November is Native American Heritage Month. On November 13th, the Native American Culture Club at Benson put on an assembly with Native American dancers. Qalch’ema Friedlander, one of the organizers for the assembly, as well as the president and founder of the club, said, “I think the assembly went really well. I was very honored and very excited when I finally was told that we were, like, a 100% go for it from the administration here.” She was impressed by student turnout, saying, “I’ve had some pretty good turnouts in the past, but I’ve never been able to, like, fully fill up the bleachers on one side.”

There were some challenges with organizing the assembly, though, as the entire event needed to be planned and scheduled before sending it out to the principal. Friedlander said, “I had always wanted a school wide assembly for Native American Heritage Month.” The club met up a few times throughout the summer to discuss how to run the assembly and what it would be based on. There were, however, challenges with finding the dancers. Friedlander said, “We had to have a certain amount of dancers, and we were very much unable to find those dancers really quickly because even though we put out that information there, we weren’t able to get dancers until that last week.”

In addition, the Native American Culture Club prepared slide presentations to be shown during second and sixth periods. “We now have 62 slides of information on different Native American subjects,” Friedlander said. The club also organized a spirit week in the last week before the Thanksgiving break, including a traditional apparel day on Tuesday, and a Native American Arts workshop during flex on Friday. Friedlander said, “We’re making earrings […] we had weaving kits that you could make a little cloth out of, and we also had a stretchy bracelet station so you can make stretchy bracelets for [Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women] day, which is in May.” 

Friedlander also enjoys helping students learn about their tribes. “Being able to help others learn that stuff, those necessities, and also teaching students who have no idea about Native American culture whatsoever, teaching them the dances, the languages, the history, and the amazing arts has always been my favorite thing to do.”