My empowering experience with the Towering Mountain Gourd Society, a nonprofit organization that's dedicated to helping and inspiring those in need, granted me the opportunity to take on the role of a traditional princess. From July 2024 to July 2025, I respectfully represented this organization. Allowing me to grow as a young, resilient, indigenous woman. I gained the skills of public speaking to advocate for my people. Through leadership, I could lead the community in the right direction, while learning traditional knowledge from the elders I met. I carried these teachings everywhere I went, utilizing my core values, whether it be perseverance, respect, or faith. This role taught me that it was more than just a crown but about the importance of community, language, and tradition. How we need each other to survive, preserve culture, and get through obstacles. I began to understand that this crown wasn't just to show off but a role that encourages young Indigenous people to develop leadership skills, learn responsibility, balance tradition with modern challenges, and gain a sense of identity. 

  In “Sharing One’s Skin” by Jeannette Armstrong. She emphasizes the significance of the connection between Indigenous people and the land, underscoring the responsibilities that come with this relationship. This essay explores the ideas from the Okanagan Community that people are a crucial part of each other's survival and the land. We are born into families and communities, sharing physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of ourselves that create bonds that allow us to be human. Armstrong's main idea is that without or losing community connection leads to dehumanization and disintegration. However, challenges like global crises create negativity, but these crises can strengthen and rebuild community resilience to face trouble. I connected to this because the idea of being without relationships, bonds, and communities is that we are just flesh waiting to die. We then lose the capacity to experience the deep generational bond to other humans and to their surroundings”. Taken over by selfishness, lacking empathy, and being without the qualities that make us human. By communication, this builds our humanity as human beings. Allowing us to help one another with our challenges is what makes a community. Also, the importance of the connection between land and people. How it's important that as a community we face the negative westernization for our future generation.  Keeping the peace within the land rather than war and violence.

Armstrong, Jeanette. “Sharing One Skin: The Okanagan Community,” in Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith (eds), The Case Against the Global Economy. San Francisco, CA, Sierra Club Books, 1996. Pp 460-470

In the article "How place names impact the way we see landscape" by B.Toastie. Toastie emphasizes the importance of the names that we, indigenous people, give to the land. We give place names a sense of identity, description, and connections between the community, the land, and ancestral stories. It's ideal to remember the place names in the language and continue telling the stories that are connected to the land. Rather than experiencing the loss of our history, by being colonized by the overwriting of our sacred place names. The westernization of place names gives a different interpretation of the land. It disrupts connections to mythic beings, lacks a deep connection, and recognizes the tragedies and trauma they caused. They use the names of people who caused violence and war, such as Jackson or Washington. Disrespecting the place, polluting the minds of Indigenous people, and losing the meaning of our homelands, hunting grounds, and sacred sights. By reading this article, I can connect to the idea of learning my Diné language to learn about the true meaning behind my ancestral lands rather than using the English language. By using my Navajo language, I can refrain from disrespecting the land and the history behind it. Ignoring the colonized perception of our places, the ones that have no meaning or sense of belonging. My language allows me to paint a beautiful picture of the landscape, remember the stories, and give me a sense of identity. I will continue to tell the stories of my people so that knowledge is passed within my community. Letting them connect to our ways, scared sights, and history.

Oaster, B. Toastie. “How place names impact the way we see landscape.” High Country News, 1 May 2022, https://www.hcn.org/issues/54.5/people-places-how-place-names-impact-the-way-we-see-landscape/print_view. Accessed 6 September 2025.

In the article  “And Then I Went To School” by Joe Suina, Suina provides a clear example of how boarding schools affected Native American children's identity. How their indigenous perspective and lives have changed. Brainwashing them into thinking how they lived was “filthy” or “dirty”.  Living with his grandmother in Chochit, he was taught the responsibilities of a pueblo man, such as prayers, songs, hard work, and the language. But he was stripped of his culture, identity, and language at a young age. Entering boarding school was a new environment, an uncomfortable feeling than the comfort of his home. Forced to remove his native tongue, he slowly learn the English language. Surrounded by unfamiliar walls and rows of desks, they were told this would benefit their future and survival in the new world. In my opinion, this article hit close to home. It made me think about my relatives who shared their experiences at boarding schools. It is emotional thinking about the reality of being outside your culture that makes you forget your tradition and language. How we were assimilated and forced into the foreign tongue that is called English. This identity loss is why most native children don't speak, don’t understand, or learn their language. I really love the parts when he was describing the school. How descriptive he was to display the unusual environment he faced and how that affected him coming home. Comparing the white man's lifestyle to how he grew up. Thinking that he lived in 'unsanitary conditions' and how it felt important to him to live with straight walls instead of his crooked adobe walls, or how to have a white man's couch rather than the two rolls of bedding. This article brought to my attention how, over time, we fell into the white man's ways. The new world that has been assimilated is dealing with language loss. Today, it is hard to find a fluent speaker and storyteller. As he said, how both of them are two different worlds. The white man's world was flashy, less personal, and very comfortable. The Cochiti were attracted and pushed towards new ways. The only way he would survive was to give up a part of his life and learn an education.

Sunina, Joe. 1985 “And then I went to school: Memories of a Pueblo childhood.” New Mexico Journal of Reading, 5(2).