Lukachukai school career fair connects students with Navajo professionals

When Lukachukai Community School turned its gym into a career fair, the message was practical: public safety, tribal government and other local jobs are not far-off possibilities, but careers students can train for and return to fill in Apache County and on the Navajo Nation.

On Thursday, April 30, students met Navajo Nation Police officers, Navajo Nation Fire and Rescue crews, staff from Speaker Crystalyne Curley’s office, the Navajo Interagency Hotshot crew and the Navajo Times. Academic counselor Arlinda Betone said she started the event two years ago, in her fourth year at the school, because she wanted students to see Native professionals already working in those fields.

Principal Carmen Jodie said the school has watched too many students leave after graduation and begin adult lives elsewhere. “A lot of them end up in the cities rather than here. They kind of start their lives out there,” Jodie said as students moved through the gym. Betone said the point was to widen what young people can imagine for themselves and to make sure they can see careers that do not require them to leave home permanently.

That matters in Lukachukai, a census-designated place in Apache County and within the Navajo Nation. Apache County says its population is about 70,000, and Lukachukai’s 2010 census population was 1,701. In a place that small, a school event can carry outsized weight when it connects students directly with the people who answer fires, patrol roads, manage tribal government and report the news.

The mix of tables also reflected the kinds of jobs that often matter most in rural and tribal communities: emergency response, law enforcement, public information and land-based firefighting. Students could see uniforms and equipment up close, ask questions and learn what training those careers require. For families, the lesson was not just about one day in the gym. It was about a pathway: local internships, tribal employment, public-service training and certifications that can lead to work in Lukachukai, elsewhere in Apache County or across the Navajo Nation.

The career fair also fit a broader public-service need. The Health Resources and Services Administration uses shortage-area designations to direct limited resources to communities with the greatest need, and the Arizona Department of Health Services maintains shortage-designation planning for communities across the state, including tribal areas. In that context, helping students picture careers in emergency response and government is more than a school activity. It is workforce planning for communities that need people willing to stay, serve and build a future close to home.