PUYALLUP, Wash. — Saturday’s Puyallup High School graduation ceremony was bittersweet for Kyson Young and Alyssa Duenas, two graduating seniors who also are members of the Puyallup Tribe.
“We went into it thinking that they weren’t going to have anything acknowledging the tribal lands that the school is actually on,” Young said.
For Young and Duenas, that was simply unacceptable. So, they made sure that didn’t happen.
While Young brought out a flag honoring his tribe, Duenas reached out to the class’s vice president, Stephanie Vasquez Pedro, and asked her to include the land acknowledgment in her speech.
“I had the platform to speak up for them and amplify their voices and have the land acknowledgment,” Pedro said. “I was ready to face the repercussions. I just wanted the Puyallup tribe to gain the recognition that they deserve.”
Members of the Puyallup Tribe held a ceremony honoring the students for standing up and making sure the tribe was recognized.
Duenas is wondering why it would be overlooked in the first place.
“I just want to know why they decided to put an end to it now, and why they decided to do this behind the scenes and not just put it out there and try to secretly do this,” she said.
The Puyallup School District claims that currently, there isn’t a board policy that provides protocol and language for land acknowledgments, and the district doesn’t have a practice of doing land acknowledgments at graduations.
Jolene Young, Kyson’s mother, believes that needs to change.
“If we continue to not have this land acknowledged during the ceremonies, then I feel like we’re going back to the past,” Young said. “It’s like they’re trying to erase us. But we’re still here and we want to make sure you still know that you’re on our ancestral lands and to respect the tribe.”
The Puyallup Schools District sent KING 5 a statement that states, in part that the district is, “seeking to develop an understanding and address this topic through discussions with representatives of the tribe, and it looks forward to honoring the history and culture of Native American and Indigenous peoples.”