“Native youth will have the chance to step foot on a college campus, something that many of these students have never done before,” said Jennifer Simon, event organizer and director of Augsburg’s American Indian Student Services.

“Students will get a feel for what college is like, and interact with current Native college students with the hope that they will see college is an option for them. We want to implant the idea in their minds that they, too, can and should be college students in the future.”

Students are confirmed from a number of metropolitan school districts, including Minneapolis, St. Paul, Robbinsdale, Anoka, Centennial, Osseo and others.

Billy Mills, also known as Makata Taka Hela, is the second Native American to win an Olympic gold medal. He accomplished this feat in the 10,000 meter run at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, becoming the only American ever to win the Olympic gold in this event. His 1964 victory is considered one of the greatest of Olympic upsets. A former United States Marine, Billy Mills is a member of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) Tribe.

Schedule of Events (Hoversten Chapel, Foss Center)

9 a.m. Welcome

9:15 a.m. Admissions presentation

9:30 a.m. Campus Tour & Connect with Native American College Students

11:30 a.m. Lunch (Christensen Center)

12 p.m. “Wings of an Eagle,” Native American Olympian Billy Mills, who was born and raised on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, presents a motivational presentation on living a drug-free, alcohol-free life, attending college, and more.

1:15 p.m.  “What is a College Class Like,” Eric Buffalohead, professor and chair of the American Indian Studies Department, talks about what students can expect when they get to college.

6 p.m. Community reception (Foss atrium)

7 p.m. “Unity Through Diversity,” Native American Olympian Billy Mills (Hoversten Chapel, Foss Center) This event is free and open to the public.

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With a grant from the Minnesota Historical Society’s Legacy Campaign, the students carried out an intergenerational project to produce a permanent piece of art at the Baker Community Center, home of the Jane Addams School. The students teamed up with youth from the Youth Farm and Market Project and hosted monthly community dinners showcasing traditional foods from cultural groups. The teens cooked the foods with elders from the Hmong, East African, and Latino communities. At these dinners, where roughly 150 community members enjoyed a meal together, the Jane Addams School teens conducted their interviews. The students asked how the elders had made St. Paul their home and what traditions they had kept alive from their home countries.

The teens had expected each culture to be very different from the others, but they were surprised to discover how much each group had in common especially with regard to values. The students learned that no matter where they were born, the elders valued family, tradition, community, hard work, honesty, and cooking and sharing food.

The community members’ similarities became the focal point of the students’ work. The students wanted the neighborhood to see that by getting to know one another, people would find out that they had more in common with each other than they thought, and they wanted this to be conveyed in the art piece.

The students commissioned Chaka Mkali and Andres Guzman to create a 40-foot mural on a wall that faces Baker’s playground. The mural, shown here, can be seen from blocks away and had been a hot spot for graffiti in the past. The mural was completed in two months and is now a beautiful addition to the growing Baker Center.

The teens proudly represented the West Side and their project at this year’s PeaceJam in Minneapolis where they presented their project to Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Oscar Arias Sanchez.

The mural is a “Sharing Community Stories’ partnership between the Jane Addams School for Democracy, the Youth Farm and Market Project, and the Minnesota Historical Society.

The Baker Community Center is a vibrant cultural learning center on St. Paul’s West Side neighborhood. Augsburg students Mallory Carstens and Lexi Stadstad have worked at Baker and the Jane Addams School through the Bonner Leaders program.

Adapted from a story by Caritza Mariani

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