It's a scorching July day, but that doesn't dissuade a group of Native American youth from , their instructors, and Cobber students from learning to play traditional lacrosse. It's uncoordinated and sweaty, but everyone is grinning from ear to ear. They're having a blast.
These high school students are participating in a summer school program. This is the second year Concordia has partnered with and the . For a week in the summer, students are bused out to Concordia's Long Lake property to learn about their Native American identities.
"The initial goal of this program was to build a bridge program for Native American students to interact with higher education and college students to give them opportunities to understand pathways toward higher education," said Brandon Baity, executive director of . "Building programs with and in community has helped us build something that's genuine and valuable for the participants because it's based on trust, reciprocity, and mutually beneficial programming."
Baity worked with Concordia history professor Dr. Elijah Bender and former Concordia faculty member Dr. Melissah Pawlikowski. They specifically planned the event around using Concordia's Long Lake property.
"Biology and the sciences use the property the most," Bender said. "But they have said for years that they want more people across campus to use it more. It's important to show students that there's a way to study physical space from a humanities perspective."
So, a plan took shape. Even after federal funding was pulled earlier this year, everyone was committed to getting the indigenous students to Long Lake.
"We pulled together resources and figured out how we could collaborate and make it work," said Baity. "It just shows the resilience of using multiple community partners and multiple funding sources to work on something a lot of different people are passionate about, interested in, and see as valuable."
At Long Lake, students learned lacrosse, beading, fishing, and other traditional knowledge. It's not just for fun either — they earned high school credit. The skills they learn during the summer will translate to a course they will take during the school year as well.
Concordia students get involved too — through their involvement, Cobber students gain a Peak credit, which requires students to have a hands-on learning experience, often outside of the classroom and in the community.
"The learning outcomes for the college students is to pick up some basics of native knowledge and epistemology," said Bender, who is supervising the Peak students. "Our three students are still in progress of completing their Peak credit. They are learning about traditional ecological knowledge as a whole system that has scientific elements in it because it's all based on observation and trial and error."
For Baity, giving the students a safe place to explore and learn is at the heart of their time at Long Lake.
"My colleague Ricky White says, 'What's good for Native Americans is good for everyone,'" Baity said. "Because essentially, youth are looking for the same things, right? They're looking for a place where they belong. We can't dismiss and throw away those kids who don't fit in the system. We need to figure out how to create systems where those kids can feel safe and comfortable to express who they are."