My name is Faith, I am a first year student at the University of Washington and I am studying Medical Anthropology with a focus on indigenous food sovereignty and I am a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. I am happy to provide my tribal identification number or card if requested. My whole life, I’ve felt behind the game. Due to financial struggles I wasn’t able to start school until most children my age were in 3rd grade, and when I did it was difficult. I pushed myself beyond my limits to get out of aid classes because I wanted to be normal. I would lie to various classmates about which math and reading class periods I was in to explain why I wasn’t in theirs when really I was in IEPs. I hated my mother for bringing me into the world when she wasn’t prepared to be a mother, I felt like she had set me up for failure. I also hated everything about my ethnicity. When I told people I was native they would say “wait you guys are still alive!?” or, “you don’t look or dress like you’re native” and even “yeah everyone’s at least a little native what’s your point?”. The truth is, the tribal community has always been there for us. They gave us food when when welfare wasn’t enough, they provided free medical and dental because our insurance wouldn’t cover all 7 of my siblings annual checkups and teeth cleaning, and they provided childcare and supplemental education while my mom worked several jobs to make ends meet. I’m now embarrassed by how I used to think, and for letting the world make me feel like I should be ashamed of where I come from. I shouldn’t have worked hard because I wanted to be normal. I should’ve worked hard because no matter what start this world gave me I have the blood of survivors flowing through my veins and because of that I can do anything. The University of Washington has an indigenous enrollment of of less than 1%. I am one of only 14 indigenous women who who were accepted to receive their education here in 2021. I am a representative of my tribe, and a tribute to the success that is possible when the native community supports their future generations. We have struggled since the genocide of our people but we are not gone, we are strong resilient people who are going to make a difference in this country. My goal in life is to go to law school and defend tribal communities rights to their food sovereignty and clean drinking water. The health of our land and water is what makes us healthy, it feeds our mothers when we are in utero and nourishes us as we grow into adults. it is important to me that this food and water is of the highest quality and quantity. I want to support future generations the way my elders supported me so that tribal children like myself lead full, healthy lives. Thank you for considering me for this scholarship, I am certain that with the right financial support I can help my tribe make a difference in the lives of our youth.

I’m from a town on the boarder of Arizona and Mexico called Yuma. My grandmother immigrated there and worked on a walnut farm, she was never a legal citizen. When my mother was growing up, she wasn’t allowed to speak Spanish in public, she was called a “wet back” and “dirty Mexican” so often she sought to gentrify herself as much as possible. She joined the Mormon church to blend into the crowd and at the age of 16 met my father. They got married and had 4 children, the last being myself when he was diagnosed with cancer. After he passed, my mother couldn’t afford supporting 4 children on her own and we lost our trailer, we were homeless and couch surfed her friends and the few family members we had on this side of the boarder until my uncle gave us his old one. In desperation she married a man and we lived with him for 4 years, he was horribly abusive. I have many scars from our time with him, physically and emotionally. After 4 years with him my grandmother passed and left her savings to my mother as well as 3 of her youngest kids in my moms care. My moms husband at the time, drained their shared bank account and kicked us to the curb, leaving my mother with 7 children to care for and taking her inheritance with him. We were homeless again. Sometimes we slept in cardboard tents because the car was too hot. Eventually we qualified for the Ronald McDonald charity housing and lived there. We were fed by the WIC foundation my mom and 16 year old aunty each worked 3 jobs. With all the loss and bitter memories, Arizona became a lost cause. We relocated to Washington when I was 10, lived in welfare housing and with their public education system I finally got to go back to school. Everyone my age already knew how to read and could do multiplication. I was humiliated and felt cheated, I blamed my mom for not having enough money to keep me in school and for not being able to afford new clothes like all the other kids, we could barley scrape together $20 for each kid to get clothes from the goodwill bins every summer, and winter jackets were out of the question. Eventually my moms youngest siblings stated their own lives and the load lightened. My mom got a job at the YMCA and they let us do swim lessons for free after school. From the moment I was put back in school I wanted more than anything to be normal, I worked hard in my special education classes, took the city bus early in the morning with my siblings so we could get homework help or read in the library and after school we took the bus downtown and went to swim practice where I did my homework in the daycare and got help from the workers while I waited for my lessons to start. By 8th grade I was ahead in math, and by my senior year I was an honors student and graduated with full IB. My struggles with poverty and racism are not singular, they are a common occurrence amongst immigrants. I only wish that my motivation was different. I worked hard in school to be normal, I should’ve worked hard to prove that we immigrants, are worth every penny of your tax dollars that go to welfare, and one day I will be a model citizen active in my community that is proud of her heritage.