LA JOLLA – For Indigenous communities, water can be a healing force, and
Native Like Water
is harnessing that power and sharing it during its youth camp.
On Thursday, Native Like Water’s
InterTribal Youth
summer camp program kicked off at UC San Diego. The 20 participants, ages 12-18, will stay in the UC San Diego dorms, exploring the coast and all it has to offer throughout the six-day experience.
Surfing, rock climbing, hiking, yoga, art, and science lab exploration are just some of the activities included in the program’s itinerary. Focusing on health prevention, climate science, and using food as medicine, the program explores coastal traditions and native foods from a holistic approach.
For Marc Chavez, the founder and program director, it’s all about reconnecting with coastal culture and healing through water. When Chavez first started the nonprofit, it was to increase the rates of Native youth going to college.
He realized two things: One, not everyone wants or needs to go to college, and that’s okay. And two, there was a lack of connection to Indigenous coastal cultural practices. He found a way to make everything meet in the middle.
“You’re having a bunch of things intersect at the same time. You’re having education intersect, you’re having cultural intersection and you’re having this joy intersection because it’s fun,” he said.
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Chavez broadened Native Like Water to provide more recreational activities that better engaged the youth while also educating them on cultural practices. And for those wanting a taste of the college experience, there’s the InterTribal Youth camp, where students stay in the dorms, allowing them to test out living away from home.
One of the water activities is surf therapy. According to the
International Surf Therapy Organization
, surf therapy promotes psychological, physical and psychosocial well-being through surfing.
“What takes place when you’re with Mother Ocean in the surfing, it’s like it does all the heavy lifting,” Chavez said.
Even though the program incorporated surfing, it wasn’t quite as heavy on the activity in the beginning. After 24 years of the program, and feedback from its participants, Chavez ramped up the time spent on the surfboards.
“Surfing is an indigenous practice. So when we talk about coastal culture, we’re talking about recreation,” he said.
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The Kumeyaay and Luiseño tribes were forcibly removed from their coastal communities, and aspects of their coastal culture were lost. For Native Like Water to undertake a “revival of culture,” the nonprofit had to lean on Indigenous people and practices from Hawaii. Chavez says not everything can be learned locally.
“There’s a mutual resonance that’s happening across — not just here in San Diego — but across the world, that whether we know it or not, we’re feeding off of that energy,” Chavez said.
That resonance stretches across age groups, as well. Naturally, the tweens and teens flock to others their age and participate in activities appropriate for their age groups. But in the water, they’re all kids, including their mentors.
“At the end of our life, and middle of our life, and the beginning of our life, our gurus teach us that we’re all just a child,” Chavez said. “We are children of our parents, or children of the earth, and inside of us, that spirit, that soul, is a young, happy child.”
