Gabby Sanchez doesn’t like the fact that many of the youth don’t have an ambition to better their lives.
She’s seen how two of her siblings have made unwise choices and how it has contributed to their decline in lifestyle.
For that reason, plus seeing other young people going down the wrong path, she has taken the initiative to start a new event.
It’s called “Empower Yourself” and she plans to hold the free event from 1 to 5 p.m. May 29 at the Black River Falls Powwow Grounds.
“The event is to empower youth and adults and to raise awareness,” Sanchez said. “People need to know they have better choices than drug and alcohol misuse and they can do something about mental and physical abuse.”
She’s seen how her sister was in an abusive relationship and how it made her life very difficult. Although Gabby’s sister was in a bad situation, she would keep returning to it by running away from home. Her sister used drugs and drank alcohol because of her boyfriend’s bad influence, she dropped out of school when she was a sophomore, and she eventually ended up pregnant.
Her brother, on the other hand, was a track star in high school, and competed in several state meets. He met and started dating a girl at school, which began a downward slide.
“She was a huge negative influence on him,” Gabby said. “He dropped out of school three months before graduation and began drinking and using drugs heavily. She abused him mentally. He went to jail and it caused a lot of legal problems.”
He grew apart from his family and not wanting to associate with any of his former friends.
Gabby has asked her youth counterparts questions on what the cultural ways mean to them. She gets the feedback that young adults her age do not seem to understand the true meaning of life as she feels many are clouded by the effects of drugs and alcohol. She is saddened that they know more about drugs and alcohol than their native ways.
And she sees the same thing happening with younger children on the school bus. They can tell anyone, with great detail, about any illegal drug, but don’t even know what clan they belong to, or anything about their heritage.
“If I ask them questions about cultural ways, they don’t understand. But they can tell me everything about drugs,” Gabby said. “The youth are being abused physically and mentally. Their self-esteem is very low. They’re not capable of doing anything big with their lives.”
In an attempt to correct these problems, Gabby has been thinking of what she could do to bring the youth to some type of understanding of where they belong: with their families and with their culture.
“I’ve been talking about it for a while,” she said. “My mother encouraged me to go ahead with my plans for an event. I took the idea to Lisa Flick in Youth Services and she thought it was a good idea. Then I got backing from Marty Ybarra, Jean Ann Day, Kristi Green and Cynthia De Florian.”
Supporting the event are Community Supportive Services of Ho-Chunk Social Services and Ho-Chunk Youth Services of Black River Falls and Tomah.
Gabby searched out presenters for the event that could share similar stories and how they empowered themselves to break the cycle in their lives.
The first speaker, Gary “Litefoot” Davis, is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. For over two decades, Davis has meshed his talents as an artist and entrepreneur to nurture his passion to better the future of Indian Country. His music, tours, films and books have served as sources of inspiration for Native people across North America.
The second speaker Gabby chose to get the Empower Yourself message across for the event will be Noah Hotchkiss. Gabby met Hotchkiss when she attended NCAI in San Diego. Hotchkiss was in a tragic car accident with his parents in which he became paralyzed from the waist down and is wheelchair bound. Noah has not let his disability stop him and has started sports groups for natives with disabilities that include basketball, skiing, snowboarding and surfing.
Gabby’s final speaker Paul “Tall Paul” Wenell Jr., is a hip-hop artist. Wenell tells about the struggles he has gone through and how he has furthered himself. He is a native from Minneapolis.
The event will be held during the annual Memorial Day Powwow at the Powwow Grounds. It will be held in a separate tent off to the side, so not to disturb other events happening on the grounds.
 The masters-of-ceremonies will be Isaac and Cyrus Ortiz and Josh Cloud, three Ho-Chunk young adults.
There have already been two fundraisers held to help make this event possible. There will be two more upcoming fundraisers for this event, with the next fundraiser a silent auction/bake sale from 11a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, April 22 at the Tribal Office Building, and the final fundraiser will be an artwork auction from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, May 6 at the TOB. All proceeds will go towards this event.