SEATTLE – For almost a week, the bright and excited voices of more than 1,350 American Indian teenagers rose over the hustle and bustle of downtown Seattle. The strong turnout marked the springtime return of the 31st annual Northwest Indian Youth Conference, held on the grounds of the Seattle Center on April 2 – 5.
The conference was hosted by the IWASIL Boys and Girls Club of Seattle, the first and only all-Indian urban Boys and Girls Club in the country. The name IWASIL comes from an Ashootseed (Coast Salish) word meaning “positive change.”
The IWASIL organization has been a fixture on the Seattle Indian scene ever since Woody Verola, Aleut, started the organization in 1981 to serve at-risk Native youths in the city. In 2003, IWASIL joined the national Boys and Girls Club organization, moved to a new campus on Beacon Hill and opened a model re-entry school program to help American Indians earn high school diplomas.
Ryan Wilson, Lakota, runs the IWASIL Boys and Girls Club and is president of the National Indian Education Association. Wilson said, “Each year, the conference draws between 1,000 and 1,400 students. The first conference was held on the Warm Springs Reservation, and in 2007 the conference is going to Spokane.”
This year there were nine workshops and countless activities in store for the attendees. Workshop topics included teens against tobacco, Northwest Coast art, youth empowerment and theater training from the renowned Red Eagle Soaring Theater Group. Students surveyed their future at the college and career fair, while others performed traditional and urban acts at the talent show. Still others sewed and then modeled designs for the fashion show, while on the other side of the Seattle Center future journalists and politicians shared their dreams through microphones and laptops at the essay and speech competition.
Bridgit Phillips and Amanda Pakootas, members of the Colville Tribe, were repeat attendees. Bridgit is a sophomore at Omak High School in eastern Washington and this was her third conference. Amanda, a Colville Youth Coordinator office employee, chaperoned the Colville students. They attended the theater workshop on the second day, and afterward announced, “This is great! There are a lot of people from our tribe, but we’re meeting new people too. It’s pretty cool.” Amanda added, “We’re looking forward to the trip to visit the Tulalip Tribe, the traditional games, the basketball tournament and the final night’s feast.”
This year’s concluding feast featured Q’Orianka Kilcher, 15, the Huachipaeri/Quechuan star of the feature film “The New World.”
Wilson credited the growing success of the conference to the students, the volunteers, the IWASIL staff and support from the National Indian Education Association. Lillian Sparks, Lakota and the association’s executive director, keynoted the first day of conference and told the students, “Use your culture and traditions to achieve what it is you want to achieve in your life.”
Besides Sparks, the conference featured Sam McCracken, Fort Peck Sioux/Assiniboine, manager for American Indian programs at Nike; Billy Frank Jr., Nisqually, chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission; and Howard Ranier, Taos Pueblo, motivational speaker and director of the Native American Outreach Program at Brigham Young University in Utah.
Another featured personality was television news reporter Mary Kim Titla, San Carlos Apache, who publishes Native Youth Magazine. Titla said she came because, “I want to encourage Native youth to become storytellers.” She plans to publish the winning submissions from the essay competition in her magazine. When asked to describe the conference, Titla’s answer was easy: “It’s awesome!”
