To encourage American Indian youth to attend college, Sacramento State will host its second Native American College Motivation Day on Monday.

The College Motivation Day, sponsored by the United Auburn Indian Community and the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, is a free event taking place from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the University Union’s Redwood Room.

“We do this to bring the kids together and get them motivated and show them what’s out there,” said Ricardo Torres, academic counselor at Sac State and coordinator of the event.

The event, targeted toward American Indian high school students and graduates, will present keynote speakers, raffles, workshops and campus tours. About 150 showed up to last year’s event.

Torres said the low college enrollment rate of American Indian students has sparked the need for the College Motivation Day. As of fall 2009, American Indian students comprise .7 percent of Sac State’s student population – the lowest among ethnic groups – according to California State University’s Analytic Studies website.

“It’s a big problem nationally, and even the high schools have real dismal numbers,” Torres said. “Many of our youth are just disenfranchised and aren’t really involved with the public school systems because of home-schooling. They are not part of the curriculum because many of them live in rural areas where there are cultural conflicts and clashes.”

Torres said he is very involved in the American Indian community.

“I’ve also been running the American Indian Summer Institute for the past 15 years, which is a four-day residential program for local or regional high school kids,” Torres said. “We do a college readiness curriculum for them. Each year we usually have about 20 kids stay in the dorms, and we take them to different colleges and have various panels and projects.”

Torres said the event will reach out to young American Indians that are isolated in rural towns.

“You can go to a lot of places in an urban area to get exposure to higher education-related events, but people in rural areas don’t get that as much,” Torres said. “Many of them are the first of their community to come, so it’s exciting to allow them more access to the city to see what our university looks like. We’ll also have tours on that day to get them a little motivated about schooling and finishing their degrees.”

Special guest presenters at the event will be leadership and motivational speaker D.J. “Eagle Bear” Vanas and hypnotist Robert Johnston. Vanas’ performance encourages his listeners to apply the Native American warrior spirit in present-day activities and decisions.

Johnston also works as an athletic trainer for the youth programs of the Native Wellness Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes Native American traditions.

Torres said Johnston’s performance is not exclusively a hypnosis show.

“Johnston uses his work as a hypnotist to entertain his audience while speaking to them,” Torres said. “He might start with a little activity where he gets students on stage and hypnotizes them and makes them all act like chickens or fall asleep when someone says a certain key word, but after he conducts his exercise and has all the students’ attention, he presents his motivational speaking topic.”

Throughout the day, there will be five different workshops available.

One of them is “Stay Local, Go Far,” a presentation explaining the benefits of enrolling in community colleges after high school. The workshop will show programs available at local community colleges, and encourage transferring to four-year institutions.

“A lot of our youth is told by the media that specialty trade schools are the only option they have, so for example they pay $18,000 to get into a fashion design program that they could have gotten into at the local JC for $2,000,” Torres said.

One of the panelists, David Rasul, dean of counseling at Sacramento City College, said his presentation caters to students from other ethnicities.

“The key here is to open up the students’ eyes to see how far they can go,” Rasul said. “They determine their own career, and once they find that career &- if they put all their heart into it &- then they will be successful.”

Another workshop will be a discussion on leadership led by Maggie Steele, a national trainer who works on reservations nationally with American Indian youth.

“Her workshop will identify leadership and its qualities, as well as emphasize the importance of staying on a wellness path and staying in school as a means to contribute to your community,” Torres said.

There will also be a workshop aimed at helping students in their college application process.

“If there are any seniors that want to be in the enrollment process and aren’t getting any help in their local area, we will have some computers available and help them get online and start their files to get them into the system before the admissions deadline,” Torres said.

Torres said the College Motivation Day is a single segment of the vital ongoing dialog between higher education institutions and local and regional tribes.

“This event is a product of that dialog, so this isn’t happening in the vacuum,” he said. “We pay much more attention to this issue than just once a year.”

Micah Stevenson can be reached at [email protected].