Tere Graham attended the African American Graduation Ceremony more than a decade ago after graduating from Eastern Washington University.
Although she previously lived in Spokane and attended Lewis and Clark High School, it was during this ceremony that she first felt connected to the Spokane community.
“I just saw a sea of folks who look like my aunts and uncles, and I said, ‘This is pretty cool.’ I never experienced that before,” said Graham, program manager for the Unity Multicultural Education Center at Gonzaga University and volunteer for the African American Graduation.
For decades, cultural and identity-based groups – including African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and the LGBTQ+ community – have hosted graduation celebrations honoring students at all levels, from middle school to college.
Despite ongoing political threats to diversity, equity and inclusion programs organizers of these events in Spokane emphasize that the ceremonies are not about politics; they’re about fostering a sense of belonging and worth for young people.
“When I crossed that stage as a college graduate, they were there and they’re still here. So, I love to offer that to our generation,” Graham said.
Diversity, equity and inclusion
DEI initiatives can be traced back to the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in employment. Shortly after, in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson established an equal opportunity policy, mandating affirmative action for federal contractors.
However, when President Donald Trump returned to office earlier this year, he rescinded DEI-related policies during his first week.
“We have ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government, and, indeed, the private sector and our military,” Trump said during a joint session of Congress earlier this year. “And our country will be woke no longer.”
In February, a letter from the U.S. Department of Education referenced “segregation by race in graduation ceremonies” would warrant withholding federal funds to schools if schools continue to offer them, though a federal court in April prevented the department from acting on the contents in the letter.
Sarah Wixson, an attorney with Stokes Lawrence in Yakima, said one problem with the current wave of attacks on DEI is that the term means different things to different people.
Under Trump’s presidency, she said, many began to see it as discriminatory rather than inclusive.
“People view DEI as being discrimination, and I don’t think that’s a correct way of looking at it, but that’s where we are now and where we weren’t two years ago,” Wixson said.
She said she works with various employers who have since abandoned their DEI programs out of fear of being targeted or defunded. Still, she admires the organizations that continue to hold space for students to celebrate their culture and identity.
“I think everybody else’s culture is just as important. It’s a huge point of celebration,” Wixson said. “Not everybody celebrates the same way.”
Frances Mortel, the cultural programs manager for Asians for Collective Liberation Spokane, also said within the past few years that the term “DEI” has become twisted. The Asian American Graduation Ceremony was a reminder to her that DEI isn’t a specific brand.
“As part of Asian American Heritage Month, we had guest speaker Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and really inspiring activist,” Mortel said. “It was really inspiring being reminded after both of those talks that our work is actually beyond just what DEI has become.”
The fourth annual Asian American Graduation, held in May, was organized by ACL Spokane in partnership with the Empire Health Foundation. She said they had about 40 grads attend the celebration.
Fernanda Mazcot, executive director of Nuestras Raíces Centro Comunitario, said that, with increasing attacks on DEI and the Latino community, they had to rethink safety plans for this year’s 30th annual Latino Graduation Ceremony.
Canceling, however, never crossed their minds.
“We know this is a very significant event for young scholars and graduates, especially first-generation college students, to share this event with their families, but we did partner with the Peace and Justice Action League here in Spokane,” Mazcot said. “They are just kind of walking around campus, just making sure everything’s good, and folks are feeling safe.”
For Graham, the main question around the African American graduation wasn’t a matter of “if” there would be a ceremony but “when.”
“When we see these students walk across this stage, we’re one inch closer to not having to talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, not having to talk about who’s feeling microaggressions in their classrooms,” Graham said.
During the ceremony, Graham said they gave out an African kente stole, a symbolism of interconnectedness to their heritage and its history that is deeply connected to Africa’s rich weaving traditions, which dates as long ago as 3000 B.C.
The more than 30 graduates at the 16th annual Lavender Graduation hosted by Eastern Washington University’s Eagle Pride Center were similarly adorned with rainbow stoles to represent their identity or ally-ship with the LGBTQ+ community.
At the intimate ceremony on EWU’s campus, many knew each other from their time at the school and in their pride center, where EWU graduate Zoe Swenson worked for about four years as a peer adviser. Even those outside EWU reveled in the sense of “found family,” like North Central High School graduate Anabell Sweet.
“We have people who come into the Pride Center or to even these events, and it’s because their families don’t support them, so they’re looking for kind of a family within the community,” Swenson said.
Sweet is bound for Washington State University to study early childhood education. For her, the graduation was just as much a time to feel celebrated as it was to see others who walked in her shoes earn their degrees – those who can relate to being called slurs or not being accepted by parts of their family.
“I’m excited to see and celebrate all these other people who have gone through the same struggles, more struggles than I have,” Sweet said. “To just have that space to be like, ‘You did it. Despite everything, you did the dang thing.’ ”
Organizers of the annual Spokane Native American Community Graduation sang a similar tune about its importance. Evanlene Melting Tallow has sat on the graduation’s committee for 24 of the 29 years it has existed, working at EWU as a project coordinator and recruiter.
Not only is the event significant to honor and adorn graduates with a Pendleton stole, but encourage the young minds watching.
“We definitely need to be able to show that these graduates look like them who are in the audience,” Melting Tallow said. “These are the people who eventually are going to be doctors, who are going to be engineers or teachers or welders.”
It’s a real point of pride for her to drape the traditional Pendleton stole over the shoulders of a student she once saw in the audience.
Creating a cycle of prosperity for her community is personal to her, the first in her family to graduate college.
“I always said, ‘I will not be the last,’ ” she said, supporting her point by rattling off numerous academically decorated family members, including her two kids who walked in the Spokane Native American Community Graduation.
“When you start a movement, and we are starting a movement, it always has rippling effects,” she said.
The ceremony, hosted at Gonzaga, has several cultural elements otherwise absent from traditional school-based affairs, including an Indigenous drum group.
This year, the committee also decided to honor a teenager who would have walked with her class but died this year in a car accident. Her family received a Pendleton sash and a friend held a photo of her as she walked across the stage to recognize the young woman's efforts towards graduating. That personal touch is part of the significance of these ceremonies to supplement whole-school graduations, said Melting Tallow, a citizen of both the Blackfeet Nation of Montana and Blood Tribe of Canada.
“Our people have gone through a lot, but we’re resilient. We will continue to have this celebration every year, because we want to show that we have students who are very productive in our communities, from different degrees and graduating from high school,” Melting Tallow said. “We are here, we are resilient, and we are going to keep moving forward.”
The thought that cultural graduations have been targeted in the Trump administration’s efforts against DEI shocked Kitara Johnson Jones, who owns and operates a DEI consulting agency and attended dozens of cultural graduations in her former role as multicultural director for Spokane Community College.
“There’s a rite of passage thing to happen, that’s a cultural thing that you aren’t going to be able to erase … especially in communities where it doesn’t often happen, it takes a whole village to get them there,” Jones said.
Jones is confident cultural graduations will persist in some fashion with or without the federal government’s approval. The government hasn’t historically been the provider of Indigenous powwows or celebrations at Black churches, she said. These came straight from the communities themselves.
“You can’t erase people and you can’t erase history or heritage or a culture; you just can’t,” Jones said.
‘Proving your worth’
During the Hispanic/Latino Graduation Ceremony organized by Nuestras Raíces Centro Comunitario, Edmundo Aguilar, an assistant teaching professor at the University of Washington, said that graduating and being proud of their culture is important for students to move forward.
“Today, you all are pushing back. You all are fighting back by proving your worth, despite all the barriers that you are facing and all that is happening,” Aguilar said.
Hispanic and Latino students from middle school all the way to college were honored with a serape stole, a brightly colored, woven stole used to represent Mexican cultural pride, heritage and identity.
Among them was Angel Maldonado, a recent graduate of Gonzaga University. Maldonado said he majored in elementary education, following in his mom’s footsteps to become a teacher.
“My mom is the only one of her siblings to ever go to college. She’s also the youngest and she’s also a teacher, so I think it’s really special for me, to not only to get an education, but to also become a teacher, kind of following in her footsteps,” said Maldonado, who’s from Brewster, Washington. “It just feels really nice and rewarding.”
For him, attending the Latino ceremony was a way to show that he and others aren’t backing down, despite attacks on DEI and on the Latino community, especially under Trump’s administration.
“I mean, many cultures, but us as Mexican Americans, I think these kinds of fights fall onto our shoulders, and I think just being a part of this ceremony really shows we know what we’re really about,” Maldonado said. “Just keep looking forward. Follow your dreams.”