Our Story
CLASP Values
Values anchor us while highlighting why we are doing our work.
Culture
Land, Water, and Sky
Kinship
Learning and Education
Stories
Enactment of our Values
Enactment of values describe how we intend to live out our values.
We encourage awareness of the beauty of Indigenous stories, artistry, and communities with gratitude to the sacred elements for being our great teachers.
We have the utmost respect for our connections and recognize that the sole authority of decisions comes from our respective communities.
We connect and relate with people and the unbound elements that unite us together.
We engage in healthy interactions full of pauses, reciprocity, in-depth conversations, and relationship-building.
We listen to individual and collective perspectives and experiences to uplift many voices and share the whole story.
We give back to our relatives, teachers, communities, and sacred elements through amplifying, sharing, revitalizing, and passing on knowledge to build better futures.
We acknowledge every season that comes and the productive discomfort that comes with embracing all side(s) of the entire story.
Our Goals
Goals serve as a shared direction and purpose for what we intend to do through our work.
Goal 1: We seek to sustain culture and strengthen kinship with Native youth, their families, and their communities.
Goal 2: We seek to create learning experiences shared by Indigenous peoples/communities that promote kinship, educate the public, and inform policy.
Our Logo and the Seasons
Our logo features seasonal iterations that honor the rhythms of nature, reflecting our partners' deep connection with the earth's natural cycles. As we hold reverence for each season we find ourselves in; we honor it, celebrate it, practice it, learn from it, and allow it to manifest in our own rhythm of work as we collaborate. The spring logo has the morning light with the yucca plant flowering. The summer logo is midday and is marked by shadows on the land. The fall logo is sunset time and reflects the colors of harvest. The winter logo’s colors are icy at night, with shiny stars in the sky and glowing in the lake's waters. Our partners’ homeland inspires the landscape that encapsulates this logo we have designed together. The first logo is a standard for grant purposes, and the other logos are used for the appropriate season.
Standard
Default
Spring
February - April
Summer
May - July
Fall
August - October
Winter
November - January
Our Process
Our community-driven design process invites a slow, rhythmic, and intentional exchange of knowledge with our partners and communities, who are made up of educators, designers, and experts of all ages, diverse in stories and wisdom. The CLASP team promotes free community-based education expansion throughout Utah, primarily focusing on integrating culture, science, technology, & art to serve the educational needs and desires of our local communities. Specifically, we seek to teach and share Native language, heritage, & culture with Indigenous communities, Tribal Nations, Title VI families, their schools and school partners, and the public, as appropriate.
As we meet for in-person gatherings and online meetings, we listen to each other and the land. In listening, we acknowledge and realize our power to extend and reciprocate all the wealth within our partners and community’s stories and the wealth from the land that has always bloomed. From our process, we collectively design community workshops that support the interests, creativity, and stories of the community we listen to and reciprocate. Our process is healing for us individually and collectively because we show up for each other, like in our designs and the enactment of our shared values.
Meetings
Gatherings
Listen
Reciprocate
Workshops