Keeping culture and tradition alive

The County of Sacramento has made an effort to create a family environment for the people of Sacramento County. The County has thought of events, built facilities and offered activities that make everyone’s family-fun-day a blast.

On Oct. 6th the county’s Effie Yeaw Nature Center in Ancil Hoffman Park had an annual performance that attracts floods of people to Sacramento to watch traditional Maidu dancers, basket weaving and cooking with acorns. Maidu Indian Day happens at the nature center once or twice a month, which is an educational, fun workshop for children to learn about the Maidu people by making traditional jewelry and toys.

The Maidu Indians were native to the Sacramento area and uses the rivers as a source of survival and the county of Sacramento wants to keep their culture alive.

The nature center also has activities such as nature walks, beaver hikes were you can see beavers building a damn and owls of October, were you learn about owls and owl pellets. The facility has resident animals, a nature preserve, native plant landscaping, a discovery shop and a discovery room wildlife exhibit.

All of these wonderful offerings to the public might be owned and maintained by the county now, but the idea for the center came from the founder, Effie Yeaw herself. Yeaw promoted appreciation for plant and animal life and was a leader in the movement for protecting Sacramento’s natural environment.

The nature centers goal is “to create a greater awareness, understanding and appreciation of the natural and cultural resources of the Sacramento region, the need to conserve these resources, and their interrelationships and interdependences within in the Earth’s ecosystem.”

The message the county is trying to spread is a positive lifesaving message that everyone should take the time to learn. Even if the nature center had the smallest effect on one child and encourages them to pick up litter or preserve nature in any way then one less person will be working against the natural workings of the Earth in the future. The Earth is one of the only things humans truly need to survive yet most of us treat it like it owes us something.