“You are stupid.” “You are a failure.” “You will never amount to anything in life.”<\/p>\n
Young people often hear such messages from others – to the point that they begin to believe these words and feel that way about themselves, according to Ray Buckley, a Native American storyteller and United Methodist layperson from Palmer, Alaska.
\n“I meet many young people across the world who describe themselves this way, and the sense of some youth in our communities is one of despair,” Buckley said during a workshop focusing on both “names of derision” and how names are sacred during Youth 2007, a July 11-15 event sponsored by the United Methodist Board of Discipleship.<\/p>\n
Buckley said he frequently talks with young people who have been told all their lives that they are worthless, that they won’t graduate from high school or college because no one in their family ever has, that their future is to become alcoholics, and that there is no way out of the situation in which they live.<\/p>\n