TULALIP — The gym at the Tulalip Boys &Girls Club echoed with the shouts of scores of kids and the pounding of basketballs.
Inside the club community room, more kids sat in circles and played games and talked about their feelings.
The occasion was the first of what is hoped will be many days of physical education under the imprimatur of the Nike N7 program.
The N7 program derives its name from the Native American concept of “seven generations” — that you should consider the impact of your decisions on future generations. N7 evolved from an apparel line marketed to Native Americans into an ethos of physical fitness, health and community building in native communities across the U.S. and Canada.
That Monday night, Dec. 15, the Tulalip Tribes became the latest native community to partner with N7, and the Boys &Girls Club received a $10,000 check from the program’s charitable arm, the N7 Fund, which will help support the club’s athletic program, paying for such things as awards, tournament costs, staff training and equipment.
Nike also left behind T-shirts for the kids in the evening program, as well as dozens of basketballs for the club.
“What we hope to get out of this is good continued training of our staff, and doing this with Nike’s help,” said Chuck Thacker, the executive director of the Tulalip Boys &Girls Club.
“It’ll help bring our programs up to the next level,” he said.
The N7 Fund has distributed $3 million since it was established in 2007, benefiting more than 200,000 kids. The Tulalip Tribes were one of 14 native communities selected to receive N7 Fund support in 2014.
Out on the gym floor, Husani Slaughter led a group of about 15 elementary school-age kids through a fast-paced dribbling exercise.
Husani, the assistant athletic director for the club, lined the kids up, then had them run laterally across the width of the court while maintaining a constant dribble.
It had mixed results, but Slaughter quickly switched the kids over to forward dribbling, then stationary dribbling, low to the floor dribbling, then standing-upright dribbling.
The kids then rotated to another station, where they worked on sprinting or jumping exercises.
“We’re teaching the ABCs, the fundamentals of basketball, at the lowest level possible,” Slaughter said.
The N7 program guides kids in learning such basic skills, improving hand-eye coordination, becoming facile with their left hands as well as their right, and other elements, so that when they play on a team, they’ll play better and not give up in frustration, he said.
“I want to feed them the basics and build confidence,” Slaughter said.
N7 training involves a holistic approach, emphasizing spiritual, mental and emotional balance as well as physical health.
In the community room, the activities with middle-school-age kids were led by Jillene Joseph, the executive director of the Native Wellness Institute, an Oregon nonprofit that frequently partners with Nike on reservations to encourage kids to become well-rounded.
A typical session with kids starts off with trust-building exercises and activities but also encourages children to view those activities spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically.
The activities are especially useful in communities that have gone through a recent trauma, Joseph said, such as the shootings at Marysville Pilchuck High School. The shooter and three victims were of the tribal community.
The institute has been working since February at the Cedarville Rancheria in northern California, where a shooting at a tribal government office devastated a tiny Indian reservation.
“Whenever there’s trauma, healing is the answer,” Joseph said.
The goal of the exercises is to get the kids to open up and feel inspired, Joseph said, “and give them a few nuggets, a few gems they can use.”
An activity near the end of the session had the kids describe their feelings about the day using a single word. The responses ranged from “happy,” “grateful,” and “thankful,” to “bored” (eliciting a response from one of the girls, “That was super-inappropriate!”), “one word isn’t enough” and “I want to play basketball.”
Sam McCracken, a Nike general manager who grew up on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana, launched both the N7 apparel line and the charitable fund.
The fund is supported by proceeds from the sale of N7 apparel as well as donations, but McCracken credits his employer for supporting the program through the years.
“Seventeen years later it’s turned into this,” McCracken said, waving at the hubbub in the gym.
“Our goal is that when we come to these communities, we want the work to continue when we’re not here,” he said.
Brian Cladoosby, the president of the National Congress of American Indians and chairman of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, said Nike is on the cutting edge of investing in the next generation of tribal youth.
“Things you see here today are things our grandparents and great-grandparents dreamed of,” Cladoosby said.
This kind of community-building will allow kids to have good role models and focused on education, and avoiding the pitfalls of welfare, drugs and crime, he said.
“We firmly believe investing in the youth of today will save a lot of heartache in the next generation,” Cladoosby said.
In the gym, Boys &Girls Club athletic director Tori Torrolova was already drawing up plans for that next generation.
She envisions including the training regimen in the club’s summer program and being able to bring in youth from other tribes.
“We have these exercises now,” she said. “We have the tool kit to run it year after year.”
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
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