Utah school names 1st Native student to homecoming royalty

By COURTNEY TANNER
Salt Lake Tribune

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Mahala Sutherland never expected to win this year’s homecoming royalty contest at Southern Utah University. But the Salt Lake Tribune reports she’s honored that she did. She’s also honored to be the first Indigenous student to claim the title in the school’s history. She entered the pageant to showcase her culture in quiet rebellion to a time when her parents could not. Growing up in a small town in central Arizona, Sutherland had been taught not to openly embrace being Diné, or Navajo. Her father had been pressed to attend an Indigenous boarding school as a kid where it was against the rules to wear traditional clothing or speak his Native language.