Anawakalmekak

"Native languages are American languages. They were spoken here before the United States existed. They survived colonization, boarding schools and federal policies explicitly designed to erase them."

Read more in this is commentary by Anawakalmekak's Marcos Aguilar about our work to help expand bilingual education to include indigenous languages and treat it more than just an elective but "rather as core languages of learning, culture and community."

Link in Bio or by going to https://edsource.org/2026/multilingual-education-native-languages/757838

A wonderful day celebrating our Earth and Traditional Ecological Knowledge during our Tlalilwitl / Tovaar Taamet Ceremony 2026. For indigenous peoples, every day is Earth Day!

Thank you to all of our community partners, families, students, and tribal leaders who came out!

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Anawakalmekak is dedicated to student academic excellence, education rooted in Native wisdom, advancing the cultural and intellectual heritage of Indigenous Peoples, and promoting positive social awareness.

The multigenerational work of Indigenous regeneration, resurgence and reparations rooted in Native autonomy over education has not stopped since we founded our school in 2002 - and you have been part of this movement!

Whether you have contributed to us in the past or are currently contributing to us through monthly donations or if you plan to support us in the future, we want to extend this thanks / tlasokamati and recognize how important you are to this mission. We encourage you to recommit to helping us advance educational autonomy and self-determination in our community by donating here.

Thank you for supporting our mission, your support is a powerful commitment of community-rooted support for our schools.

Donate to Indigenous Self-determination through Education Anawakalmekak is dedicated to student academic excellence, education rooted in Native wisdom, advancing the cultural and intellectual heritage of Indigenous Peoples, and promoting positive social awareness. The multigenerational work of Indigenous regeneration, resurgence and reparations rooted in N...

🧑🏽‍🏫 📚 Wednesday 4/22: Indigenous Pedagogies Speaker Series

Join the U of A Indigenous Teacher Education Program - ITEP virtually on Wednesday, April 22, 2026, from 5:30pm-7:30pm (MST) for their next Indigenous Pedagogies Speaker Series (IPSS).

Theme: Justice. Storytelling, and Ceremony
Title: “Water Remembers Us: Southwest and México.”

Use QR code on flyer to register! or

Contact ITEP Coordinators for questions or comments, Dana Wilcox-Frago: [email protected] or

Ingrique Salt: [email protected]

Thank you to our sponsors: the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry and PUIC at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

🔗 Register for the zoom here:
https://shorturl.at/oB36M

Many thanks to for the honor and invitation to join you for the closing ceremony. We are so proud of the collaboration and powerful vision of is . We are humbled by the presence and power of our youth leaders tonight starting with ’s for representing her tribe and our living ancestral ties. Our students sang our retelling of ihkwik a retelling of a poem-song over 500 years old that tells of catastrophe and regenerative healing. was so gracious to join us in uplifting our youth and shared powerful words con hechos no nomas palabras…Xtlaxtlawi Lindsay!

The inequities of funding for public education continue to deepen. As the cost of education workers certificated by the state continues to outpace state per-pupil school funding levels and the costs of living inflate at every metric and the governments invest in policing and war, a perfect storm is brewing. To paint the government’s divestment from public education as American social justice and the democracy of a republic is the norm. While private schools charge $40-$80k per year plus all the extra fees charged for every little thing extra, our schools are offering $2 lunches and $5 afterschool programs for free. If every TK or kinder student that is admitted to our school represents a 12 to 13 year educational commitment on the part of our indigenous community organization, then we can estimate that the cost of public education at the end of that period will have been about between $300,000 to $500,000 (accounting for future dollar value) per student. Yet, our school lives underfunded on a year to year basis usually on a 1 to 2% cost-of-living increase in state revenues and increasingly dependent on philanthropy for program enrichment. The only major public investment in education recently made was because of the pandemic. And now that’s gone. Should we hope for more catastrophe? At we seed hope, but our school design will be forced to change by the failed social economy and the crisis constructed by a settler state bureaucracy. The land teaches how to survive. As we seed white sage and compost school lunch leftovers today, the morning breeze reminds us to look into the earth deeply. Our young ones merit education beyond smiling assimilation & caring colonization in govt schools. Sowing self-determination through the educational decolonization of our youngest generations is a kind of composting itself, where we take the blighted buildings and abandoned lots and convert these into beautiful learning communities. Speaking with a parent paisano from Tlalnepantla, we reasoned, systems impose crisis designed by those who plan to profit from our pain. We need to design liberation. -

It’s ! honored the week by gathering at with parents, students and volunteers learning the process of composting and planting native trees! Thanks to our partners, families and friends as we spent the morning working the land!

Public education is becoming more underfunded as the cost of education workers increases by 10-30% and the cost of living increases and governments invest in war. A perfect storm is brewing. To paint the government’s divestment from public education as American social justice and the democracy of a republic is the norm. If every TK or kinder student that is admitted to our school represents a 12 to 13 year educational commitment on the part of our school, then we can estimate that the cost of public education at the end of that period will have been about between $300,000 to $500,000 per student. Yet, our school lives underfunded on a year by year basis usually on a 1 to 2% cost-of-living increase in state revenues and increasingly dependent on philanthropy for program enrichment. The only major investment in education recently made was because of the pandemic. And now that’s gone. Should we hope for more catastrophe? Here we seed hope, but our school design will be forced to change. Where once tule was abundant, mustard weeds now dominate. As we seed white sage, the morning breeze reminds us to look into the earth deeply. Our young ones merit a movement beyond smiling assimilation and caring colonization in public schools.
…Marcos Aguilar

space=safety

One student said the move is meant to address her discomfort working out in a “men-dominated” space.