Standing beneath the trees outside the University of Arizona College of Education, Anthony Escalante took a deep breath.
“Creator will always be there to greet you in the morning with the rising sun,” he told the people circled around him on Thursday morning.
He wore a floral headband over his mid-length hair. Pearls, shells and weaved ornaments were draped around his neck. He picked up a gourd rattle and started to shake it to a simple rhythm. Then, in O’odham, he began to sing.
The group of students and staff listened reverently. They were gathered for a welcome and blessing ceremony put on by a UA program called Native SOAR — or Native Student Outreach, Access, and Resiliency — to ring in the first week of the semester.
Escalante is involved with the group, which pairs UA students and Indigenous high schoolers preparing for postsecondary endeavors.
The beginning of this chapter means a lot more than just an academic feat for Escalante and his peers.
The sophomore is from Tucson and is Tohono O’odham and Kanesatake. He started the morning by singing the “Creator’s Song” and provided his first-ever sage blessing, a sacred practice in O’odham culture.
“I really hope the blessing gives them encouragement to realize that there’s always going to be a community here for them. Whether they see it or they hear it, there’s always going to be a space here for them,” he told AZPM.
He says the UA’s Native community helps him navigate campus life. Sometimes, it can feel like he’s “living in two different worlds.”
“When I go home, I live a very specific life and then I come here and I go to class, I do assignments… As long as I remember that there’s always a community here and you just got to find it, that’s what’s going to get me through,” Escalante said.
Preserving traditions like this one, and inviting anyone to join in, helps keep that comfort alive too, Escalante said.
“There has not been too many singers who live the traditional life, but I for one am trying my best to just re-strengthen that knowledge and revitalize those ways of living because it’s what kept us alive for time immemorial and it’s what’s going to keep us alive or future generations,” he said.
Escalante closed with a song that was passed down to him from his grandparents and Elders in the Tohono O’odham Nation. He said it’s about being one with the Earth.
Last fall, 830 students at the UA self-identified as American Indian or Alaska Native.
