The Woodrow Wilson School will host the 2009 New Mexico Indian Leadership Institute's Summer Policy Academy from June 20 to June 28. The program, which will be hosted by the School for the second year, will convene 18 Native American high school students from the Santa Fe Indian School Leadership Program to examine public policy and tribal community issues.

This year’s program will focus on education, natural resources, health disparities, and economic development.

The Summer Policy Academy provides young Native Americans the opportunity to explore the current challenges and issues facing Indian people and examine how federal policies impact tribal communities. Students from all 19 New Mexico tribes and pueblos are nominated to participate in the program by teachers, community leaders, professionals, and tribal leaders.

Through roundtable discussions, case studies and presentations by Native Americans leaders, students will examine Indian policy making on the federal level and the current political climate; Indian education and the role of language and culture in education; indigenous research and policy implications; protection of natural resources and water rights; sacred sites protection policies, and economic development. The week will culminate in Washington, D.C. where students will present their findings and policy recommendations to the National Congress of American Indians.

Speakers will include Richard Hope, Director of the Foreign Affairs Fellowship Program  at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation; Kevin Gover ’78 (Pawnee/Comanche), former Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs and Director of the National Museum of the American Indian; Joe Abeyta Santa (Clara Pueblo), Founder and Superintendent Emeritus of the Santa Fe Indian School, and former Chair of the National Indian Education Advisory Council Graduate School of Education at Harvard University; Christine Sims (Acoma), Professor and Director of Center for Language Policy and Research at the College of Education, University of New Mexico; Liz Sumida (Japanese, Wanka and Quechua), doctoral candidate in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University; Susan Williams (Dakota, Chippewa), attorney and former professor at Harvard School of Law; Casey Douma (Pueblo of Laguna/Hopi-Tewa), attorney at Arizona State University School of Law; and Meagan Hill (Oneida), Director of the Honoring Nations Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Other guests will include Cornel West, the Class of 1943 Professor at Princeton;  Chief Oren Lyons, Chief and FaithKeeper, Onondaga Nation; Kim Varilek *97, Muhaisen & Muhaisen, LLC; and Joe Tenorio *98, attorney, Chestnut Law Offices.

In discussing the Summer Policy Academy, Regis Pecos ’77, program director, a former Princeton Trustee and chief of staff for New Mexico’s House Speaker, said, “There have been many inquiries from the highest levels nationally with the Department of Education, the Office of Indian Programs, the Bush Foundation among other foundation representatives, policy centers and universities across the country. Most have articulated that not only is this program creative and exemplary, it is absolutely a necessity.”

Pecos added: “We used the issues relevant to [the students], taught by an extraordinary faculty in a place where that relevancy typically does exist. It is the bridging of the cultural education that gives our children that depth of meaning of life through their deeply embedded core values complimented with the acquisition of skills through a formal education that results in articulating what has never been articulated through their lens.”