SPACE TO GROW
ment and will bring increased and much-needed resources to Indigenous communities.”
The program marks the beginning of an effort to shift Native American boarding schools away from their traumatic history and instead create spaces that embrace Indigenous traditions and students as assets rather than deficits, Abeyta said.
The Trust for Public Land and Bureau of Indian Education selected the nine participating schools based on maximizing benefits for local people, Denk said, saying the agencies decided “when we do this, let’s be intentional about where we work to have the biggest impact.”
Sites were selected based on two primary criteria. First, officials used localized data — including the proportion of the population that identifies as people of color; the percentage of low-income households and children living in poverty; and the number of adults with less than a high school education — to generate an environmental justice score. Then they generated a health score based on factors like the local COVID-19 death rate, the number of days per week people experience mental unhealthiness and levels of physical inactivity.
These scores generated a short list of schools, from which the Trust for Public Land and Bureau of Indian Education selected the final pilot schools — a mix of residential and day schools operated by tribes and by the Bureau of Indian Education.
Wingate Elementary School in Fort Wingate was the second New Mexico school to participate in the pilot program, joining schools in South Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Arizona and Wisconsin.
Students, teachers, school and tribal leaders and community members will assist in designing and creating the yards, Denk said.
“With tribal and Indigenous voices leading the design, creation and activation of these schoolyards, there’s amazing potential to infuse centuries of knowledge into these schoolyards to connect tribal and Indigenous communities to their culture and inspire future generations of tribal and Indigenous leaders,” Trust for Public Land President and CEO Diane Regas said in a news release.
With assistance from the University of New Mexico and input from students and staff, Santa Fe Indian School officials have planned out their ideal campus footprint, Abeyta said. The pilot program will allow the school to build out new elements on that map.
Abeyta hopes to see the construction of new walking paths for students with signs offering historical and cultural information, outdoor classrooms that lend themselves to discussions of ecology and natural catchment systems to limit flooding on campus.
Collaboration with tribal leaders and the school community was the most important aspect of the process, she said: “What do they envision for the build out of our campus? What does the ideal schoolyard look like for a Pueblo, Navajo, Apache student who comes to Santa Fe Indian School? In that thought, there’s so much that potentially could be considered.”
The outreach and design phases of the project will double as an applied learning project for students at Santa Fe Indian School, Denk said. Throughout the process, students will create a survey for fellow students, parents, teachers and community members and analyze its results, examine budgetary constraints and learn to compromise.
Fundraising for the nine new schoolyards — which are expected to cost $16 million — will be led by the Trust for Public Land and begin in 2023. The trust expects to raise most of the projects’ funding through public sources supplemented by private philanthropic donors.
Abeyta is excited about the possibilities.
“The potential is endless. I think that we’ve done an awesome job so far in doing it for ourselves with limited to no resources. Now that we have funding and resources, it can only get better,” she said.