Rachelle Areyan and Laura L. Wass (2021)

Image: Laura Wass (Mountain Maidu) and Rachelle Areyan (Pascua Yaqui - Yoeme), video still, This is River Bottom: the Land tells the Story of the People, 2021. From an ongoing project telling the story of their work together.

Laura L. Wass is an activist and advocate for Indian Country and has been involved in Indian affairs for decades throughout California and nationally.  As the area director of the American Indian Movement (AIM), she works to protect Indian sovereignty, Indian lands and sacred sites, and has been intimately involved in bringing awareness to the many issues remaining in Indian Country. 

In 2001 Ms. Wass formed a non-profit organization, Many Lightnings American Indian Legacy Center, Inc. with Fern Eastman Mathias, an elder of the Dakota Tribe and on the Grand Council of AIM, to do the work to unite youth and their families back into their culture and traditions. Ms. Mathias passed shortly before this was realized but the work has carried on through the efforts of Ms. Wass.

As an effective participant in the American Indian community, Ms. Wass has organized and implemented American Indian cultural celebrations and workshops with emphasis on the aboriginal aspects of native life and the responsibility each has to Mother Earth and all connected. She acknowledges the next generation and those to follow as the future Caretakers and the vital importance education has to the realization of their responsibility.

Rachelle Areyan is a Yaqui community wellness activist who has also studied the environment and ecology of the San Joaquin river. She is a student at FCC majoring in Anthropology American Indian Studies. For several years, Laura Wass has mentored Rachelle to become the next generation to steward the luhpin’ Native Plant Garden and they now work in tandem to nurture the land there.