If you’re like me, the past two weeks have felt like a never-ending marathon of news that’s infuriating, frustrating and downright exhausting. In light of that, we’re going to take a different approach for this week’s edition of The Intersection.
First up, we’ve got a story from URL Media partner Black Voice News.
When Calcea Johnson and Ne’kiya Jackson presented at the American Mathematical Society Southeastern Regional Conference in Atlanta, they showed the audience a potential way to solve the Pythagorean theorem.
For those well removed from algebra, like me, the Pythagorean theorem is used to find the length of the sides of a right triangle using the formula a2+b2=c2.
The two high school seniors from St. Mary’s Academy in New Orleans used the Law of Sines to prove the theorem.
“There’s nothing like it, being able to prove something that people don’t think that young people can do,” said Johnson. “I saw a bunch of people writing down stuff and pulling up things on their computers, and they really connected with this.”
The girls were told to submit their findings to a peer-reviewed journal for evaluation.
Our next story also centers scholars, Karen and Karenni students specifically. These students, who have fled violence and oppression from the government of Myanmar, are now able to apply for a new scholarship from Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota.
“We were started 150 years ago to serve Swedish immigrants fleeing persecution in Europe,” Paul McGinnis, Bethel’s vice president of enrollment and marketing, recently told URL Media partner Sahan Journal. “We think it’s a unique opportunity to help another group of people facing hardships in a country that’s still new to them.”
The Fight for Something scholarship will provide students with a total of $11,000 in tuition assistance every year during their four years at Bethel.
Our next two stories come to us from URL Media partner Native News Online, which shared a list of the 2023 inductees to the Native American Hall of Fame. They are:
- Joe DeLaCruz, Quinault, long-serving President of the Quinault Indian Nation
- Will Sampson, Muscogee Creek, film and television actor
- Leslie Marmon Silko, Laguna Pueblo, novelist and poet
- Mark Trahant, Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, author, reporter and current Editor for “Indian Country Today”
- Richard Trudell, Santee Dakota, founder of the American Indian Lawyer Training program and American Indian Resources Institute
- LaNada War Jack, Shoshone-Bannock, Alcatraz Occupation co-leader, writer
If you want to be inspired, go read more about these incredible folks.
The second piece of good news from Native News Online: The Tennessee Valley Authority, the single-largest holder of Native American human remains, is taking steps to repatriate more than 14,000 Native American ancestors to their present-day tribal nations.
“The TVA notice demonstrates that the process for repatriation can be completed effectively and efficiently under the existing regulatory framework,” Melanie O’Brien, the National Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act program manager, told Native News Online.
According to the outlet, the remains were unearthed during dam construction projects across the Tennessee Valley from the 1930s through the 1970s.
The final piece of good news for this week’s essay is a bonus story from Sahan Journal, in partnership with the Star Tribune, about Black leaders who are finding safety at a Minneapolis wellness center.
“In the same way that our children need teachers that look like them, in terms of the alternative health field we need practitioners that look like us as well,” said Kinshasha Kambui, a Black bodyworker and healer who opened Wellness Paradigm in February. “I realized that I could be that catalyst.”
The cultural competency Kambui brings to her work makes the center’s clients feel safe in the space by allowing them to heal from the traumas of daily life.
“She’s an extraordinary healer,” civil rights attorney and activist Nekima Levy Armstrong said. “It’s difficult to find safe spaces for Black women and other women of color to get the care that they need. But self-care is so critical to our survival.”
I hope this weekend allows you to get what you need to keep moving forward.
