Tribal college mounts cultural exchange with Indigenous Brazilians

A coalition of Minnesota educational institutions sent nine college students to Brazil as part of the pilot program

A few weeks ago, with the gentle melody of waves breaking on the shore behind her, recent Red Lake Nation College graduate Summer May spoke into a camera in Brazil. She was a world away from the traditions and cultures in which she grew up.

“Boozhoo, aaniin, indinawemaaganidog. Or hello, my relatives who are listening to this today. Right now, I am sitting on a beach by Aracruz,” she said. “We’re sharing an experience, a cultural practice that the Tupinikim have.”

She was in this costal city about 375 miles north of Rio de Janeiro for a first-of-its-kind cultural exchange.

A coalition of Minnesota educational institutions sent nine college students to Brazil as part of the pilot program. Five of the students came from the U of M and four from RLNC.

In her vlog May described joining members of the local Indigenous tribe in harvesting and eating sea urchin cooked over an open fire. She said the experience felt familiar in many ways.

“As I try all these new foods and I experience their culture and I see how alive it all is here,” May said. “I’m reminded of how it is back home when we go to the roundhouse or we go have ceremony, like moon ceremonies, or someone goes ricing and they bring it all back.”

May also correlated the sense of community the Tupinikim experience with that of the Red Lake people.

“Even though, like from a geography standpoint, we’re halfway across the world, I just can’t help but to feel that this is just so similar to how we live back home,” she said. “Like how they carry themselves with respect, with love, with compassion for one another, just the same way how we do it back home.”

May continued by saying the Tupinikim also share philosophies she learned at Red Lake about things Western cultures might consider inanimate objects, such as rocks and drums.

“In Ojibwe culture we refer to them as they’re alive, because they are alive to us and all living things extend past you know, just human beings,” she said. “And I see aspects of that in that respect, and that awareness of their culture that life is not just our own experiences, but what goes on around them too.”

The exchange came about through a group of Brazilian professors and graduate students at the University of Minnesota who wanted to expose students to their culture.

They also wanted to connect Brazilian people living in urban parts of the country with the Indigenous populations in rural areas.

To do this they turned to a federally funded college opportunity program known as TRIO, and to two Red Lake-based academics who happen to be married: RLNC instructor Lucas Bratvold and BSU instructor Awanookwe Kingbird-Bratvold.

Awanookwe says their knowledge and community engagement caught the U’s attention.

“They heard about us, they asked for us, and we started meeting with them,” she said. “And we told them that this would be a huge opportunity for us to collaborate, especially with Red Lake Nation college.”

Lucas said planning began over a year ago.

“We conducted a site visit to do some preliminary stuff, make connections, look for ideas and opportunities of what students could do,” he said. “And it also turned into an opportunity to bring our students and travel along with the U of M TRIO program.”

Finding funding was tough. BSU is experiencing tight budgets and layoffs. But at the last minute the school paid for Awanookwe’s trip with professional development funds.

To cover other costs the BSU students enrolled in RLNC.

Then the Red Lake Tribal Council donated $10,000 which RLNC matched.

But they were still short.

That’s when the organizers got a wild idea. For years Awanookwe and Lucas have worked with an organization called Companions and Animals for Reform and Equity, running pet clinics on the reservation through their outreach called Aweysiinyag (animals) are Loved.

Why not ask them?

“And they were thrilled to support it,” she recalled. “And without any thought really they said, ‘Of course, we’re going to help fund you.’”

With that taken care of both instructors began recruiting students. They had also been working with a Brazilian University so that students from both countries could benefit from the interaction.

RLNC student Michelle Anderson took the trip as a member of the group. She says Indigenous people in Brazil deal with many of the same problems she and her friends find in the U.S.

“I learned that everyone really faces the same struggles, especially like continentally as Indigenous people. But at the same time, I also found shared struggles within the people from just overall Brazilian culture,” she said. “Especially talking with the college students and how they were struggling within their predominantly white institution to get through their schooling, which really paralleled with me, because I was facing the same thing here.”

Another RLNC student who made the journey was Nicole Good.

As a single mother and pet owner she said deciding to go to Brazil wasn’t as easy as for a traditional student. But in the end, she said it was all worth it. Good also realized that Indigenous people everywhere are still trying to overcome the effects of colonization.

“It really broadened my horizons and made me realize that this experience that we’re having here in the United States really isn’t specifically to here,” she said. “It’s more of like a global struggle that we’re all facing.”

During the two-week trip the group visited several Indigenous villages. Lucas and Awanookwe hope to continue these cultural exchanges in the future partnering with Indigenous communities in other countries.