Student Activists Honored With Jazzy Johnson Waw-jashk Award
Northwestern University's Kimani Isaac (BS20) was honored with the new Jazzy Johnson Waw-jashk Student Award during a surprise Zoom meeting.
The annual honor from Northwestern’s Campus Inclusion and Community (CIC) in the Division of Student Affairs – completing its first full award cycle this year – recognizes the work of a wide variety of student activists. Faculty members, staff and fellow students nominated the students based on commitment, courage, care, service and humility.
Isaac was recognized for being a “social-justice change agent” who took on several advocacy efforts around academic affordability, support for Black students, first-generation, low-income students, and queer and transgender students.
Isaac supported first-year Northwestern students as a Compass Mentor and participated in the Summer Academic Workshop (SAW). As an active member of ASG, Isaac spearheaded course affordability efforts that led to the creation of Books for Cats, which offers eligible first-year students the opportunity to borrow course materials.
Isaac served as a student panelist and speaker at several high level Alumni Relations and Development events, including the We Will events on campus and in New York at The Met, where she advocated for greater supports for first generation and low-income students and for the work of Campus Inclusion and Community more broadly.
Her nominator described her as someone who demonstrates “all of the core values of the Jazzy Johnson Waw-Jashk Student Award, starting with her commitment and courage to advocate for marginalized communities throughout her time at Northwestern.”
In addition to Isaac, winners include Kiana Jones, Antonette Narvasa, and a student who didn’t wish to be identified.
Winners of the award, which comes with the approval and blessing of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and the Pokagon Potawatomi Nation, receive a hand-crafted birch medicine box engraved with the award and the recipient’s name.
The box contains four sacred medicines, including tobacco, sage, cedar, and sweet grass, as well as information on the benefits and uses of each medicine. These teachings come from the Anishinaabe people of the Great Lakes Region and were provided to Campus Inclusion and Community by the American Indian Health Services of Chicago.
The word Waw-jashk comes from the Potawatomi tribe, a nation whose land Northwestern University sits upon today. The direct translation of waw-jashk means muskrat, which is a small, tenacious, and humble creature. Despite its size and seeming lack of strength (in numerous local indigenous tribes), the muskrat is known for its courage and the crucial role that it played in creating these Nations.