Increasing awareness about cultural traditions across the district through dance.

On Tuesday, May 13, the Native American Student Union (NASU) at South Eugene High School held their first ever assembly in the Main Gym during an advisory period. Intended to help provide representation for the indigenous communities at South, the assembly consisted of dances rich with cultural heritage, featuring performances from the indigenous latino dance group, Baile Folklórico, and from a trio of dancers from NASU.  

“It was definitely what we wanted to get out and represent for our first assembly,” freshman counselor Melissa Martinez said. “Other highs were just seeing my culture represented at South on the floor, and I know that a lot of Latino and other native students felt that way, because we don’t see a lot of our culture in this school, so that was really amazing for us.” 

While Tuesday’s assembly was the first such assembly to be held at South, indigenous dances have been held at Eugene schools such as North Eugene and Churchill for years. They have all been organized through the 4J Natives Program, which helps provide support for Native American dancers in town by ensuring they get the regalia and outfits needed to perform.

The idea to bring one of these dances to South was first proposed by a senior named Xander Charette. Charette was the only one of the three NASU dancers who was from South; his partners were Lance Stone from Chruchill and Delia “Dom” Deleon from North Eugene.

“Xander had a really big vision of having a teaching Powwow,” Martinez said. “He really wanted to make that a project he did in his senior year, but we didn’t have the time for it. What we were able to do was to shorten this into an assembly.” 

After several months of planning, the dances were finally scheduled and performed, and, all in all, the assembly was successful. However, NASU sees this assembly as just the beginning of what they hope to do within South Eugene. 

“I hope that there are more indigenous showings of what could happen and for the people paying attention, it feels less like they’re watching an event rather than it’s something that they wish to see,” Charette remarked. “I was hearing things about people saying it felt like a zoo exhibit. You’d come in and watch it, and be like ‘oh wow, that’s cool’ and then move on. In the future, I hope it’s something that could linger better in people’s minds.”

Some of the ideas both he and Martinez floated for future assemblies included a more interactive experience. Charette spoke of potentially including audience members in a large group dance at the end of an assembly, while Martinez mentioned the possibility of trying to start a fair for minority groups at South to showcase their culture.

 “Our vision is to take all the BIPOC groups of this school and have them bring in representations of dance, food, storytelling, [and] introducing or showing people the different regalia or outfits of their ancestors,” Martinez said. “We want to be able to represent these things at South so we can expose the students to more culture.” 

While the assembly had successes and things to improve, it is definitely a major step forward for NASU’s representation at South.  

Article by Daniel Harms