What's our goal?

We at the Nihewan Foundation want to provide an opportunity for youth to define and discuss race issues in the world today. We and several partner foundations want to hear what youth of all races have to tell us about race. What's important? What needs to change? What can youth, adults, and foundations do to improve race relations locally and globally?

Who we are

Since 1969, the Nihewan Foundation for Native American Education has been providing Scholarships, creating indigenous based Core Curriculum and Teacher Training, and connecting cross cultural classes of students in 18 states through our Cradleboard Teaching Project, which teaches students of all races about Native American culture. But the Nihewan Youth Council on Race is brand new!

We have created this opportunity for two main reasons:

1. We want to serve additional youth populations besides the classes in our Partnering Program.
2. We agree with many other youth based organizations that in order to make things better for years to come regarding race, we need to listen and hear what young people have to say about their own experiences.
   

The Nihewan Foundation is one of fourteen non-profit foundations addressing racism nationwide who comprise the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's YES! (Youth Engagement Strategy). Each of the foundations has a unique plan to help youth define race and culture issues for their own generation. The organizations selected by the Kellogg Foundation represent a cross section of the areas that Kellogg supports: health, youth and education, philanthropy and volunteerism, and food systems and rural development.

The Nihewan Foundation falls within the youth and education category, and this website and your participation is our unique way of participating. The other foundations will do different things.

Your feelings and thoughts will be pooled together and shared with theother foundations participating in the YES! initiative, who meet together to teach each other what we are all learning from youth as regards race and culture issues.

Each of the participating foundations is in a position to make positive changes in communities, and sometimes even nationally and internationally. Your comments can help people who are in positions of giving make appropriate decisions as to what they support locally and globally.

Youth teams and mentors from the following American communities have requested to participate:

Native American, Pacific Island, Latino, Jewish, Euro-American, Arab-American, Asian and African-American city and rural communities.

International teams include youth and mentors from the following countries have asked to participate:

Mauritius, Nigeria, Bosnia, Turkey, Thailand, Philippines, Canada, Norway, Peru, Mexico, and South Africa.

Each youth team relies on the help of an Adult Mentor. In some cases, this is the person who creates the team. In other cases, the youth create the team and invite their own choice of Adult Mentor to assist them.

Mentoring is personal to each group, and different ages will require more or less help: help youth participants get online, drive the youth team to a computer lab, or just be there with the team in sorting out feelings about race and culture, and sharing it with your online peers of many races. Teams who win travel awards for Outstanding Participation are accompanied by their mentor if they are under 18.

There will be Chat Rooms in which you can interact Live. You can also create Discussion Topics that you can create and post at our Discussion Boards. Each feature has Help available, and instructions are clear and easy.

Chat Rooms are for synchronous communication: spontaneous chatting back and forth with whoever is in the Chat Room at the time. Exception: if you make an appointment with another team by pre-arrangement. Probably the people you see in the Chat Rooms will be those who happen to be close to your own time zone (or else night owls).

There is also a Private Chat option in case you wish to chat privately with someone in the group without the rest of the group being involved. For example, two adult mentors need to discuss scheduling, but don't want to interrupt the ongoing topic of conversation.

Discussion Forums are used for messages that the other teams can check, even while you're asleep on the other side of the world. Instructions are available right in the discussion pages themselves, in case this is new to you.

You can create a new topic; or you can reply to a topic that another team has posted.

Please be as honest as you feel is appropriate. However, we do request that you be respectful to all the other participants. No put-downs, bullying, or other abuse of your fellow participants. The obvious swear words are not allowed, and can result in getting a user kicked off the system for that session. Repeat offenders will lose their password privileges. You can express your moods, your thoughts and your feelings, but you must be discreet and creative enough in your expression to work around offensive language.

Some people have a real joy about multicultural experiences, love to be with mixed groups, and feel comfortable with people of any cultural background. Other people have experienced terrible racism, or problems with people outside their own cultural group. We want to hear from young people from all these realities.

Whatever your experience, please share it with the Youth Council on Race. We hope you'll meet others here who may feel the same or a different way than you feel; and that you can share, learn, maybe even transform one another. At the same time you might do the world some good, just by smartening us all up with your personal perspectives.

We invite you - (but it is not required) - to create something of meaning that comes out of your own experiences and observations about race and culture. The "something" might be a poem or rap; a cartoon or illustration or mural; a skit or song; or something else. The purpose of the creative work is to support your view in a way that brings meaning to your community.

Your work will remain your own. If you decide to create something, we'll require that you copyright it yourself, which protects your work from being claimed by some other person at a later date. We will provide instructions on copyrighting to those who may decide to create something. You can share your creative work with us by whatever means makes the most sense. A song or rap would be sent as a copy of a tape or video. A poem or essay by fax or letter. A mural or sidewalk painting would qualify via a photo. (Keep your original; send just a copy.) Please send us an email if you plan to send something to our office so that we can watch for it.

Hopefully some of our Youth Council on Race participants will create meaningful works which will remain in use in their communities for years to come. A skit, a mural, a song or a cartoon can inspire people for generations!

Awards will be given for Outstanding Participation and Best Practices. The awards with be in the form of certificates, gifts, public acknowledgement, travel, and money.

If you have further questions, please let us know: info@youth.nihewan.org Many thanks from the Nihewan Foundation staff and your fellow Mentors and Youth Council members.

The Nihewan Foundation for Native American Education is a non-profit corporation founded by Buffy Sainte-Marie in 1969.

Programs include Scholarships, Youth Council on Race, Teacher Training, and the Cradleboard Teaching Project.

The Youth Council on Race is made possible by the Nihewan Foundation; and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, whose YES! (Youth Engagement Strategy) implements youth-led programs that seek to bridge racial barriers in their communities.

©2001 Nihewan Foundation

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