Pauly Denetclaw
ICT
WASHINGTON — During a lunch break, auntie laughs and “Reservation Road” by Navajo country band Stateline echoed off the walls of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services headquarters during the annual White House Tribal Youth Forum in Washington, D.C.
This year the forum was open to Indigenous youth from Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia and other countries in central and south America.
Federal officials who oversee everything from the Treasury to the Biden administration’s green initiatives or Indian Health Service were literally sitting at tables with Indigenous youth. This is where one participant, Audriana Mitchell, Navajo and Southern Cheyenne, learned about the Treasury Tribal Advisory Committee from Josh Jackson, a policy advisor for the U.S. Treasury.
“He was telling us about this board called TTAC where it’s made of seven different tribal leaders,” Mitchell said. “It’s a four year term for each tribal leader. I was asking him what’s the process to select tribal leaders for those positions because I would be interested in my tribe being represented as well,”
Mitchell is enrolled in the Colorado River Indian Tribes, that is made up of the Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi and Navajo tribes.
“We got to ask him some questions about the funding that goes out to the tribes,” Mitchell said. “It was really interesting.”
A couple of the federal officials were able to see their own children participate in the forum including Bryan Newland, assistant secretary of Indian Affairs at the Interior.
The yearly gathering was started under the Obama administration in 2014. It came out of the Generation Indigenous initiative. The following year was the first White House Tribal Youth Gathering. The program went dark under the Trump administration. It came back under Biden. This year would be the fifth Indigenous youth forum hosted by the White House.
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