I am absolutely amazed
at the knowledge, and the time that it takes to build these robots.
They were telling me that they program everything, they built it from scratch,
and to see these kids and how they know how to improve
their robot already just by watching it perform.
I'm just absolutely amazed.
Hello, my name’s Destiny Kessay.
I am the Miss White Mountain Apache Queen 2022-2023.
I am 21 years old. I’m from McNary, Arizona.
I am Between Two Hills people, born from the Slender Peaks Standing Up people.
We are at the Southwest Native American Showcase.
The third annual Southwest Native American VEX Robotics tournament
that is hosted here in the White Mountain Apache Reservation.
This year, it’s at Canyon Day Junior High.
Last year we had, I think, 20 teams,
and this year we’re at 70. It’s grown really big.
We brought in some new sponsors for this event this year
and we're very excited to have them on board.
Amazon and Amazon CoRo, Amazon Future
Engineer, and Indigitize. We also have our returning sponsor, Google.
We're here to give Native Americans the opportunity to showcase their robots
and present their engineering and STEM skills that they've achieved.
There's the White Mountain Apache,
Mescalero Apache, the Cherokee Nation,
the Navajo Nation has a couple teams, and we're hoping
to get more here to represent their tribes as well.
This event is special.
For one reason, we have both middle school and high school students here.
So we have two separate events together, and that allows us to have eight
world championship qualification spots given away this weekend.
Competition adds a couple of elements to our students learning.
They are not just learning technical skills
which they could get in the classroom,
but they're also learning what we call 21st century workforce skills
when they come to competitions.
They're learning how to process frustration when the robot
quits or something fails and they have to go back and rebuild.
They're learning about other native cultures as they engage with each other.
They're learning how to communicate efficiently and effectively
and a lot of times in pressure situations.
I mean, when they go to go to a match with another team
and a lot of times they only have a few minutes to...
to get a plan together.
I was very, very shy.
But being able to compete and talk with other teams from different schools,
that helped me really build my confidence and my communication skills.
It opened a lot of opportunities
within our school, got to travel, meet new schools and places we'd never been.
It also helps him to challenge his mind with the having
to use his hands and the tools and the measurements and well,
if this isn't going fast enough, how do we make it faster?
If this feels too big, too small, then how do we make it better?
This is an activity that can bring everybody together.
They're talking, they're applying math, they’re learning code and logic
and teamwork, recording everything in their book.
There's not many downsides.
My child is really into science, and just being on a robotic
team has given him something that he can build on.
It brings out who he is, just being more positive of himself.
And that's what we need is for our children
is to be confident and just know who they are...
special.
Really, it's helping them discover that they have these skills
because these kids are very talented.
My goal is that kids learn robotics in general,
but really it's more about the difference that it makes in the communities
and the fact that the students learn that this is an opportunity
that they have out there.
Coming from rural Oklahoma,
most kids don't realize that the possibility of the engineering degrees
and stuff and the fact that they are capable to achieve this.
If you expand the types of ways
students can interact with educational material and
through a lot of different opportunities, then they can find the thing
that really clicks for them.
It makes them excited, and they want to learn, and they want to figure it out.
The students love about the fact that it's hands on and interacting.
I mean, from a Native point of view, unlike Western science,
where you lecture first and then they go into the lab and teach,
Natives is, we taught our children years ago,
it was hands on first and explanation second.
And robotics really brings that forward,
and so it really relates to our Native students.
Being able to build something
that was nothing before, and then build it into something that is incredible.
I really love all this hard work to make a robot,
and then you finally get to see it work with your controller
and see what you want it to do and how you can make it.
It's just really satisfying to me.
What I love about
robotics is how much the team has to work together.
You get to like learn about all the different personalities they all have.
Honestly, coding.
I think that's my favorite thing, because it draws my heart more,
especially because I get to like, make it my own instead of someone else's,
and I'm pretty good at it, so it makes me more confident.
I enjoy kind of meeting people.
Coming to these things are a lot of fun,
getting to see everyone and all their robots.
So I feel like an event like this brings us all together
since it's like mainly Native Americans, and we get to share our stories
which encourage other Native Americans to go out into the world more.
To have a Native American showcase to
where Natives can come together as a collective community
and to see what other Native Americans are doing from other areas
all in the same building, all on the same day, is very special.
It gives them a bigger sense that they're part of something bigger than just their
little local school.
For me, it's just cool to see, you know,
other Native students and a lot of Native people engaged in tech.
You know, this is on the reservation, and it's focused,
rather than being like the only one in the room,
like the only Native team or the only Native student on a team.
And it's just a really good
to create that sense of community within the context of tech.
And I think that builds a lot of momentum and energy for them.
It shows that Native Americans
are still here, and we're just as smart.
So being able to see all these little kids running around, like
knowing that they're Native, knowing that they can do things
that are beyond their limits, but not quite beyond their limits.
It's us as a people, and we want to remind everyone that we're still here
and that we're resilient and that we’re still standing strong as Native Americans.
And we can do anything that anyone can tell us that we can’t.
It feels nice.
Feels like we're known, feels like we're being represented as a people.
Indigenous cultures are often viewed
in a kind of like a stagnant or a thing that exists in the past.
And it's really not that case, right? Like it's very present, it's current,
its existing, it's living. And so
there's like this presentation aspect,
showing who we are, what our identity is, what our culture is.
And also like now here we are working with robots,
and that robot doesn't have to be separate.
Maybe this is something that we're learning
that we can use to, you know, better our own selves and create something new
in the future that it becomes then a part of our living culture.
I think something like this where it's Indigenous centric,
you know, we're at a school that's on a rez, and we've got rez kids
all in the same room, a bunch of them
doing something like this, competing together.
That gives them the opportunity in the future then to like
make something like this their own, you know,
and have it come from the inside out as opposed to the outside in.
No matter how
much technology evolves and how much the kids grow
in their future career field, you know, of STEM,
they don't forget who they are as a Native American or as an Indigenous person.
You know, I see the girls out there in their camp dresses.
I see them in their moccasins, and they're just representing who they are
out in the different fields.
So that just gives them a sense of pride to say, “Look, I'm a Native American,
and I'm out here doing, you know, engineering and building a robot.”
The confidence of knowing who you are and being proud of who you are
is really important.
And I think that's, you know, that's the purpose of this event.
My head administrator is always encouraging me,
“How can you do something in this class that's going to serve the community
or serve the school or serve the students and their families?”
And I think that's a value that is really common
in a lot of Indigenous communities.
I think that's something that needs to be
a lot more present in the tech space is like not
“How can I create the next big thing that's going to make the most money?”
but like, how can we use these tools that are so powerful
to serve, you know, the community and the people I care about?
When Indigenous folks create tech, it's... it comes from like a community
based frame of mind. It's not individual and Western.
In Navajo communities, there’s this concept of “K’é”
and “K’é” cannot be translated into English.
It's just like how everything's related to each other, how people are related
to each other, how we’re related to the land and the sky and everything around us.
I think for a lot of Native people,
our culture and identity is like, it's one thing.
When we take those things and
put focus on it with technology,
a lot of innovative solutions to current issues in the community can be solved.
I think that robotics is one of these pathways
that helps us negotiate between where we are now
with technology and jobs and into the future.
With the challenges that change every year in the competition format,
it's engaging, it's fun, but it totally opens up
that problem of “Here's this thing we want to do. How do we make it happen?”
And that type of unencountered
technology and challenge...
like, no matter what job these kids end up doing, they're going to benefit
from that experience and being able to,
you know, apply it in new ways.
My hopes is for them to take this
and grow with it, each year progress.
And hopefully you can
be able to go
off the reservation, get that education, get that degree,
and then come back and help your people... and have fun while you're doing it.
The hopes, I think, are endless.
It's just getting the students to see that.
And not necessarily the hope I have for the reservation or these people.
It's what these kids can come up with,
you know, some of the problems they see.
Learning how to code and program and engineer--
I think those are
those are the big solutions to all these problems
that we don't even know are coming our way, you know?
The question is, “Where is our children's
education going to be from 50 years from now?”
Are we going to continue to do
engineering anything that they want to become?
And, you know, just a big heart and a big mind for just
our Native American kids.
And that's one thing that I really get excited about
at these meets is the Native American children, you know, they have a chance.
And I really give the thanks to all that have a open
heart and open mind and just introducing STEM to our children.
The program as a whole has continued to grow
tremendously across the whole reservation.
Soon here we'll have a robotics program in every school on the reservation.
So it's cool to see.
So, I mean, like I was telling some of the people here, I started
one robot, one student at a time, and that, kind of, that's how it built.
I mean, at its peak we had about 80 students at the school of 300,
so it was really good.
It's still growing across the rez.
I think looking back,
it's really
rewarding to see that, to see where we started
and where it's at now.