As Merlin Adynn Pecos listened to his teacher describe a school trip she was planning for him and his classmates to the nation’s capital, he didn’t believe her.
“I thought she was lying,” the 13-year-old said on a recent afternoon. “It sounded fake.”
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The Native American teenager attends a school on a reservation located about 50 miles from Albuquerque. Many of his classmates have never left the state or flown on a plane. The trips he’s taken have always been by car and weren’t the type to include organized tours.
D.C., he thought as he listened to his teacher talk, seemed too far and too pricey.
“Even the name sounds expensive — the nation’s capital,” he said.
Science teacher Patricia Ferguson knew affording an out-of-state trip would pose a challenge for many of the students at the San Diego Riverside Charter School on the Pueblo of Jemez reservation. She also knew how badly they needed one. The pandemic had taken much from them. They had lost loved ones, more than a year of in-person learning and the chance to participate in traditional ceremonies. For a while, they were even cut off from the rest of the world. Concrete barriers were placed along roads leading to the reservation to keep strangers who might be carrying covid-19 from entering unchecked.
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Ferguson called different school travel companies to ask about summer trips to D.C. and decided the best deal was one that offered a four-day trip in June for $2,200 per student. On the day she told the students the price, she watched their excitement about the trip dissolve into doubt. Pecos wasn’t the only one who viewed the trip as beyond reach.
“We will never be able to raise that much in a million years,” one student said.
He described his mother as making $100 a day selling burritos. Other students told Ferguson their families didn’t have credit cards to pay even the $95 deposit fee.
Countless school trips have taken place in the District over the years. This is the story of one that almost didn’t happen. The trip would have never become a possibility if it weren’t for a teacher who cared, a community that rallied and strangers who helped.
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Joseph Brophy Toledo is a spiritual leader with the federally recognized Jemez de Pueblo tribe. He can tell you in detail about the historic ties between D.C. and the reservation, including the legend of a member whose spirit settled in a place near the Washington Monument and continues to guide leaders. But he speaks just as passionately about the future benefits of having the children take the trip. He described it as holding the potential to change their outlook.
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“We don’t want them lost in our world,” he said. “We want them to know about Congress. We want them to know about our state senators, our representatives that are out there and why they are there. We want them to know the importance of your personal self, that you have the right to speak your want and to be heard.”
Ferguson, whose mother attended the school where she now teaches, said it can feel intimidating to leave the reservation. She grew up hearing what happened when her grandparents once headed to a nearby city to sell wool. A woman at one shop bought the wool but refused to let her grandmother use the restroom.
“I remember hearing that story and being really hurt by it,” Ferguson said. She described it as sending the message, “We’ll take what you have, but we’re not going to help you out.”
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Last month, a hotel in South Dakota set off a social media firestorm and spurred a federal class-action lawsuit after the owner reportedly posted on Facebook that the hotel would no longer “allow any Native American on property.” That post came after a young Native American man was shot at the hotel.
“Some of our people were shocked and upset after seeing that,” Harold Frazier, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, told The Washington Post. “Some of our people were like, ‘We always go through this,’ but to really see it in writing, it caused a lot of anger.”
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Ferguson said her students, who are considered English language learners because they speak Towa at home, are aware of the stereotypes some people have of Native Americans. One day at school, as they talked about the trip, the conversation turned from what they might see to how they might be seen.
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“When we go there, people might look at us. What if they call us names?” Ferguson said one boy asked.
She assured him that it likely wouldn’t happen and that if it did, they would deal with it. She also told the class that in Washington, there are people of many backgrounds who look and dress in all different ways.
“My long-term hope,” for the students, she said, “is they will be encouraged to go out and do other things, that they won’t be intimidated by the outside world and will realize they can fit in.”
In September, she came up with the idea for the trip. By December, about four students had signed up. There are about 20 middle school students and she hoped that at least a dozen would go.
Her sister Barbara Creel, who is a law professor, got involved at the beginning of this year. As Creel tells it, she wanted to show the students they wouldn’t have to wait “a million years” to travel.
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“I wanted them to experience things other kids get to experience,” she said. “Travel is transformative and makes you appreciate the value of home.”
“Help Native American Indian Children Go to D.C.” reads the title of the GoFundMe she created.
“I am asking for your support to help the children on the Reservation who have a dream to go on a middle school trip to Washington, D.C.!” it reads. It describes how the reservation went into lockdown because of the pandemic. “There are many challenges, but the children have been hard hit, with the isolation, illnesses, death, unemployment, impacts on family, the lack of ability for the village to gather in traditional ceremonies, AND learning gaps.”
The trip, it says, is the one thing that has sparked some excitement for them.
“The light in their eyes was inspiring when they attended the informational meeting with the tour group, EF Tours — They were BEAMING!” it reads. “The light went out when they learned the price per student!”
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What has happened since Creel created that page has left the students checking it daily and talking about what they will pack, what they hope to see, and who will get a window seat.
As of Friday, more than $31,000 of the $42,000 goal had been raised.
Creel said she hopes the students see that money, which has come from people who live on the reservation and off it, not as charity for them, but as an investment in them.
“What I want the children to take away is that they are worth supporting, that their minds are worth supporting, that there are people who care about them,” she said.
A total of 15 students and five adults are signed up to go on the trip. The money will cover their airfare, hotel costs and tours. If funds are raised beyond the goal, Creel said that money will go toward buying suitcases for students who don’t have any and fixing a broken window at the school.
Ferguson said recent weeks have seen the students speaking excitedly about the trip and hotel stay, which will be a first for some of them. Their itinerary is still being formed but will include the war memorials because so many families on the reservation have relatives who served. Native Americans have traditionally served in the military at a disproportionate rate.
Pecos is one of the students who has requested a window seat. He said he is “kind of scared” and “kind of excited” to fly.
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He said he is looking forward to seeing national monuments up close and hopes when people see him and his classmates, it breaks down stereotypes. “We’re not lazy Native Americans like people think we are,” he said. “We want to learn.”
When I asked what he wants to be when he grows up, he didn’t give one answer.
“A lot of things,” he said. “I want to be a chef. I want to be a bartender. I want to be a welder. I want to travel the world.”
He has not yet flown in a plane, and already he’s planning future flights.