Louie Hawpetoss can tell you exactly what it feels like to be an American Indian high school student in Duluth.
"It feels like there's a big target over my head spelling out 'native'," the Denfeld High School junior said.
Hawpetoss was sitting at a table with fellow students Emily Pohl and Madi Himango during a quick lunch on Saturday at Lake Superior College. They were among about 70 students and adults from throughout the 8th Congressional District attending a youth summit designed to produce ideas to address statewide concerns.
Among those is the graduation rate, said Lt. Gov. Yvonne Prettner Solon in an opening address. She noted that the state has a 77 percent high school graduation rate. She and Gov. Mark Dayton have a goal of increasing that to at least 90 percent by 2020, she said.
But they also are aware of the achievement gap that has given white students a much higher rate of success than students of color, she said.
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Indeed, whereas the state's white students had an 84 percent graduation rate in 2010-11, only 49 percent of black students graduated on time, and 42 percent of American Indian students, according to U.S. Department of Education data.
Saturday's event, sponsored by the nonprofit Minnesota Alliance With Youth, mirrors other summits taking place in each of the state's congressional districts. Their task is to discuss the top issues identified in a survey of more than a thousand students across the state and develop plans for dealing with them, said Jamie Keith, a "promise fellow" with the alliance who helped organize the event.
They'll take their ideas to decision-makers in their district and gather in June for a statewide summit to share how their efforts went, Keith said.
The survey, conducted by the 72-member Minnesota Youth Council, identified crime, safety and gangs; bullying; and drugs and alcohol, in that order, as the top issues. The issues were identical in the 8th District, except that drugs and alcohol slightly outranked bullying as a concern.
Those issues are related to the achievement gap, Keith said.
"Certainly young people can experience those things and do well in school, but often ... it does impact their engagement in school and their ability to graduate," she said.
Among the event's leaders was Andrew Nguyen, a Denfeld sophomore who is in his second year on the Minnesota Youth Council, consisting of students in eighth through 12th grade.
Events like Saturday's can make a difference in the long run, Nguyen said, because they bring together students with similar concerns and give them the boldness to speak up.
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"This opportunity for us to have a voice didn't exist as much for us before," said Nguyen, 15. "It's really hard to speak up against these things when you're with your peers, because a lot of the people who you're friends with are probably doing those things."
And for American Indian students, stereotypes about drinking, behavior and poverty present an additional challenge, Hawpetoss said.
Pohl and Himango, both 15, also are American Indian but encounter less of the stereotype because they are lighter-skinned, they said.
But Pohl, a sophomore, said she sees it happen, such as in the response to the formation of a native drum group at Denfeld.
"The other morning when it was playing I heard multiple people saying rude things about it and making fun of it," Pohl said. "They were just really closed-minded."
Pohl, who like Nguyen is a member of the Minnesota Youth Council, said she has advanced from being a quiet middle school student to speaking out on issues that are important to her.
"Lately I've been coming out and standing for things," she said. "It's starting to show now."
