Kaedyn Yonker
Sports Editor
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush approved a joint resolution designating November as National American Indians Heritage Month. Since then, resolutions have used different names like Native American Heritage Month or National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month. But the core principle remains the same: a month should be dedicated to celebrating the lives of the First Americans and remembering the lives and land that were stolen by European colonization and genocide.
Traditionally, the first week of November is First Generation College Student Week leading up to November 8th, the anniversary of the signing of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which notably created federally funded financial aid programs for low-income students.
To celebrate these two events, the College’s Center for Engagement, Belonging and Intercultural Dialogue (CEBID) put together a poster display celebrating Native Americans and first-generation college students.
The Native American poster display features activists, scientists, historians and politicians of Indigenous heritage. These include geomicrobiologist Wendy K’ah Skaahluwaa Todd, who has worked to increase Native American visibility in STEM; Emory Sekaquaptewa, who was a judge known as the “Webster of the Hopi” because she compiled the largest Hopi Dictionary; and anthropologist-archeologist Sonya Atalay whose work in Turkey focuses on protecting Indigenous communities and managing cultural sites. There are also political activists like Vine Deloria Jr. and Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of the book “The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World.” Kimmerer visited the College on Nov. 4 to speak about her book, which first-year students were assigned to read over the summer.
On the opposite wall, there are posters celebrating some of the most famous first-generation college students. The posters feature former South African President Nelson Mandela, former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, American civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ruth Simmons, the former President of Brown University and the first Black woman to ever be the president of an Ivy League school.
The posters display the ingenuity and determination of both communities. They showcase the way that many first generation college students go out into the world facing many hardships and go on to become household names, as well as the countless Indigenous scholars who have contributed to their respective fields.
