinoza's class and
Navajo elders together to teach environmental subjects to Eva B. Stokley
Elementary School pupils. The project put the high school students who
had to master their subjects in leadership roles because they became teachers
to a younger generation. "It's
basically the kind of obstacles teachers go through," said Stephanie
Johnson, a high school student. Espinoza's
students chose an array of subjects to research that included water quality
and uranium, household and industrial poisons, environmental lifestyles,
ditch safety, drinking and driving and use of tobacco. "We
try to hit all the topics that are big concerns out here," Espinoza
said. The program "is trying to get seniors, people 55 years and
older, and young people working on environmental issues," he added.
"The seniors bring their life experiences in." The
project fused together "new-age technology perspectives and story-telling
perspectives," said Ryan Downey, a coordinator for the Senior Environment
Corps at San Juan College in Farmington. Downey's outreach program worked
closely with the high school. "Anytime you get three generations
working together it is a tremendous thing," Downey added. "When
the seniors (elders) would walk into class, the kids are up shaking hands." The
students and elders used laptop computers to present power point presentations
projected onto the walls Tuesday in the small gymnasium at the high school.
Four presentations were run simultaneously for approximately 130 pupils.
At the end of each presentation, the groups would rotate to the next station. High
School senior Stephanie King's presentation was water quality and uranium. "I
chose it because in my family uranium is a big thing," King said
in an interview. "My grandpa worked in the uranium mine." King
added she also chose to research uranium problems after reading in the
local media that Navajo Vice President Frank Dayish Jr. had proposed it
as a potential economic resource for the Navajo Nation. Dayish
had mentioned leach uranium mining, a process that uses water underground
to separate uranium from the rocks. He did not advocate the return of
traditional uranium mining a point that didn't make a difference to King. "It's
ridiculous," she said. "We lost a lot of our people because
of uranium. The thing that got me was the money part. We have sales tax
here on the reservation, yet we haven't even seen that money. Where is
the money going to go from uranium?" She
added "We had two generations, our grandparents, our parents, how
they got exposed to uranium. We have to look at the generations coming
up." Her
presentation also showed how oil from a car deposited on the ground could
eventually make its way into the water table. "We presented this
to third-graders a week ago ... at that age we don't even think about
that stuff, we really don't care until we get older." The
Navajo elders found themselves surrounded by pupils and students during
the presentations. "It's
for the benefit of the kids," said David Patterson, one of the Navajo
elders who was present. The
EPA brought a lot of attention to Shiprock High School, Principal Larry
DeWees said, since there were only two other sites chosen nationwide.
"There's 22,000 high schools across the United Sates they could have
chosen from." DeWees added the program was beneficial because it turned the community into a learning one since it involved three generations. "Every generation is learning from each other," he said. Environmental
Alliance for Senior Involvement http://www.easi.org/
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