Virginia Chickahominy tribe Chief Stephen Adkins gave a talk Tuesday called “Diversity Within the American Democracy” to students with the University’s Center for Politics’ Youth Ambassadors Program for South America.
Daman Irby, the CFP’s director of Global Initiatives, said the hosted students are from Argentina and Chile and will be in the United States for three weeks learning about civic engagement and leadership.
“They’re in Charlottesville specifically for an introduction to those subjects,” Irby said. “They’re here for one week and then they move on — half of the group goes to Charlotte and the other half goes to Kansas City, where they’ll be with families and participate in homestays. So the exchange is kind of twofold — it’s civic engagement and leadership, but it’s also cultural.”
Adkins gave the students a brief history about the Chickahominy tribe in Virginia and then encouraged students to become civically engaged in their communities.
“You have got to get engaged,” Adkins said. “If you don’t like the ways things are, you’ve got to get engaged. You can get into little groups … and talk about how bad things are but that’s not going to fix it.”
Adkins also publicly announced for the first time his decision to run for the Virginia House of Delegates’ 74th district.
“In order to affect change you’ve got to be a part of the process,” Adkins said. “Life is not a spectator sport.”
Adkins said the diversity of the Chickahominy people makes them a microcosm of society at large, but there is still a national lack of understanding of America’s indigenous peoples, especially within the government.
“Our leaders should know quite a bit about all of the ethnicities that they were elected to govern, and I think they should do their homework and understand that,” Adkins said. “How we present what we look like, what we wear [and] who our parents were should not help or hinder our access to social justice, economic justice [or] to opportunities. Our Constitution says that’s where we are … but it’s still a journey.”
He also said he hopes the students “have a leg up” on him, by valuing diversity and understanding other cultures.
“There’s always room for improvement,” Adkins said. “If you’ve been wronged, you need to use all available resources to right that wrong…You need to be proud of your heritage. You don’t do it by disparaging someone else — you take pride in who you are.”
Constantino Intilangelo, a fourth-year secondary school student from Argentina said he hopes to open his mind to other cultures and learn from new people.
“I hope to take home new leadership skills and new ideas for my project that I have to do in the community which is going to be about the environment, so the talk that we just had is going to be extremely useful,” Intilangelo said. “I want to become a better leader and I want to get more involved in volunteering activities. I want to get to know American politics and the economic system better.”
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