A video made by the First Nations/Native Heritage club was not shown as expected during Monday’s advisory disappointing both members of the club and ASB.

“I felt disappointed. The rest of my group felt disappointed too. I know ASB was disappointed simply because we were told very last minute, and it’s no longer November,” said senior Taavi Machado, “now we’re kind of all scrambling to get this video together by Friday.”

Machado, a member of the First Nations/Native Heritage club, said the video was “just us being honest and us saying our minds and what we feel like the school curriculum could do better, and us talking about the isolation we felt.”

Unfortunately, the video was not shown because the administration did not feel the video was complete leading to them making the decision to show the video during Friday’s advisory.

Members of the club were told by the administration that they had to add more personal information about where you can see Native American students in the school to the video before they would show it in advisory. 

When members of ASB asked why the video wasn’t shown they were given a different answer. They were asked by the administration to put a positive spin on the video to make it more “palpable” for the general student body. ASB officers didn’t want to change the video for fear of compromising its original message of open honesty about their experiences as Native American students at LOHS.

“The video to different people can be seen in a negative light, but just kind of realizing that some representation is better than none,” said Machado, “despite how it is, it should still be shown.”

Here at school, the First Nations/Native Heritage club had hopes to raise awareness during the month and educate their peers by putting informational posters up around the school and putting together a video illustrating the club members personal experiences as Native American students at LOHS.

View the Native American Heritage Month video here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cjv_fTkQHBmZlXhGGSmgw1tn5SuDskzh/view?usp=drive_web