Youth celebrate life at annual festival

Reyes Garcia leads the Gallup Spartans rugby team in a demonstration during the Celebrating Life: Youth Street Festival on Saturday. The festival was put on by the Coalition for Healthy and Resilient Youth organization and featured several activities for kids throughout the day. [Photo by Brian Leddy/Independent]

By Karen Francis
Staff writer

GALLUP — With many pupils out on their fall break, hundreds of area youth were treated to a celebration in their honor with the “Celebrating Life: Youth Street Festival” at Miyamura High School Saturday.

Festivities began at 9 a.m., including chess tournaments, basketball contests, rugby demonstrations, and a fair with information booths. The chess tournaments were held hourly, while rugby demonstrations were held every half hour in front of the school.

Also in front of the school was a huge inflated slide for youth and rock music pumping from a large sound system. The sheriff’s office, University of New Mexico-Gallup, and the Navajo Nation Special Diabetes Project were among those inside presenting information for parents and students to learn about and discuss.

Program coordinator Kimberly Ross-Toledo said that the festival, now in its fourth year, was the brainchild of young people of the Coalition for Healthy and Resilient Youth.

“They wanted a day to celebrate being young people, to showcase their art, their talent,” she said.

Ross-Toledo said that attendance at the festival has been increasing each year.

One marked improvement, said volunteer Lucille Ross, is that this year’s activities were held in one central location and most of the activities were inside, rather than outside, which can make a difference when the weather is brisk like the day the festival was held.

One of the most popular activities is the pumpkin contest. More than 200 pumpkins were donated for kids and parents to carve scary and funny faces with the chance to win gift certificates.

Two new events this year were the aerosol art contest and the Police Athletic League boxing tournament.

For the aerosol art contest, young artists were invited to express their creativity by spray painting a large wooden palette. After the contest, the creations were put on display in the hall corridor.

The plan for the contest is to take three of the best pieces and approach the city council to ask for a wall in the city for the youth to showcase their artistic talent.

“We want to give them positive exposure,” Ross-Toledo said.

A youth powwow was held in the gym with four drum groups, including Southern Wild Horse, which sang a flag song, and Sacred Wheel, which played a victory song. The powwow has been a part of the festival each year it has been held.

Powwow master of ceremony Richard Donaghey said that there were four categories for competition, including junior boys, junior girls, teen boys and teen girls.

Donaghey said there was a steady flow of people throughout the day.

A first grand entry was at 1:30 p.m. and a second grand entry happened at 7 p.m. Gourd dancing was held prior to the second grand entry.

Lucella Hunch was one of the youth joining her uncle, who was the head dancer, at the powwow.

Hunch, who was at the youth festival all day, also participated in the pumpkin carving contest.

“It was fun,” she said about the festival. Her favorite part was helping out at the powwow.

Also attending the powwow was 11-year old Paul Salaba.

“I really liked the spray painting contest,” he said. “It was colorful.”

Barbara O’Keefe was at the powwow with her 17-year old daughter who was helping out all day with the activities.

“We’re here to be supportive,” O’Keefe said.

Some of the other activities throughout the day were a 5K fun run/walk, a skateboard exhibition, cake decorating, chalk art and martial arts demonstrations.

“I’m really proud of Gallup for embracing the event,” Ross-Toledo said. She said that if the coalition had to pay for everything, it would cost more than $25,000, but because of sponsors and support from the community, the event is put on for free.