Three win ReachOut 56-81 Fellowships

This year’s winners — James Bryant ’10, Fatu Conteh ’10 and Katie Hsih ’10 — will all work for nonprofit organizations next year.

Bryant will receive a $30,000 ReachOut 56-81 Fellowship to support his work digitizing tribal legal documents for the Native American Rights Fund in Boulder, Co. Conteh and Hsih will share $30,000 from the 1956 ReachOut International Fellowship to manage health projects for the Global Action Foundation/National Organization for Welbody (GAF/NOW), a nongovernmental organization in Sierra Leone.

Bryant, a history major pursuing a certificate in American studies, will work toward digitizing documents such as treaties, tribal codes, judicial opinions and statutes at the National Indian Law Library. The library houses a large collection of documents but was forced to put its digitization project on hold due to the recent economic downturn. The last major attempt to digitize tribal law was undertaken by the University of Oklahoma Law Library in the 1980s.

Bryant said that his interest in Native American history and culture was sparked while growing up in Oklahoma. During his time at the University, he became interested in legal issues faced by tribes.

“I took a writing seminar on social movements in the 1960s,” he said, noting that he “had never deeply explored Native American issues before that.”

Bryant completed an internship with the Ogala Sioux tribe after his freshman year, and he spent the next summer interning with a tribal court.

These experiences taught him about “the importance of tribal sovereignty,” he said, adding that working for the Native American Rights Fund was a “dream job.”

“It’s the best advocate [for tribal rights],” he explained. “I wanted to work there no matter what.”

Bryant noted that, due to a hiring freeze, he would not have been able to work for the organization without outside funding.

“I feel deeply that a wide-scale, unprecedented project of universally digitizing tribal codes and constitutions would demonstrate constructive and measurable impact on the welfare of Indian people and tribal organizations,” Bryant said in a University statement.

Hsih, an operations research and financial engineering major pursuing certificates in global health and health policy and engineering biology, and Conteh, a chemistry major, will both work in Sierra Leone.

Conteh, who left her home country of Sierra Leone in 1999 after civil war broke out, will establish a peer-education program on teenage pregnancy through a new youth center. The center will host support groups, conferences and workshops which focus on teenage pregnancy.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“I’ve always wanted to do something back in my country,” Conteh said. After hearing about the work of the GAF/NOW, which was co-founded by Dan Kelly ’03, Conteh said she wanted to get involved.

“The organization is working to really provide good quality health care in Sierra Leone,” she explained, adding that quality health care either “doesn’t exist” or is “hard to find” in much of the country.

Conteh, who plans to attend medical school after completing her fellowship, said she is not sure if she will return to her home country after receiving her medical degree. But, she noted, the fellowship will give her the opportunity to explore that option.

“I’m taking the year off [for the fellowship] to figure it out,” she said. “[To figure out] where my skills are and where they fit into Sierra Leone’s development.”

Hsih, meanwhile, will conduct ethnographic research on the practice of female genital mutilation, a widespread ethnic ritual that can cause severe health complications.

Hsih said in an e-mail that she spent last summer interning with GAF/NOW in Kono, where she taught health education to amputee camps and local community members and conducted a health knowledge survey.

Like Conteh, Hsih plans to attend medical school. But, she said, she may take an additional year off following the fellowship to continue with global -health work.

“I feel that it’s really valuable to spend time contributing and applying the skills I’ve learned, and my global health experiences have shown me that graduating seniors already have the skill sets necessary to make a strong contribution to the field,” she said.

Applicants for the domestic ReachOut 56-81 Fellowships propose projects to complete through existing service organizations, while applicants for the 1956 ReachOut Internaional Fellowship can propose independent service projects to be completed anywhere in the world.