Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board 2020 Student Honoring and Blanketing Ceremony
Channel: NPAIHB
Date: 2020-04-26

The Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board would like to congratulate all of the high school, college and university graduates of Spring 2020!!!
This is a huge accomplishment and we wanted to take the opportunity to congratulate these students and to honor them for their hard work. Due to the Covid 19 pandemic, many of our staff and family’s commencement ceremonies have been cancelled or postponed. We are proud of our students and want to make sure that we do not lose sight of these accomplishments in this crisis. To acknowledge this important rite of passage we honored our students with a blanket ceremony. NPAIHB sent each graduating student a blanket and families blanketed the students at home during the honoring ceremony on April 26, 2020 2:00 pm-4:00 pm.  
Being gifted a blanket is an honored tribal tradition that shows generosity and bestowed blessings on the part of the giver. For the receiver, the blanket is protection and represents their people’s blessing for a good life.