Utah school names 1st Native student to homecoming royalty
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Mahala Sutherland was still wearing her feather headband when the pageant judge placed the gold crown on her head.
From under the bright lights of the stage, she couldn’t help but smile at the combination: the eagle plumes collected from her tribal homeland and the shimmering red jewels.
It made her proud as the crowd chanted her name. “You deserve this, Molly,” one person cheered. “That’s our girl,” said another, as everyone began to stand in ovation.
Sutherland, 22, never expected to win this year’s homecoming royalty contest at Southern Utah University. But she’s honored that she did — and that she became the first Indigenous student to claim the title in the school’s history, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
“Just having that mixture of my regalia with the crown,” Sutherland said, “it means so much. It means so much to students like me. We feel seen.”
She entered the pageant to showcase her culture in quiet rebellion to a time when her parents could not.
Growing up in a small town in central Arizona, Sutherland had been taught not to openly embrace being Diné, or Navajo.
Sutherland’s dad had been pressed to attend an Indigenous boarding school as a kid where it was against the rules to wear traditional clothing, like feather headbands, or speak his Native language; children that disobeyed were beaten. He still has scars, she says.
And Sutherland’s mom had been bullied by her white classmates in traditional public schools whenever she displayed her heritage. They hooted and hollered at her in the hallways, she told her daughter.
Out of their hurt, her parents grew afraid to teach their children about where they came from, Sutherland said. So they didn’t tell her much about Navajo traditions.
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