Involving Youth in Outdoor Play and Environmental Stewardship Work
Youth development is a big part of our work here at Trees, Water & People (TWP). In Colorado, we partner with the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s (UMUT) local charter school, Kwiyagat Community Academy (KCA), and other local organizations to involve youth in outdoor play and environmental stewardship work.
With funding from the First Nations Development Institute, TWP is partnering with the Kwiyagat Community Academy to install school gardens during community events involving KCA students in the summer of 2023. Beginning in the fall, classes will have access to raised bed vegetable gardens just outside the school doors that will introduce young learners to tasty vegetables such as cherry tomatoes, sugar snap peas, sweet carrots, and red beets, while providing an opportunity for kids to learn to garden and get their hands dirty during the school day. An ethnobotany garden will be planted around the school grounds and include species important to Ute people, with interpretive signage in the Ute language. Curriculum is being developed specific to the ethnobotany garden that will allow instructors to teach children about their culturally important plants, and find them right outside the school’s front doors. Borrowing from other Indigenous cultures, a three sisters garden is being planted, filling the school yard with corn, squash, and beans, and including a learning circle in the center so that class activities can be held in the garden. With abundant outdoor learning areas, students will have the opportunity to take advantage of good weather and increase their time in the outdoors.
KCA’s school gardens tie in closely with our ongoing work with UMUT and other partners to improve the availability of native and culturally important plants for traditional use. Riparian restoration on Tribal lands has included repairing degraded landscapes by revegetating with native and culturally important plants (in addition to other concurrent strategies). Children that attend Kwiyagat Community Academy have been actively involved in restoring their Tribal lands through planting native and culturally important trees, shrubs, wildflowers, and grasses in restoration sites. These field trips often result in kids chasing insects or playing in or near the Mancos River, after all the planting work is done!
There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that children’s time spent in the outdoors improves their physical and mental well-being, but for the Ute people, it also fosters a connection to the land that has been passed down from generation to generation.
