Hands for a Bridge was honored to host a day of education, laughter and learning on October 22 by hosting the play Sonny Sixkiller Buys the Washington Redskins.

This exciting live production by Native American playwright, Darrell Hillaire, was shown last year to an enthusiastic audience at the Moore Theatre and joined us again to Seattle onstage at Roosevelt High School!  The large cast includes tribal youth, elders and others from the Lummi Tribe.

The play was staged throughout the school day for students of Roosevelt High School, and again that evening for the community at large. Over 300 members of the community came to the evening production to explore the controversy surrounding the NFL’s Washington Redskins’ mascot and its impacts on Native Americans and all people. After each production of the play, the cast and crew hosted a dialogue session with the audience.

Both groups spent a wonderful two weeks in either Northern Ireland or South Africa. Our trips were both extremely valuable experiences, and full of personal growth. The trips were very unique and different from each other while at the same time they had a lot of things in common. Each trip group came back enriched, changed, and closer than ever. Travel created an incomparable bond between us. While experiencing different events in the respective countries, members of both groups had learned a lot about one another. With each group having become so close, everyone was curious as to what our reu-
nited HFB class would be like upon return. The first day back we were tired and generally overjoyed to see each other. We had all just been on very influential trips and this is something we knew we shared. However, realizing that we might know a lot more now about our trip-mates than the rest of our classmates made a lot of us feel a little lost. It was hard to combine as a class again, but, after coming back from something so empowering, we were all very motivated to make change. To do this, we had to work together. Knowing that, we got to work on new projects, such as our film project and our activism projects.

Through working together to make change at Roosevelt, we connected again with those that we had spent two weeks without. Once again we became the tightly knit Hands for a Bridge class that we had come to know so well earlier in the year.

I can see the ocean.

I can see the vast, endless ocean, and maybe, just maybe, I can see the rest of my life.

I can see the future swaying in the branches of the trees, alighted on a rare cloud, and blowing past me in the wind.

My future terrifies me.

Sliding off the mountain, crashing into rocks, falling from the sky – my dream is liquid.

My future is ephemeral, not because it is short, but because even the lightest current could derail it.

I could ignore it, dive in the freezing water, swim away and never come back – or would that be good?

Will I instead sit here, waiting for a future that will never come, one that will lap at

my feet and slowly wash away the very ground I stand on?

I want a future – any future – but I want to find it.

I want to climb the tree, fly to the cloud, and catch it in the wind.

And yet…if my future is light enough to be carried by the breeze, do I want it?

I can’t let myself be carried off into nothing, nor can I sink to the bottom of the sea. So I’m just here, I guess.

I’m just stuck under the African sun.

Hands for a Bridge (HFB) is an innovative and immersive program designed to educate and empower students to build a more connected, informed and just world.

The program is run through a unique partnership with Roosevelt High School in Seattle, Washington. Students must apply to participate in the intensive year-long academic and extra-curricular program. Teachers and volunteers lead the students through a year-long language arts class, along with weekly after-school meetings, and a bilateral international exchange program.

Using the arts as a lens, students learn to examine and discuss social justice issues that impact their own identities, their communities, and our globally-connected world. They are challenged to apply these lessons in a variety of settings, culminating in an Activism Project. Students design and complete a solution in their own community, using the lessons, perspectives, and tools they have gained throughout the program.

HFB students emerge as transformed global citizens with vision and resources to effect vital change in our world. Our program strengthens students’ engagement in our own community and the world, as well as their leadership skills. They frequently go on to study and work in related disciplines: international affairs, social work, teaching,

Hands For a Bridge is:

• A High School Arts Curriculum
• International Exchange
• Local Leadership and Activism

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Hands for a Bridge includes a bilateral exchange program, allowing students to travel across the world to develop a global dialog about peace and justice.

Every February a class of students from Roosevelt High School in Seattle split up and travel to Northern Ireland and South Africa – two regions where a long history of conflict has formed deep divisions in their communities. This exchange is a coalescing event in the host country, providing an opportunity for students from opposite sides of post-conflict zones to come together and share how these divisions have shaped their experiences and identities. The Seattle students participate alongside their hosts in an arts-based dialog building immersion.

Each Fall, students from both regions travel to Seattle to continue the exchange. With an expanded global perspective, students are better able to examine injustice in their own community and have tools and resources to create change.

Poetry, song, dance, film, literature, and many other art forms are central to the HFB curriculum. Students participate in the curriculum through a daily language arts class at Roosevelt High School in Seattle, along with weekly after-school meetings.

The arts are used both as a lens for examining social justice issues as well as a starting point in a dialog about difficult issues. Race, culture, religion, and privilege are hard to talk about – especially when people from opposing sides are engaging in the dialog. Art is a powerful tool for unity. Oftentimes coming together in song or dance can establish a human bond that allows students to later address those harder issues in conversation.

Throughout the school year in Seattle, students complete Activist Projects to explore an aspect of their own community that needs greater understanding and social change. They propose their Activist Projects based on the skills and resources they have developed through the classroom curriculum and exchange program.  By completing their projects, they emerge as leaders , equipped to

Seattle struggles with division in our neighborhoods and schools and students are charged with examining and acting on these divisions with the lens they have developed through exchange and learning. These local projects help our students build bridges of communication and understanding that our city benefits from. In past years, student projects have inspired connections with English Language Learners in their own school, students across the city in other high schools, and Native American student groups on local reservations.