Shoshone-Bannock Tribes partner with INL for annual Earth Day celebration
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IDAHO FALLS — The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and the Idaho National Laboratory joined together to inspire indigenous youth through a celebration of the earth.
INL hosted its third annual Earth Day Celebration with the tribes on April 18. The day’s events included speeches from INL and tribal officials, traditional dance numbers and a trip to the tribes’ ancestral lands.
“We appreciate them being here and we are looking forward to them being the ones who are leading the tribe,” said Sunshine Shepherd, a member of the tribes and the K-12 STEM Education Coordinator at INL.
This event is part of a continuing partnership between the tribes and INL in advancing the Shoshone-Bannock Jr./Sr. High School’s STEM program. In 2021, they formalized their partnership creating a career technical education and job placement program for students in Shoshone-Bannock School District 537.
Shepherd said holding events like this one is important because it brings community members and students onto the INL campus.
“We want to bring community members and students on so they can see themselves going down a STEM pathway and know that they have opportunities here at the Idaho National Lab,” Shepherd said.
Fort Hall Business Council Chairman LeeJuan Tyler said this partnership is important for the tribes because it opens up new doors for the youth.
“It gets our youth interested in science. They could become scientists or go work on a naval reactor or maybe even become a submariner,” Tyler said.
INL Chief Operating Officer Juan Alvarez also sees the partnership benefitting the Shoshone-Bannock youth in their future.
“We’re also creating opportunities to create pathways to professional careers in skilled jobs. Welders, pipefitters, you name it,” Alvarez said. “The goal ultimately is that it gets the kids better choices for their future.”
Before the event took place, INL was able to take the youth to Middle Butte Cave, which is on tribal ancestral land owned by the lab.
The students saw old petroglyphs on the cave walls. Shepherd said this is an opportunity for the students to walk where their ancestors did, and show them that they’re welcome at INL.
“That was their land, and even though we have a lab here now and we do research and we do all these big things, that doesn’t take away from the fact that our ancestors walked on those lands and on those rocks and in those caves,” Shepherd said.
At the end of the event, members of the tribes and INL joined hands for a friendship dance, celebrating what they had accomplished so far and what was to come.
