“It’s been really great to see other Native people working here at NASA – people that looks like me or look like my family – because it’s not something I see or that I’m used to,” Warrior said. “If we have all of the smartest people, but they get trained the exact same way, sometimes you just don’t have the insights that can give you the ability to look at problems in a new way.”īuilding connections with fellow Indigenous employees is another way to help inspire the next generation, Connolly says, and Warrior connected with many through an online Natives at NASA group. “I think one of the reasons that it’s really important to get more Indigenous people at NASA, and just people with different perspectives, is because the problems that we work on are ridiculously hard,” Connolly said. Outreach is integral to bringing more Indigenous people to NASA, says Connolly, who shares Warrior’s Haudenosaunee background and has mentored a handful of other Indigenous interns during his 19 years at Glenn. But after attending an American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) conference and meeting Glenn engineer Joseph Connolly, she was recruited as an intern. Warrior, who is Onödowá’ga’(Seneca) and belongs to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, never expected to come to NASA. “But I’d be thinking, well, maybe I’ll just make one more adjustment and that’ll help.” “At one point, I needed to stop,” Warrior said. Adjusting the model and combing over code for hours to make improvements reminded Warrior of her skywatching memories. In summer 2023, Warrior – now a physics senior at the University at Buffalo – interned at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, where she used software to validate and verify a model of a control system that could be used in future hybrid-electric aircraft. “I was always like, ‘One more, just one more shooting star,’’ Warrior said. Other nights, she lay with her face pressed against the sliding glass door in her living room, hoping to catch just one more glimpse of the sky. With a blanket wrapped around her, Warrior walked barefoot in the dewy grass, staying out long after her family retreated inside. “I think I’ve always been interested in the natural world.” “Looking at stars was always my favorite thing,” Warrior said. Her family sunk down in lawn chairs after the fire turned to ash and gazed up, searching for lights in the sky. When night came, her father started a fire and told scary stories while hot dogs and s’mores sizzled. She lay in the creek to escape the boiling sun, ran through the woods with her sister and five brothers, picked raspberries and wild onions, and lounged in a hammock. On hot, summer days when Alyssa Warrior was growing up, she spent her time outside by her home on the Seneca Nation Cattaraugus Reservation near Buffalo, New York.
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