Campus Corps All-Star Member: Harvey King of Aaniiih Nakoda College

Harvey King, a long-time resident of Fort Belknap Reservation, has a passion for the Native American culture and wants to preserve their native traditions.  In the past, the reservation had put on a Halloween event so that children and teenagers had a safe place to go, on this holiday that is typically associated with drug and alcohol abuse.  Since there was no alternate activity planned on the reservation, Harvey and another student took it upon themselves to plan an event for the night of Halloween and were able to combine traditional Native American activities with activities a person would normally associate with Halloween. 

With the intention of honoring the way in which their ancestors survived, Harvey and a teacher came up with the idea of organizing a buffalo hunt for students.  He has been working tirelessly to gain access to a buffalo so that students can learn how their ancestors hunted game and used each part of the animal for different reasons.  His hope is give the students an opportunity to learn through first hand experience how their ancestors lived.

He has also helped plan reading days with the Immersion school and Head Start along with other holiday activities to do with the children.  According to Robert Fox, a worker at Head Start, “having college students come into the classroom creates a good mentorship with the Head Start kids and helps create a relationship with the older generation.” The children had fun listening to the books, drawing, and painting pumpkins with the students from Aanniiih Nakoda College.

 With Harvey, we are having a fellow student come and teach the Jump Start students at Aanniiih Nakoda College how to do beadwork and other art activities that are done by Native Americans.  He wants the students to have hands on experience with their culture rather than just learning from the text books.  Harvey is also planning a field trip for the students to visit a culturally relevant site.  


post submitted by Aaniiih Nakoda Campus Corps leader Alison Graham