Julia Heilrayne

Cooper, 1st Period

AP Lang, New Mexico Reflection

22.May.2019

New Mexico Reflection Essay

I went to New Mexico as an activist and advocate involved heavily in the Austin, Texas

liberal crazies scene, and because of that, and due to the nature of my driving question, I was

expecting to have the idea that everyone who has been traumatized, brutalized, or otherwise

marginalized by the US government confirmed. Oftentimes in the liberal activist culture, there is

this underlying idea that everyone is eternally mad at the people who have largely been

responsible for their marginalization, but what I learned in New Mexico, especially through the

river rafting trip, is that this is often not the case when it comes to how Native Americans feel

about the US government and white people in general.

When we were going down the river in our raft with our Native guide, James, we were

able to ask James a lot of questions about his life, the his tribe, and pretty much everything else.

We asked him about school, about his family, about the things he does in his free time, and we

all talked about the similarities and differences between our lives. When we finally asked him

questions that pertained to our project, we shied away from our real driving question, and asked

things such as “does your tribe feel anger towards the people who have traumatized your people

in the past?” and “how do the impacts of colonization still show in your tribe, family, and the

way that you do things?” Through asking these questions, we were able to start a dialogue with

James about these issues, and what we learned was that this people are very forgiving, and they
don’t see the purpose to anger. Rather, James explained, that his tribe works to better the future

for everyone, rather than being angry about the past. I think that is really cool of their tribe,

because a lot of times in my experience, that level of forgiveness and understanding that

everyone having a better future is the best thing to work for is really hard to get to, much less

maintain and continue for generations. I really enjoyed getting to talk to James, especially about

the details of how his tribes deals with everything that has historically been done to harm Native

Americans.

In addition to learning about how differently James’ tribe deals with things than people

sometimes assume based of faulty preconceived notions about what it means to be marginalized

and try to break out of it, I really enjoyed and learned a lot from the day trip to the To'hajiilee

Community School. While we visited them, we were given a tour of their campus by some of the

high school students that were about our age. On the tour, we got the chance to ask them

questions about their school, and they asked us a lot of the same questions about school in

Austin. I have a very hard time imagining what it might be like to live in someone else’s life, and

so for me, the tour of the school and talking to the students was by far one of the best ways for

me to actually come to a greater understanding of how different, and how similar, my life is to

that of students my age living on reservation in New Mexico.

One of the things that stood out to me at the Community School was even though they

live in a different state, even though they live on a Native American reservation, and even though

from the outside it might look like we live very different lives, we actually don’t. Their school

reminded me of the school I went to for kindergarten through 6th grade- a small school, with

students of all ages, and with classes like wood working and other more practical classes than I
feel like we have in Austin, and that really made me realize how similar our lives are, even

though I felt like there would be more stark differences.

All and all, I really enjoyed the Southwest Trip to New Mexico. The trip was a chance for

me to grow as an AGS student, and as a person. I was able to get closer to my fellow AGS

students and teachers, see things from other people’s perspective, and develop new opinions and

thoughts on various issues and things that impact our world today. I enjoyed the level of

autonomy we were given on the trip, I liked all of our activities, and I think that this trip will be

one of the things I look back on when I think about my experience in AGS and in high school in

general.