Veronica Acosta Engavo has seen first hand the devastating effects of the mental health taboo in the Wyoming Native American communities. Supported by the strength of her cultures and family of strong women, this first generation student is learning to proudly uphold her identity at UW.
Veronica, a third year Computer Science major, inherited two rich cultural backgrounds from her Eastern Shoshone mother and Mexican father.
“When you’re younger, you don’t really understand that you are different or unique, I didn’t think about it. I didn’t understand that my differences could set me apart.”
“I used to find it challenging in highschool to be able to tell people, I have two identities and I want to uphold them both. It does empower me to know that I come from two very powerful cultures. They mean so much to me, it feels very cool to belong to both of them.”
In the effort to stand proud in her identities, Veronica has faced judgment, racism, and microaggressions from both hostile individuals, and even like-minded friends. This contributes to a fatigue she feels explaining herself, and a fear of rejection that often silences her.
“Microaggressions are such little actions that you almost don’t think about them as they happen, but they build up with time and then all of a sudden it makes you scared. I think, how am I supposed to fight these people without people that are like me?”
“The [Native American Education, Recourse a Native American Education, Research & Cultural Center] is like a comfort,” Said Veronica when asked about where she finds community through the isolation.
“Like when you go home and you can eat your favorite comfort food- you feel warm and safe. That’s how the center feels to me.”
Without community, minority individuals in the US do not feel empowered to fulfill their potential, and they may not, as Veronica described, even recognize that potential. Through her work with the Boys and Girls Club on the Wind River Indian Reservation, she witnessed self doubt as early as middle school.
“It hurts me inside that this generational curse follows Natives along. They don’t believe that they are enough– especially not when that’s all they are being told. I would ask [the children] what they want to be when they grow up. And at middle school age they would start saying Are you kidding? I’m not gonna go to college, I’m not smart enough.”
“I wanted to tell them, ‘You are! You are all so powerful. You are all people, and you all deserve access to the same future, not the future that society wants to set for you.’”
With high rates of suicide, school drop out, and among the lowest rates of higher education, Veronica sees Native American youth like her own sisters working twice as hard to get half the recognition in college programs. Still, watching her female family succeed against the odds gives her strength.
“[My mom] is almost 50, she’s getting her Bachelors of Nursing. She has always been told she can’t. But she does, and she did! Seeing the way she loves her family and how she’d do anything for them is really empowering. I am so proud to come from a woman like that.”
