From Youth Poet to Program Manager

Autumn White Eyes (Oglala Lakota/Turtle Mountain Band of Anishinaabe) was raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

In 2014, she graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in Native American Studies and Creative Writing. In 2017, she received her Ed.M in Arts in Education from Harvard. Autumn is a spoken-word artist and published author.

Prior to joining First Peoples Fund (FPF) as the Program Manager of Youth Development in January 2021, Autumn was a teaching artist, education consultant, and has 6 years of experience working in the nonprofit sector. Some of the organizations she has worked with include Red Cloud Indian School, Native Youth Leadership Alliance, Art Change US, Big Sister Association of Greater Boston, 3 Generations, and City Year New York.

Cameras and celebrities added to the pop in the air as Autumn walked into the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival in Los Angeles for the first time. Still a high school senior, Autumn loved poetry but had never seen it presented like this.

“I loved that young people, who were around the same age as me, were being free on the mic,” she says. “I wasn’t writing poetry in the same way, but that inspired me.”

First Peoples Fund supported her trip in 2010 during the early years of FPF’s Spoken-Word Youth Development Initiative. Autumn and Tiana Spotted Thunder (Oglala Sioux Tribe) — now a 2020 FPF Artist in Business Leadership fellow — were Team Pine Ridge members.

That event inspired Autumn to continue poetry, branch into spoken word, and volunteer with FPF in the youth program.

“At Dartmouth College, I joined the poetry group and did spoken word and slam poetry there,” Autumn says. “At the same time, First People’s Fund was starting their youth development work. I helped out long-distance, and in the summertime, we took a group, Waš'aka Howašte (‘strong voices’), back to Brave New Voices.”

FPF continued weaving through Autumn’s life. In 2011, she had an opportunity to go to the Alternative ROOTS Week conference. Supported by FPF for the trip, Autumn witnessed arts, culture, and community come together, and the inspiration sent Autumn on a trajectory in the arts and culture field. She later became an Intercultural Leadership Institute (ILI) fellow in 2019. ILI is a collaborative effort of First Peoples Fund, Alternate ROOTS, the National Association of Latino Arts & Culture, and the PA’I Foundation that provides a year-long intensive leadership experience for artists, culture bearers and other arts practitioners.

“To learn from arts and culture leaders and cultural bearers across the country doing amazing work was challenging, but rewarding,” Autumn says. “It assisted me on my journey to take on this new role and work with young people in art.”

In August 2018, Autumn was hired as a contractor for FPF’s youth development program. She helped create the curriculum used in the poetry program and recently began teaching that same curriculum.

In her new role as a full-time staff member and Program Manager of Youth Development, Autumn will oversee poet mentors and guide them in the journey of working with young people through programming. Autumn had already begun working with the FPF youth this past October to kick off the new season of programming. In place of the Emerging Poets Fellowship this year, the program’s focus is on workshops and open mics, emphasizing kinship building.

“We also work with partners at the Cheyenne River Youth Project in Eagle Butte, Nis’to Incorporated in Sisseton (both in South Dakota), and the Indigenous Peoples Task Force in Minneapolis,” Autumn explains. “It’s exciting to work with these partners. They share [with me what’s going on in] their communities and how our work is translating to those areas. How we can make our program better and reach more young people is something that excites me about the work.”

From that first Brave New Voices event as a high school senior, Autumn’s journey with FPF has blossomed into a career of mentoring and inspiring youth as she experienced both herself.

“I enjoy the community of First Peoples Fund and being part of artists and supporters who are advocating for our large artist community,” Autumn says. “I love being part of that intergenerational community.”