Native Pathways Program Academic Scholarship

Wovoka See-La-Cumm

NPP Academic Scholarship

Application

Tuesday 27th January 2026

What your education means to you and what you plan to do with it. Good Morning to all who may read this. My name is wovoka babatoth seelacumm. I’m an enrolled member of the Puyallup Tribe, with relatives all around the Salish Sea from many different tribal affiliations. I was born in 1982 to a mother who just turned 17 less than two weeks prior. At this point in my mother's life, she already had a baby pass away from S.I.D.S. (sudden infant death syndrome). I’m not sure before that. My mother was just a child and didn’t have the life skills necessary to give me the education I deserved. I learned most things in life on my own and through observing the world around me. Mother and Step-Father Rod claimed to raise me as a “free thinker,” the way they speak of this style of child rearing releases them from responsibility.

I feel like I always resented school because of my personal experience, also on some level, reliving historic and collective trauma. While I was still in elementary school, I got a bad report card—a ubiquitous experience for me throughout my educational experience. Mother was away from the house my younger stepsister was gone.

Rodney demanded I stand in the bathroom, staring at myself, while he cursed me. Talked down to me. Telling what a loser I am. How I will never amount to anything because I didn't do my homework. I stood there on the receiving end of this verbal abuse with tears flowing down my face.

Why must he do that to me, when my parents are supposed to teach me to be a good student? To survive in society, to thrive and do well. I didn’t see my parents invest in me the way my peers' parents did in my friends. In this moment, my spirit broke, and I made myself not try again. 25 years later, this moment haunted me as a failed English 95 Class again and again, over and over at Tacoma Community College in the early to mid 2000’s. While I never found the knowledge from my paternal figures that I desired. I did find what I was looking for in the streets of Tacoma, from street fraternities like God’s Disciples, which mix gang culture with religious knowledge and decolonization techniques. Conversations that lead me to the music of Immortal Technique. A Hip Hop artist who speaks about systemic injustices and encourages socialist dialogue.

I’m a first-generation college student. I lost my higher educational funding from my tribe and had to pay for an Associate's Degree on my own. I graduated from Tacoma Community College in June of 2024.

For me, education is about understanding historical sequences and the contexts in which they occurred, and how to avoid or encourage them in the future. For me, education means to think critically. For me, education means to think about my thinking. For me, education means practicing holistic problem-solving. For me, education means being patient and practicing humility. For me education means being self reliant, community oriented, and ready to help. For me, education means going to sleep knowing I tried every different way I could think of to solve a complex problem. Ideally, I would love to be a community organizer with projects I’m passionate about. Maybe a photographer who teaches the history of photography uses it to justify colonization. Or maybe whatever a sociologist does. I love art and helping my people. Maybe one day I could work with Kyle.