TWO AMERICAN INDIAN INTERNS INTRODUCE THEIR UNIQUE CULTURAL WORLD-VIEWS INTO DISTRICT WORK

One is Navajo, one Ojibwe.  Both are Corps interns, one in L.A., one in San Francisco.   Together, Valisa Nez and Violet Albright are quietly introducing elements of their American Indian culture into how the Corps does business with nature.

They started their one-year internships as part of the American Indian Society of Engineers and Scientists (AISES) program that encourages and mentors American Indian students to pursue careers as scientists and engineers.  “We were able to use allocations specifically for the Corps of Engineers in partnership with AISES,” says Rick Gallegos, South Pacific Division’s Human Resources Adviser and Regional Recruiting Manager.

Georgeie Reynolds, Tribal Liaison at Corps headquarters, thinks the outreach is proceeding “very well.”  Three years ago, the Corps pledged to be a sponsor at the annual AISES conference and career fair, held in 2005 in Charlotte, N.C.  “We attempt to hire graduates from the workshops and interview students on the spot,” she adds.  “Then we poll the districts, and they send us a list of opening in science and engineering fields that recent graduates might follow.”  Three people were hired this fiscal year.

The Corps team in Charlotte, and their tribal affiliation,  included Kimberly Oldham (Caddo/Cree), Richard Zaragoza (Acoma Pueblo), Daniel Emerson (Skokomish), Mark Gilfillin (Sac & Fox Nation of Missouri), Direlle Calica (the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs) and Anthony SiJohn (Coeur d’Alene).

One session at the most recent conference was called “Walking in Both Worlds:  the Multiple Realities of Being a Tribal Member Working for the Federal Government.”  Kimberly Oldham, a mechanical engineer in the Portland District, made a presentation that Reynolds described as “being a federal employee and being a Native-American employee—‘how I combine my culture with the federal culture.’”

That’s just what the two District interns are doing early in their Corps careers.  Nez’s maternal grandmother, Grace Yazzie, is a noted weaver of the famous Navajo Two Grey Hills rugs.  Nez recently wove a small one herself, which she drapes in whatever Corps cubicle she’s sitting in at the time.  “I’m the only grandchild she’s taught how to weave,” says Nez.

When she moved to San Francisco, Albright brought her hand drum, shawl, moccasins and cedar sweet grass and sage for “smudging,” which she describes as “a cleansing of the space you’re in and yourself with the smoke.  It takes bad thing with it and dissipates them.”

Nez started as a general physical scientist in the LA District’s Environmental Research Branch and has moved to Planning, Regulatory, Geotechnical, Hydrology and Real Estate desks during her internship.  “I was so excited to know the Corps does projects with the tribes,” she recalls.  “My goals are to work with my tribe or other tribe because a lot needs to be done in the environmental field.”

ez came to Los Angeles armed with a bachelor’s degree in environmental earth sciences and a master’s in earth sciences from highly regarded Dartmouth College.  She grew up with her mother Evelyn and younger sister Cassandra in Farmington, N.M., “always interested in geology,” which led her to her academic majors.   After “six freezing years” in New Hampshire, she returned to New Mexico and interned at Los Alamos National Laboratories for a year in its environmental remediation division; there, she was introduced to hydrological studies of radioactively contaminated soils. 

She then spent a half-year or so with the Arizona Public Service Co. studying new rules that protect aquatic organisms at the cooling-water intakes of power plants.  She enjoyed being closer to home, but soon yearned for even wider horizons. 

Glynn Alsup, the District tribal liaison, who’s almost a member of the Navajo Nation himself after years of working with them, talent-spotted her resume and recommended her for the internship.  “What’s a better change than to come to one of the largest cities in the world to start a new career with the Corps of Engineers?” she rhetorically asks.

Navajo officials are thrilled at the opportunity the Corps has given Nez.  “President (Joe) Shirley has said that as an emerging nation, the Navajo Nation needs all the help it can get,” relates Nation spokesman George Hardeen.  “That’s fantastic that she’s able to line up an internship and get that kind of experience because it will benefit her forever.  What Navajo are proving is that they can compete—they may grow up without running water or doing their homework by a kerosene lamp, but it’s not holding them back.”

Albright, in San Francisco Division since July 2005, is spending the year also rotating through various branches—Planning, Operations, Construction, Engineering—“so I can try everything out,” she says.   That summer she worked as a field engineer in the Oakland Project Office, helping on a project that is deepening Oakland Harbor by 50 feet.  She also worked on a project to build a containment structure around a small bay at the entrance to the port’s inner harbor “so that material dredged in the deepening project can be put into the area to make a wetland/mudflat for remediation and restoration.”

In the fall, she volunteered for the Hurricane Katrina relief mission and toiled Oct. 16 to Dec. 23 in Belle Chasse, Plaquemines Parish, La.  Plaquemines, she says, is a peninsula that runs southeast of New Orleans and where the eye of Katrina passed on its way north.  The devastation resembled that after the 2004 Asian tsunami, Albright says.

And whether kismet, karma or coincidence, Albright’s grandmother, Violet Bushnell, long ago worked for the Corps in Seattle in an administrative post.  She left the reservation at 17, got a job with the Corps during World War II and never returned to the reservation.  “She typed out telegrams,” her granddaughter explains.  “She says she never had to worry about ‘that damned carpal tunnel syndrome.’”

Albright grew up in the Seattle suburb of Edmonds, Wash., and attended the University of Washington, where she obtained a bachelor’s in civil engineering.  She then worked for a private consulting firm in Seattle before finding her way to the Corps.

Her tribal affiliation is the Pembina band of the Chippewa, or Ojibwe, from Turtle Mountain, N.D.   Bushnell, however, didn’t raise any of her children in American Indian culture, although she did pass along the world-view associated with being part of their tribe.  It wasn’t until she was in college that Albright’s mother Jeannette became more involved with native tribes.  She was a public health nurse who often visited nearby reservations, and Albright spent a lot of time there.

Growing up, Albright herself was more familiar with the coastal tribes in Washington State, but many Turtle Mountain Nation people had migrated to the Pacific Northwest over the years.

Both young women apply their tribal consciousness to their Corps jobs, now and to any future roles they may play.  “The cosmic view of the world held by Native Americans is one I was raised with and very much include in my outlook,” says Albright.  “The interconnectedness of everything on the planet; the idea we need to be careful what we do because it affects everyone who comes after us.  As a civilian engineer with the Corps, part of my job is to make sure any project we do is environmentally friendly, low impact and positive all the way around.”

Adds Nez:  “I’ve always felt that I want to educate myself as much as possible to help my tribe and to take care of our environmental needs.  Any training I get will be beneficial to help out my people or other tribes.  A lot of the (tribal) areas are so beautiful that I wouldn’t want anything built there.  That’s another challenge—economic development but not disturbing our sacred lands.  One thing that did attract me to the Corps of Engineers was the possibility of working on tribal projects; I’m hoping to learn as much as I can from interacting with Glynn (Alsup).”

Recently, Albright got a new name.  She neither married nor changed her birth name, but an “auntie”—not a blood relative but from her mom’s generation and tribe—gave Albright the new name.  Among the Ojibwe, Albright explains, “at different critical points in your life, you can ask for a name, and it entails the person you ask to meditate on it and, generally speaking, the spirits will tell you the name.”

She prefers not to disclose it but says it was “really cool” to obtain.  “Lucky doesn’t even begin to describe it, especially considering how quickly our traditions are all dying out as we become more and more urban Indians.”

Given the clear commitment and strong ties that both Nez and Albright share with their roots, those traditions and values are in safe—and engineers’—hands.