{"id":34510,"date":"2016-01-12T01:06:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-12T09:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/alaskan-invited-to-state-of-the-union-address\/"},"modified":"2016-01-12T01:06:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-12T09:06:00","slug":"alaskan-invited-to-state-of-the-union-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/alaskan-invited-to-state-of-the-union-address\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaskan invited to State of the Union address"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>WASHINGTON \u2014<\/strong> An advocate for young Native Americans plans to attend President Barack Obama\u2019s last State of the Union address.<\/p>\n<p>The Alaska Dispatch News reported 24-year-old Alaskan Lydia Doza was invited to sit with first lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday as a guest of the White House.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s like a dream come true,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and I\u2019m really glad to get the opportunity to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Doza became involved with the Obama administration\u2019s Generation Indigenous initiative through her work with the Center of Native American Youth. She reaches out to the community\u2019s students to promote getting into the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI try to be a presence to them to let them know that someone like them is getting a higher education,\u201d Doza said.<\/p>\n<p>The Oregon Institute of Technology software engineering student says she works with kids using activities that make science and technology more approachable rather than overwhelming. One exercise called squishy circuits involves a product similar to Play-Doh.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s completely nontoxic, and it\u2019s cool because we can have kids as young as &#8230; 3 years old playing with electricity, and it\u2019s completely safe,\u201d Doza said.<\/p>\n<p>The invite comes after a year in which the president visited Alaska, the state that provided the Capitol Christmas tree. Doza says she\u2019s excited to even get to attend, let alone as a special guest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSomeone just called me from the White House. I was in class, and then they sent me a text message,\u201d Doza said. \u201cAnd I couldn\u2019t believe it \u2014 I was like, \u2018Nobody just gets text messages from the White House.\u2019 So I almost didn\u2019t reply, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON \u2014 An advocate for young Native Americans plans to attend President Barack Obama\u2019s last State of the Union address. The Alaska Dispatch <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/\">News<\/a> reported 24-year-old Alaskan Lydia Doza was invited to sit with first lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday as a guest of the White House. \u201cIt\u2019s like a dream come true,\u201d she said. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-34510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34510"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=34510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}