U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell visited Saguaro National Park Wednesday as part of a federal initiative to increase public lands access to students.
Jewell met with students from the Santa Rosa Ranch School, a Bureau of Indian Education school on the Tohono O’odham Nation. The group gathered at Signal Hill, the trail of which features rock art of the prehistoric Hohokam people.
About 25 Santa Rosa students were given passes as part of the Every Kid in a Park initiative.
The pass gives fourth-graders and their families and friends access to national parks, forests and wildlife refuges. Fourth-graders are being targeted because the outdoor experience can be aligned with their curriculum, Jewell said.
Children in the United States today are spending more time in front of screens than outside, she said. The White House wants to change that.
“We want to make sure that the children recognize that the outdoors is not a scary, dangerous place, but it’s actually a place of discovery, a place to have a lot of fun and frankly, the best classroom, which is the one with no walls,” she said.
Upon Jewell’s arrival at Signal Hill, the Santa Rosa children sang a O’odham blessing, which Helen Manuel, the school’s cultural teacher, said is sung every morning to the Baboquivari Mountains.
Students and other attendees of the event, including the secretary, joined hands together to dance.
“The students are very excited,” she said. Sharing, singing and dancing “makes them whole,” she added.
The group also took a short hike to Signal Hill, where the park staff and Tohono O’odham Chairman Edward Manuel shared the history of the Hohokam people.
Jewell also visited Winslow as part of her visit to Arizona. There, she went to the Winslow Residential Hall, which houses Native American students from tribes in Northern Arizona.
In Winslow, students were provided broadband access and tablets through a public-private partnership between the federal government, Verizon Wireless and Microsoft.
