Finally at her dream school, Yanenowi Logan works intently on managing her heavy course-load while paying close attention to her state of well-being.
“I didn’t really have clear aspirations for a career path but I have always known I wanted to serve our people. I look up to Indigenous leaders in the climate movement like Winona LaDuke and I’m inspired by their tenacity and resilience. Going to Cornell and choosing to study environment and sustainability just made sense to me.”
Attending a predominantly white institution can have a heavy mental and emotional impact on a young indigenous student such as herself. She gathers motivation from the world she grew up in, and from the hardships faced across Indian Country. “My career aspects are a direct result of my culture,” she says. “Our culture as Haudenosaunee people revolves around giving back to the land and protecting Mother Earth. With the climate crisis we are currently experiencing, I find it to be my utmost responsibility to do as much as I physically can to help the Earth in its revitalization”.
When she is impatient, Yanenowi often has to remind herself that her college instruction is merely the first step in achieving her goals of finding a career in sustainability efforts and community involvement. She credits her mother as her biggest inspiration, her proudest supporter and the most influential person in her life.
Yanenowi, 18, is the daughter of Leslie Logan of Tonawanda and the late Brad Bonaparte of Akwesasne. Although she currently resides on the Cattaraugus reservation in Seneca territory, Yanenowi lived in Akwesasne during her sophomore year of high school and moved home shortly after finishing her junior year. She graduated from Lake Shore Senior High School in Spring 2020 and is now attending Cornell University at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, where she majors in Environment and Sustainability. Yanenowi, her name means “She Guards the Corn”.
The past ten months have proven to be extremely harsh on students trying to navigate new chapters of their lives while in the midst of a global pandemic, but for Yanenowi it has been a very good year. In May, she was named as a recipient of the Tewaaraton Native American Scholarship by US Lacrosse. In November, she was sworn in as a Youth Commission officer for the National Congress of American Indians. These feats very clearly demonstrate her tremendous will to create a strong platform for Indigenous youth, which is her main goal as a leader in both of her communities.
She says some of her personal greatest accomplishments this year was coordinating a raffle to support the Navajo and Hopi Nations, who are being disproportionately affected by COVID-19 compared to other tribal nations across the country. With this, she was able to promote local indigenous artists. She also donated money to Campaign Zero, a project run by a non-profit organization devoted to stopping police brutality through systemic changes and implementing the right policies.
Yanenowi strives to fulfill the duty she has appointed herself as a Haudenosaunee woman, which she says is to “serve our people and our land”.
Article written by Kanatires Barreiro
