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\\u201cGoogle \\u201cNative people in tech\\u2026; and see Native people in every field, no matter how much of a walled garden exists. They did it, you can do it.\\u201d
One of the goals for NextGen Native is to connect Native people across a variety of professions, and to tell the story of these people to place their experience in context i.e. being Native person in the 21st century. Perhaps no one best exemplifies this to date than Erin Spiceland.
Erin Spiceland is Choctaw, and grew up in South Georgia. Her family ended up there after her grandfather settled down in the area after serving in the Navy. She is a software engineer \\xa0working in for a technology company in Huntsville, AL. If there is one area that every community needs to be part of in 2016, it\\u2019s technology. Specifically, preparing people to work in technology by teaching them to code. But even more, in the same conversation Erin talks about the importance of coding, she talks about learning her language, and teaching it to her kids.
Erin\\u2019s journey is about more than just coding. Erin lost her mother at a young age after a battle with Leukemia. It was difficult for her to move on after the loss, but she found strength in her faith and realizing that her life did not have to be defined by what she lost.
In this episode we discuss:
I learned a lot from Erin, and she pushed me to understand things just a bit beyond my grasp. In addition to learning my language, I think I\\u2019ve been inspired to learn some kind of coding program, too.
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