Hailey Polson: Smudge before flight
In an article for MIT Technology Review, Hailey Polson ‘26 shares how the MIT’s First Nations Launch team embraces their cultural heritage for a better engineering experience.
“I’m moving to Boston in three weeks!” At my high school graduation, I had just learned I’d been accepted into the Interphase EDGE program, an incredible opportunity to acclimate to life at MIT before the 2022 school year began.
I was glad to have that chance, since I faced a big change from life at home in Claremore, on the Cherokee Nation reservation in northeastern Oklahoma. I’d been away on my own only once, on a fifth-grade trip to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, where I first fell in love with aerospace engineering.
It didn’t take long to find community on campus. To my surprise, out of the dozen students at a welcome event for the Indigenous community, three grad students and an undergrad were in the aero-astro department. As a prospective Course 16 major and a FIRST Robotics alum, I was excited to discover that they planned to start a new team for the First Nations Launch (FNL) rocketry competition, a NASA Artemis Student Challenge. It was the perfect opportunity to merge my technical passion with my cultural roots.
That first year, many people questioned the need for our team. “MIT already has a Rocket Team,” they’d say. But while most build teams are defined by the specific projects they work on, the product is just one aspect of the experience.
Yes, I’ve learned to design, build, launch, and safely recover a model rocket. But doing that alongside other Indigenous engineers on the team we call MIT Doya (ᏙᏯ, Cherokee for beaver) has taught me more than engineering skills. Beyond learning how to work with composites or design fins, I’ve learned how to navigate classes and connect with professors. I’ve learned about grad school. And I’ve learned how to celebrate my Indigenous identity and honor my ancestors with my work. For instance, we often hold smudging ceremonies—burning sage to purify ourselves or our rockets—at our team meetings and competitions.
I’ve also learned that embracing my culture can offer a better approach to engineering challenges. While many engineering settings foster top-down decision-making, our team tests and incorporates as many ideas as possible to engage everyone, emphasizing universal consensus and buy-in on the technical side while paying attention to the success of each team member on a personal level. We call this gadugi (ᎦᏚᎩ) in Cherokee, or “everyone helping each other.” And we find it’s led to better technical results—and a better experience for everyone on the team.
