Alpine skier Jesse Keefe has been busy. Since November, the 17-year-old has traveled to British Columbia, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden, racing the best adaptive skiers in the world.

Now, Keefe is in Beijing, where he’ll represent the United States of America, alongside fellow skiers Ravi Drugan and Andrew Haraghey, when the 2022 Winter Paralympic Games begin Friday. While the three men hail from Sun Valley, Idaho; Drugan, Ore.; and Salt Lake City, respectively, they also call Park City home as athletes at the National Ability Center.

The National Ability Center (NAC) is a non-profit organization based in Park City, whose programs are designed for individuals of all abilities, including those with physical, developmental and intellectual disabilities. At the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games, NAC athletes received 7 medals. And the NAC’s ski and snowboard teams have prepared myriad athletes for success at the highest levels again this year.

Keefe, the youngest alpine skier on Team USA, wasn’t sure there would be a spot for him, which are determined by the points and ranking in qualifying races and the number of slots made available by the International Paralympic Committee. But that didn’t stop Keefe from buying a plane ticket in advance. Then, two weeks before he was supposed to fly out, word came that he’d be on the team during the Games in China.

“I can’t believe a life goal of mine is actually coming true,” he wrote on social media.

Now that he knows he will indeed be going, he’s already thinking about the next one, he said.

“I’m going to do my best, but I’m only 17. I’ve got at least another Games or two in me,” he said. “I’ll know what it’s going to be like the next time, so I can fully prepare myself and get the most of my training for the next four years.”

Keefe started skiing at age two and has raced in a World Championship and several World Cups, winning gold in both slalom and giant slalom at the 2021 National Championships in Winter Park, Colo. Keefe, an amputee born without an ankle bone in his right leg, skis under the LW4 classification, a Paralympic Alpine and Nordic ski designation that stands for “Locomotion Winter,” and means he has an impairment in one leg only. He skis standing with a prosthetic inside of a regular boot.

Although Keefe mainly trains at his hometown mountain of Sun Valley, he’s also spent a lot of time at the NAC with Head Alpine Coach Erik Leirfallom.

“They’ve helped me get to where I am now, building up points and eventually getting to race against the national team. Once I started beating some of their guys, that’s how I got on,” he said. “I could call Eric right now and ask him for advice. It’s just that kind of relationship.”

Haraghey, a Salt Lake native

Keefe will join 26-year-old Haraghey, who raced at the 2018 Winter Paralympic Games in PyeongChang and has been on the national team for five years.

In early February, Haraghey raced at the Huntsman Cup World Para Alpine Ski qualifying race, hosted by the National Ability Center at Park City Mountain. He had already qualified for the Games, but the event was an important training opportunity, one of the last in an intensive year of training and preparation.

Haraghey skis under the LW1 designation and has lower-body impairment in both legs due to Cerebral Palsy. He started skiing at age 7, and has been racing for more than a decade, but it took some time to find the best equipment.

“I use a regular set of two skis and then outriggers, [which are] like forearm crutches with skis on the bottom,” he said. “They provide a little extra balance and support. I have my ski tips tied together … because of my disability, sometimes my feet rotate outward, and it’s not exactly fast to be going into reverse snowplow racing down the hill, so that helps keep my skis more parallel."

Haraghey initially raced without outriggers, but once he tried them, they helped his form and technique.

“They just let me work around my disability a little better.”

A Utah native, Haraghey trains regularly with the NAC. There, he benefited from having an experienced and consistent coach, he said.

“Having a solid coaching base and someone who’s seen your progression, can give you that feedback and know what you need — or don’t need — to help you develop is super helpful,” said Haraghey, who recently has spent a lot of training time at the center to get back to competition level after a few injuries last year.

X Games to Beijing

While Keefe and Haraghey ski upright with two skis, 32-year-old Ravi Drugan uses a monoski, or sit-ski. Like Keefe, this will be his first Paralympic Games. And although he’s no stranger to competition, it was only recently he started turning his sights toward Beijing.

“When I was a little kid, I always wanted to be a pro skateboarder in the X Games,” he said. “I ended up going to the X Games for monoski and getting a medal there. But even being on the national team was never something I necessarily was striving to do.”

Still, Drugan, who lost both of his legs above the knee at the age of 15 after being hit by a train, said he wanted to compete against the “best guys in the world.”

“I just wanted to be the best skier I can be,” he said. “It [wasn’t] until last season [that] it started becoming apparent that I was going to have a shot at going to the Paralympic Games.”

Drugan’s racing expertise is in monoski X, or monoski cross, a freestyle event in which numerous skiers simultaneously race a course with jumps, gaps and berms. But there are no freestyle skiing events at the Paralympics. There, he’ll be competing in slalom, giant slalom, super g, slalom combined, and possibly downhill. Adjusting his training to prepare for those events has been rewarding, he said.

“I started ski racing because that’s what I was bad at, skiing down a hard icy slope,” he said. “I can go free ski anything, but [with racing], setting up a certain turn radius and a designated number of turns? Sounds good to me.”

While Drugan said he has enjoyed training for events that are relatively new to him and is eager to compete at the most prominent event in his sport, he has the long-term goal of pushing the progression of adaptive skiing. With his background in freestyle, he wants to show what is possible on a sit ski.

“Racing’s a fun challenge, and who wouldn’t like timing themselves against the best in the world, but I’m not just a ski racer. I’m a skier,” he said. “I ski everything, but I have the most fun skiing out in the trees and out in the moguls and in the terrain park, where there is so much potential.”

After the Games, he said, he plans to get back into the terrain park.

“Over the years, I’ve tried to show the adaptive community that we can ski anything a non-disabled skier can,” he said. “I’d like to prove that.”

Drugan may not be a Utah native, but he keeps finding the time to return to Park City after a decade of competition. Some of his first races were hosted by the National Ability Center.

“The NAC kind of took me under the wing,” he said. “They helped me be the racer and freeskier I am now. Ripping around Utah was the first time I ever skied bottomless, super soft snow. It keeps me coming back. It is like they say, the greatest snow in the world.”

Matt Didisheim wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.

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Last fall, the Arab Student Association at the University of Utah had its first-ever social event — with trivia, dancing and food, all providing an inviting community space for the university’s Arab students.

Amer Al-Shuqairat, the association’s president, said he and the group’s vice president, Mariam Safeudien got the idea to launch the U.’s ASA when they were attending a first-gen cohort and saw a post about their friends launching an ASA at Brigham Young University.

“So we jokingly said, ‘Let’s make an ASA for the U.,’” said Al-Shuqairat, who is Jordanian and Palestinian. “Once we completed the long process of making the club, a lot of people expressed interest very quickly, and we realized that it would be much more serious than we anticipated.”

‘Making a change’

For Al-Shuqairat and Safeudien, the association isn’t simply a club. It’s a place where passion and community collide.

Safeudien, who is Egyptian, said the concept of community is important to Arab culture, and that her love for family and her culture play a monumental role in her dedication to ASA.

“We wanted to create a community on campus [for] students who come from a Middle Eastern background ... especially those who are international students,” she said.

Safeudien said she and Al-Shuqairat refer to the club as their child, because it’s something that they’ve already seen grow in the short time it’s been around, and hope to see it grow a lot more.

“This organization doesn’t just mean an organization on Campus Connect,” she said, referring to the U.’s web portal for campus groups. “For me, it’s making a change. I genuinely believe this club is like a seed — it’s something that we get to see, and we water through every single event, every single [piece of] advertising, every single social that people come to.”

Before they started ASA, Al-Shuqairat said it was difficult to find a place where he felt he belonged on campus.

“Being a freshman living on campus last year was difficult in regards to not finding people who can speak Arabic with and relate to things that pertain to us on a personal and cultural level,” he said.

Newly recruited secretary Fatima Al-Saedy, who is Iraqi-American, said the association’s presence has had a profound impact on her life.

“The Arab Student Association to me is like a warm blanket,” Al-Saedy said. “I feel it is a club where I get to truly be who I am and belong.”

For Al-Saedy, it’s exciting to have a place on campus where people of Arab background can be who they are without judgment.

“It makes me proud to be Arab American,” she said. “I hope we can make those who feel that their ‘Arabness’ is not enough feel that the rich culture they come from is beautiful — just like their souls.”

Although ASA provides a social hub for those from a Middle Eastern background, Safeudien said it also promotes inclusivity, to provide a safe space for people who don’t identify as Arab.

“I just think ASA definitely has a mission and a vision [to] very outwardly welcome everyone,” she said. “ASA tries to teach about our culture as well, so we are not just celebrating one another — we’re sharing our culture with everyone on campus.”

Moving forward

In January, ASA held a game night where music, food and tea were provided. Safeudien said it was inspired by Middle Eastern traditions of going to a cafe late at night to play board games with friends.

“We want others to experience what we experience in the Middle East, and we want to be able to experience what our parents have experienced,” she said.

No events are currently planned, with the semester winding down in May. The association’s last event, Arabian Night in collaboration with the Union Programming Council, was scheduled for March, before the start of Ramadan.

The leaders of ASA say they want the association to be a place to unite people of diverse backgrounds on campus, to provide a community for those who need one.

“We are here for you and we know the struggles you must face by the day due to your identity,” Safeudien said. “We hope this club is just a place where you get to be who you really want to be and make friends who will understand you, not friends where you have to change yourself to fit their status quo.”

Breanna Giang wrote this story as a news writer intern at The Daily Chronicle at the University of Utah. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.

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On the east end of Salt Lake Community College’s South City campus, spanning a large section of the wall across from its multipurpose room, there hangs an acknowledgement of several of the largest Native American tribes in Utah.

Eight flags suspended in polished wooden frames herald the emblems of eight sovereign Indigenous nations. Behind the flags, a map of Utah hangs on the wall, behind a thin layer of protective glass. The map shows the regions of Utah where each nation is from, and where they exist today.

On SLCC’s Taylorsville Redwood campus, directly east of the student center, an expertly designed rock formation juts up towards the sky. Atop one of the red boulders is a raised plaque, in weighty bronze. An identical plaque hangs on the wall next to the map of the Utah nations in South City’s back hallway.

“Salt Lake Community College is located on the Native American shared territory of the Goshute, Navajo, Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute People,” both plaques read. “We honor the original ancestors of this land and also offer respect to our other tribal communities. We acknowledge this history to cultivate respect for and advocate with our Indigenous students and communities still connected to this land.”

Without Joseph Du Shane-Navanick, the plaques and their dedication wouldn’t exist. As part of his work in the college’s Office of Diversity of Multicultural Affairs, Du Shane-Navanick was directly responsible for the installation of the two land acknowledgements in early 2022.

His brother, Joey Du Shane-Navanick, has also held several vital positions within the diversity office, the college’s student association and the American Indian Student Leadership Club.

Together, the Du Shane-Navanick brothers work daily, they said, to ensure Native American heritage is recognized – and fostered – on SLCC campuses.

From reservation life to college

Joey and Joseph Du Shane-Navanick, twin brothers from the Northern Ute tribal band of Utah, trace their ancestors to the White River Ute band, which was forcibly consolidated over years of colonialist expansion and government treaties, they said.

The Uintah and Ouray Reservation, where the brothers grew up, covers much of the northeast region of Utah. It is an expansive piece of land, spanning more than 4.5 million acres and making it the second-largest reservation in the United States.

For the Du Shane-Navanicks, the road from reservation life to college was anything but straightforward, they said. Joey’s Vernal high school, he said, did not adequately guide or prepare him for the competitive college application process.

“No one told me to do extracurricular activities. No one even told me that good grades were part of it,” he said. “No one said, ‘Distinguish yourself, it’s a competition.’”

The University of Utah rejected his application, but Joey Du Shane-Navanick was determined to go to college. So, with the encouragement of the U.’s admissions office, he enrolled at SLCC.

“There really wasn’t another option for me,” he said.

Together, the brothers moved from the rural reservation to the bustling environment of Salt Lake City. They settled in an apartment near SLCC’s Taylorsville Redwood campus, and Joey Du Shane-Navanick started classes while his brother worked as a mechanic.

Something in the homework he brought home one night piqued Joseph Du Shane-Navanick’s interest, he said. His brother was taking a foundations of business with Prof. Ed Engh. Engh, as part of the curriculum, included a discussion of philosophy in the coursework.

That sparked an interest in business, Joseph Du Shane-Navanick said, and soon Joseph enrolled at SLCC, in the same program as his brother. But there were still adjustments to be made.

“The reservation life feels different,” Joseph Du Shane-Navanick said of the fish-out-of-water sensation the brothers experienced when first attending classes at SLCC.

“I’m not treated as a foreign thing [on the reservation],” Joseph Du Shane-Navanick said. “As [soon as] you step off the reservation, you get tokenized, or you get treated like a mystical person. I’ve gotten comments like, ‘I thought Native Americans were extinct,’ or, ‘Do they really have reservations still?’”

The uncomfortable conversations and lack of a community led the brothers to getting involved with SLCC’s diversity office and the American Indian Student Leadership club, they said.

‘The bare minimum’

Clashing cultural differences, like those experienced by the brothers after leaving their home, can be anxiety-inducing, Joseph Du Shane-Navanick said. Even the simplest of misunderstandings can make someone from a minority population feel uneasy, or worse, unwelcome, he said.

For instance, even introducing oneself is done differently in their Northern Ute upbringing, they said. When meeting someone new, both brothers were taught to say their first name, followed by their family name, and finally, that of their extended family.

“The thought is, you’re not only meeting me, but the people I represent,” Joseph Du Shane-Navanick said.

When meeting with other groups and leaders at SLCC, the Du Shane-Navanicks said they felt out of place during introductions and began explaining to classmates, peers, faculty and college staff their introduction style and the meaning behind it. Acknowledging these cultural differences, Joseph said, provides a place of acceptance among the majority voice and diversifies viewpoints of those at the table.

“[It’s] the bare minimum,” he said. “I would like to see diversity along with resources and calls to action. It’s important to understand different cultures, their perspectives and what they [actually] need.”

The brothers began engaging with other students and staff at the diversity office and promoting cultural recognition across SLCC campuses, from conference room tables to study hall desks, as part of their positions with the American Indian Student Leadership club.

Before graduating this spring, Joseph Du Shane-Navanick worked as a specialist intern to the director of the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, where he organized and taught lessons in an on-campus Brother 2 Brother program, a part of a national student organization designed to improve the educational experience for Native Indigenous, African American, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander and other underrepresented students.

As program facilitator, Joseph Du Shane-Navanick said he leaned into his culture, incorporating a traditional Indigenous concept called the “medicine wheel” into his teaching. Split into four “slices,” the medicine wheel represents the mind, body, soul and the spirit of an individual.

For his purposes, Joseph Du Shane-Navanick said he used the medicine wheel to teach positive masculinity.

“It helps me teach what I’ve learned from my culture in a symbol that people will understand,” he said. “There are different parts to the medicine wheel, but it’s a whole thing, so it helps me teach wholeness, spirituality, as well as a person’s place in the world.”

Before graduating, Joseph Du Shane-Navanick served as president of the AISL club, where his brother is now vice president. The club had slipped into inactivity before the Du Shane-Navanicks first came to SLCC, and two years ago, they worked to re-establish the club on campus.

Now open to all, the club offers a space where Indigenous students and faculty can discuss their different cultures and heritages. The club also educates those at the college more broadly about Indigenous peoples in the Salt Lake Valley and on its campus.

Winter Rex, who works with the brothers as student success coordinator for Native American students at the diversity office, said the club helps Native students know there is a community for them at SLCC.

“When people think of Native Americans, a lot of people think of the past or think we’re not here anymore. But we are, and we’re normal people, too,” Rex said.

Diversity through respect and education

While plaques at the South City and Taylorsville campuses acknowledge SLCC sits on Native land, Rex and the Du Shane-Navanick brothers said they are working to expand this across the college and within the community.

Land acknowledgement, Rex said, has caught steam lately, both as a concept and a trend. However, it is not enough, she said, to simply read or hear once that SLCC sits on Native land.

“No matter where you are, you’re always on someone’s traditional territory,” she said. “Land acknowledgement means that you always know that you are on traditional territory. It’s in your everyday knowledge.”

Rex compared this type of understanding to a math formula that isn’t forgotten after the next test, but built upon with further knowledge.

Land acknowledgment, Rex said, should should include a study of history. By seeking to understand the persecution, exile and genocide Native Americans experienced in this country, she said, people are better able to gain a fuller picture of Native issues now.

Joseph and Joey Du Shane-Navanick said they hope to parlay their degrees — in political science and business, respectively — to create a better environment for students coming to SLCC from reservations.

The goal, Joey Du Shane-Navanick said, is to “create a pipeline for kids who want to come off the reservation and … help them holistically, whether that’s transferring to a college or a technical school, or something else entirely. [We want to help] make that transitional move from reservation life to city life. It isn’t easy.”

Kyle Forbush wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.

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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Kyle Forbush wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.