Two Project Venture staff are presenting at the 51st annual Association for Experiential Education (AEE) International Conference, “The Power of Experience.”
The presentation, “It’s So Old, It Seems New”—Indigenizing Activities to Positively Change Norms will be led by Project Venture’s own Heather Yazzie Campbell, Director of Project Venture, Albuquerque, and Neal Ferris, Director of Training and Technical Assistance. Joining them will be colleague, Patrick Wilmot.
Larry Emerson, a Navajo Educator and Artist from Shiprock, Arizona, stated, “As Native Indigenous people, we often experience sad social realities that, according to our elders, are rooted in a type of culture and language loss that negatively impacts our identity.” Experiential and Adventure-based education is rooted in Indigenous thought and traditional knowledge. It has the power to create opportunities to reverse negative impacts and restore cultural identities. Project Venture has learned to adapt Native Traditional knowledge to a contemporary world and has discovered learning activities designed to restore and regenerate participant cultural consciousness. As Larry Emerson has also noted, “It’s so old, it seems new!”
This session will engage participants in meaningful experiential activities that can revitalize their sense of self, voice, culture, kinship, place, and community, as well as provide experiential and adventure educators the opportunity to expand their cultural awareness while learning to adapt their experiential activities and lessons. This awareness will allow the attendees to frame the activities and will allow them to discover commonalities from dissimilar cultural groups.
The 51st AEE International Conference will be held in the Memorial Union Building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, acknowledging and honoring that it sits on the ancestral land of the Ho-chunk Peoples. Conference dates are November 2-5, 2023, and can be accessed online.
