“CULTURE IS A STRONGHOLD”

Native Voices: Keeping Hope Alive against Adversity

“When I was a kid,” said Ryan Emmanuel, Associate Professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, “there was point where I believed my immediate family were the only Natives in the world.

“Growing up, I had no context for how Native people were treated until high school when you really start to learn about the true history of the United States going beyond the textbook,” Emmanuel said. “The treatment of indigenous peoples has kept me in a constant state of worry pertaining to what the government could possibly do next.”

Indigenous peoples’ voices and experiences are uplifted throughout November in recognition of Native American Heritage Month. One topic that tends to be overshadowed when referring to indigenous peoples’ experiences is mental health. Being subjected to the hardships of neglect can impact mental health significantly.

Native Americans have long endured the political turmoil of the United States. From constant persecution to blatant neglect, the ongoing turmoil can be mentally and emotionally taxing.

During the 2018 midterm elections, Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids were the first two Native American women elected to serve in Congress.

“The results were exciting at first but it’s challenging to always be on the back burner,” said April Hammonds, the assistant director for intercultural initiatives in Multicultural Student Affairs. “Recently, there were some laws passed that restrict tribal identification to qualify as a voter id. It definitely has its pluses and minuses.”

Hammonds is referring to the law that was passed in North Dakota during the last midterm election. According to Katie Reilly in her article for TIME, the law “requires voters to present identification that displays a street address and disproportionately affects Native Americans on reservations, where street addresses are not common.”

Amberlina Alston, a fourth-year studying psychology and the president of the Native American Student Association, said, “The election of two Native women is a great step in the right direction, but we have a long way to go.”

Many of the Native American students at NC State are from the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina, which has been fighting to be federally recognized as an American Indian tribe for over a century. The fight continues today.

“The government’s attitude towards my tribe in particular (Lumbee) and towards indigenous peoples in general has caused a low-level stress that stays in the back of my mind,” Emmanuel said.

Beyond systemic issues, interpersonal interactions can also impact indigenous people. Hammonds’ coping methods for this treatment involve understanding and attempting to educate the misinformed.

“People ask these very stereotypical things and I had to learn as a young college student how to answer these questions,” said Hammonds. “It’s one of those things where I have

jalen Rose to decide if I’m going to come off as angry Correspondent or am I going to take these questions as a moment to turn them around and educate. I try to cope by helping navigate the conversation.” Alston has a very similar coping method, as she believes in spreading awareness to those around her. “I feel like my job is to bring awareness to the people who have never met or interacted with Native Americans and remind them that we still exist,” she said. Alston also believes that staying prideful in her identity is very important. “Culture is a stronghold for us. Keeping that alive and starting that fire can be enough,” Alston said. Emmanuel believes that recognizing his ancestor’s struggles can be very helpful. “Our ancestors were treated terribly but they survived,” Emmanuel. “They were able to give rise to people like you and me. They were forward-looking and didn’t give up. They focused on mental and emotional sustainability. We get to do the same.”

learning from failure

With finals season here, it may be dawning on some of us that we might not be finishing our classes with the grades we want or need. Whether you’re struggling to get past a C-wall or you just need to pass a challenging prerequisite, there’s a chance you may fail— and that’s okay.

It’s hard to accept failure, though. In academic settings like NC State, where we’re constantly faced with academic challenges and competition with our peers, it’s hard not to beat yourself up when you’re not as successful as those around you seem.

Despite the social perceptions that exist around failure, everyone around you experiences it in one way or another. Your professors have failed. Your friends have failed. I have failed—and you will, too. Though once you learn to look at these losses in a positive light, your ability to learn from them grows immensely.

I came into NC State as a first-year engineering student and unsure of what I wanted to get out of my degree at all. All I knew was that I was pretty good at math and science and I loved design, so engineering was the direction I headed towards.

Throughout my first semester, though, I struggled beyond what I had expected. I had to learn how to study and manage my time in a completely different way from what I was used to in high school, and it was one of my hardest semesters because of that. I was discouraged when I looked around myself and saw other freshman thrive in their courses while I remained overwhelmed by the same classes.

When I came out of my calculus class with a D+, just short of the C- I needed to move on, I felt extremely defeated. It was hard to pick myself back up after that semester. Feeling like a terrible student, I wasn’t sure I would be successful in any of the classes that were most important to me.

Looking back on those first few months of college, however, though I failed in many aspects, I was able to learn more about myself. I better understood my learning style, and my perspective on what interested me degree-wise shifted significantly as well. I learned how to grow from setbacks like these and to see failure in a more positive light.

Daniel Soos, a second-year studying mechanical engineering, expressed his perspective on the value of experiencing failures of various kinds. “Whenever I got a test back that wasn’t satisfactory, not doing well just made me want to do better,” Soos said. “[This] got me into the mindset of ‘if something [isn’t successful], you can always do better on the next try.’”

Describing academic setbacks throughout high school and college as inspiration to persevere, Soos turns failures into the motivation needed to improve.

“You’re going to fail a lot of times in life,” Soos said, “but you can’t let that stop you.”

Maddy Giles, a third-year studying psychology, discussed her experience with moving on from failure, describing her first year of college at another institution in North Carolina as one of the most challenging years of her life. Coming in as an out-of-state student, Giles felt unwelcomed and out of place.

Even though she did very well academically, she expressed that she had failed because she did not fit in socially.

“No one liked me, because I was not from there,” Giles said. “I was different and they didn’t like that. They could tell by the way I talked, the way I dressed - they didn’t really accept that. So I socially failed [there]. I was by myself 95 percent of the day, the other five percent was my two classes per day.”

Once she realized that something needed to change, she transferred here to NC State, and things got a lot better. From this

anna carlson Correspondent experience, she came to the understanding that how you react to failure significantly impacts how much you grow from it.

“You kind of have to figure out what defines coming back from failure,” Giles said.

Accepting failure as a reality that doesn’t decide your future or who you are allows you to grow from these setbacks. This growth isn’t possible, however, if you don’t make the continuous choice to see failure as a positive. Once you do this, you allow yourself to fully learn from your mistakes, opening up your future to more success than previously possible.

kaydee gawlik /Staff Photographer

graphic by anna lee

dance break

playlist by jalen rose, correspondent When you’re feeling worn down and need to forget about your work for a while, take a break and throw your own private dance party with this playlist! Get the blood flowing, get loose, and get refreshed!

graphic by kyle howe

study ‘N chill

playlist by Shawn fredericks, staff writer A playlist for you to study ‘n chill, kick back ‘n relax, and let these tunes take you to another point of relaxation as your worklife balance is torn asunder from finals.