What used to be an empty classroom at West High School is now Denver Public Schools’ new Native American Student Center.
More than 50 people attended the grand opening last Thursday. The opening ceremony started with a traditional song accompanied by a drum and speeches from DPS staff members. Navajo tacos made with juniper ash and blue corn, traditional Native American stews, and popcorn were served.
The new space is a part of DPS’s Native American Culture and Education program, which is directed by the newly-appointed Dr. Jennifer Wolf, 56, who also owns the Native consulting firm Project Mosaic. According to Wolf, about 800 of DPS’s 715,000 students self-identify as Indigenous.
“We're excited because we want our students to feel like they belong at DPS,” Wolf said in an interview with CPR before the center’s grand opening. “For them to actually have a physical space that they can call their own and decide what's gonna happen there.”
The room has tall ceilings and big windows that look out onto a garden. It’s also connected to an empty greenhouse, where NACE staff hope to grow traditional medicinal plants and the “three sisters” crops of corn, squash, and beans.
DPS superintendent Alex Marrero and West High School principal Mia Martinez Lopez spoke at the event. Martinez Lopez talked about how it was her idea to volunteer an empty room at West to be used as a “student community center.”
“I really thought about how a lot of our students, and especially our Native Indigenous students have been displaced. They've been moved from school to school,” she said.
Martinez Lopez wanted to have the community center at West not only because they had the physical space available, but also because the high school has a “deep history” with “native and Indigenous families in the community.”
West is one of the oldest high schools in the city. It was an important site of student activism during the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and has seen many shifts in student population over the years as a result of nearby school closures and restructuring.
“I wanted to hopefully honor and open a space to bring [students] back, to bring them back here [and] have a place to call their own,” Martinez Lopez said.
The NACE offices are located on the eighth floor of the Emily Griffith Technical College building in downtown Denver. There are Native American clubs at multiple DPS schools and NACE staff work from different campuses, but this is the first space specifically designed for Native students and their families to gather.
“I'm just so excited that there is something physically here for our students to be on the ground if they need to use that space to fundraise or build their projects or whatever's going on,” said Alexis Rain Vigil, a program specialist at NACE. “I really feel like it's going to be a pivotal moment for our youth.”
Vigil, who is Shoshone and Chicana, is an alum of NACE and DPS so she knows the importance of having specific resources for Native students.
“I remember those offices being just so small and cramped and really not student-oriented, and it didn't really feel like a space for youth to be in,” she said, referring to the offices at Emily Griffith. “And I remember being in those spaces, feeling like I'm seeing someone's personal space and not a space that was meant for me.”
The programming that will be available at the Native Student Center is still being decided. It will depend on what students, parents, and other community members feel that they need, which is why there’s a suggestion box in the room. Dr. Wolf said she is envisioning fun, cultural activities like “beading and ribbon skirt making,” as well as practical events like nights to apply for the FAFSA and scholarships.
“We see this as a multi-purpose gathering space for our DPS families,” she said.
NACE is also launching the American Indian Parent/Guardian Advisory Committee, where DPS families can provide input on the future of the center.
“I really like that the space is opening because it's important for [students] to have community or a space to go to,” said April Allen, who was at the event with her son Cameron, a senior at South High School. They belong to the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma and also have Yuchi and Northern Arapaho heritage. Additionally, Cameron belongs to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma through his father.
“I think it's important for them to have support in the school just because the Native American population is so small in a lot of metro areas, we're looking at 1 percent or less,” Allen said. “They need extra support and we come from a background where we're all working together.”
Audrienna Brady, who is Navajo and of the Red House People clan, serves as the manager of the NACE program. She said the center is also important in repairing the relationship between Native youth and the American education system, which has a history of oppression of Native people.
“We've never really had a space here at DPS or within the schools. A space we could call our own, for families and students where they're able to feel welcome and see their identity in that space as well,” Brady said.
“It means a lot to be able to have this connection and show the rest of DPS, ‘Hey, we’re bringing awareness and recognition to our students and elevating their voices, especially our Native students,’” she said. “And thinking about the historical context of education, especially with our Native youth and being Native in general, it feels like we're helping to repair some of that too, in small bits and pieces.”
