45-2: Indigenous Youth: Leaders Today, Elders Tomorrow

Hadih, Raven Lacerte and Sage Lacerte Sahdnee. We are Raven Lacerte and Sage Lacerte. Loretta Madam S’loo. Our mom is the late Loretta Madam. Paul Lacerte S’ba. Our dad is Paul Lacerte. Sigh Gunna Lushiboo Injun Yinkak Dene Keyoh. We are Carrier Peoples, members of the Lake Babine Nation and we belong to the Bear Clan. Te Be Snachalya injun Lekwungen keyoh. We acknowledge the territory of the Lək̓ wəŋən-speaking Peoples, the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations in what is now Canada. 

My name is Sabantho Aderi, which in the Lokono-Arawak language means, “Beautiful Little Ground Dove.” I am a 22-year-old Indigenous woman living in an urban society outside of my ancestral community: a 240-square mile, 1,700- person ancestral Pakuri Lokono-Arawak territory in Region 4, Guyana, Northeast South America. I live in Barbados, another island nation altogether, in the Eastern Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean.  

Tsuk wik’a. That’s what my mom used to lovingly tell me when I was being rambunctious as a child. Tsuk wik’a is a Yowlumne phrase meaning be quiet, or shut up. To be fair, I was quite the chatterbox, and honestly, that hasn’t changed much. When my mom first told me tsuk wik’a, I asked her where she learned that phrase, and she told me it was an Indian word that she learned from her dad. He would tell her the same thing as a child. Growing up, it was mentioned within my family that we were Native American, or Indian.

The scene is set: February 10, 2015. A young Indigenous woman is about to be interviewed by a German radio station during the Berlinale, one of the most important film festivals in Europe. The interviewer introduces the young woman as “a wonderful guest, the protagonist of an excellent and exciting film, the first from Guatemala to be seen at this festival,” and offers her the microphone. Coroy greets the audience shyly, but bravely, first in Spanish and then in her native Mayan Kaqchikel language.

South Africa has been branded as “the Rainbow Nation” because of the diversity of its citizens. The country boasts a very liberal constitution and 11 official languages, none of which, however, include Indigenous languages like Nama or N/uuki. What is becoming more and more apparent lately is the exclusion of the Khoi and San languages, especially from school curricula, radio, and television. Under Apartheid, only English and Afrikaans were official languages. This famously led to the Soweto uprising of

Mia Beverly (she/they), 22, is a member of the Sandhill Band of Cherokee and Lenape and currently works as a grant writer and manager for the First Foods Program, an Indigenous-led nonprofit based in New York that was created in March of 2020. According to Beverly, the main goal of First Foods is increasing food sovereignty through education.

Introduction In this section, we share with you the voices of our Indigenous Community Media Youth Fellows. Cultural Survival’s Indigenous Community Media Youth Fellowship supports individuals and groups of youth ages 17–25 in their efforts to build their radio journalism and radio broadcasting skills through trainings, community radio visits and exchanges, radio production, and conference attendance. Since 2018, we have supported 33 Indigenous youth fellows in 10 countries.