2017 in Review: Diné girl gets Obama to designate World Autism Awareness Day
Submitted Jasmin Miller poses with her letter from President Barack Obama.
(Editor’s note: This story originally ran on Jan. 5. For our annual year-end edition, we’re rerunning some of the best feature stories of 2017.)
WINDOW ROCK
Submitted
Jasmin Miller poses with her letter from President Barack Obama.
If you saw folks around the Navajo Nation wearing blue in April, it came from the campaign of a then 7-year-old Navajo girl in Washington state and reached all the way to the White House.
Jasmine Miller, now 8 years old, got the attention of the White House with a campaign to raise awareness of autism where she lives in Bremerton. “It’s very important to me,” she said. “It just makes me happy to see people wear blue on April 2.”
Jasmine grew up in Lukachukai, Arizona, with her autistic brother Samuel Miller, 10, and took it upon herself to advocate for him. “She wanted to do something for her brother,” her mother Rosabelle Miller said. “He can’t keep up conversations with people, so she wanted to be a voice for him.”
After mounting a campaign in March to have people wear blue as a reminder of World Autism Awareness Day on April 2, she and her family spread the word by any means they could.
“I called to the Navajo Nation, to KTNN, and they put it on the radio,” Rosabelle said. Soon word came from Jasmine’s grandparents that the campaign had caught on back on the Navajo Nation. They work in the Window Rock area and informed Rosabelle – people were wearing blue back home.
Jasmine also told her mom that she thought it unfair to have days like April Fools Day marked on the calendar and not World Autism Awareness Day. She had an idea. “She asked me, ‘What do you think if I write to the President of the United States?’” Rosabelle said. Rosabelle encouraged her daughter to let her voice be heard.
In response, around Christmas time, Jasmine received a package in the mail from President Barack Obama. Rosabelle said Jasmine could tell exactly who it was from. “She was jumping up and down,” Rosabelle said. “She was like, ‘Open it mom! Open it!’” Inside she found a proclamation marking World Autism Awareness Day from the President, a letter from the same, and a signed photograph of the First Family.
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