Fountain Hills High School students Aysha Rasool and Jonas Doka-Nephi represented the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation at the White House in Washington, D.C., this November. They attended a national youth conference with about 1,000 other representatives from across the country sponsored by United National Indian Tribal Youth (UNITY).

Rasool is the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation (FMYN) Youth Council president, and Doka-Nephi assists her as the vice president. While they were in D.C., they heard from guest speakers and helped contribute to a continuing conversation on problems faced by Native American youth.

“For the whole day, it was a big conference from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and it had about 12 guest speakers to talk about each topic,” Rasool said. “After each topic, they put the focus on us, as youth, to have a chance to speak and see what our questions were and what they could tell us.”

Topics ranged from food sovereignty to education to physical and mental health, and speakers included First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and the Secretary of Interior, Deb Haaland. Haaland is one of the first Native American women to serve in the United States Congress, and the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary.

Meeting people from similar backgrounds helped Rasool and Doka-Nephi realize the issues they saw in their community were not exclusive to them. FMYN has its own customs and ceremonies, such as a coming of age ceremony for high school girls, but most traditions could not be carried out as normal across the country during the pandemic.

“Once COVID hit, not a lot of Native Americans got to experience their traditional ceremonies and their culture because everybody had to stay home, stay safe,” Rasool said. “I feel like this generation now is trying to get back or trying to relearn their culture and their ways due to a big pandemic.”

The pair shared their experience with the rest of the FMYN Youth Council last Tuesday, Nov. 29. There are 22 members in the Youth Council, and they range from middle school to high school students.

UNITY aims to empower Indigenous youth and planned this year’s youth conference to coincide with Native American Heritage Month. November has been recognized nationally as Native American Heritage Month since George H. Bush signed it into law in 1990.

Rasool and Doka-Nephi spent five days in D.C. over Veterans Day weekend, and they toured the White House and attended landmarks like the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Neither of them had ever been to D.C. before, but they may return for the next UNITY National Conference from June 30 to July 4, 2023. There will also be a UNITY midyear conference in Phoenix from Feb. 23 to Feb. 26 next year.