Students are encouraged to engage in a conversation for Native American Heritage Month about the history of Native Americans in present day.
Based on current events with the dispute about Native American-themed mascots and other political issues, the Multicultural Center will host events based on student interest for Native American Heritage Month.
Native American Heritage Month starts Nov. 1, and Ohio University will host related programs to help teach students about the culture of Native Americans.
“There are two major things that (the Multicultural Center) is doing,” Winsome Chunnu-Brayda, associate director of the Multicultural Center, said.
Chunnu-Brayda said Anton Treuer will have a talk titled, “Everything you need to know about American Indians but were afraid to ask.”
This will be the second year in a row that Treuer has come to speak for Native American Heritage Month at OU, Jeffrey Billingslea, president of the Black Student Cultural Programming Board, said.
After the presentation, Chunnu-Brayda said there will be a drum-making and dream catcher workshop that is in collaboration with the How-To series.
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Treuer is a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State. He will answer questions about topics such as Christopher Columbus and problems involving sports mascots resembling Native Americans. He will present the information in a way that engages students in a conversation, Chunnu-Brayda said.
The conversation will be interactive and geared toward questions that the audience has about particular topics related to Native Americans, Treuer said.
According to the Ohio University Institutional Research website, there are 34 students of Native American and Alaskan descent enrolled at OU in fall of 2014, which is .1 percent of the total number of students.
There has been a 54 percent decrease in Native American and Alaskan students within the past six years, but Chunnu-Brayda said the numbers for this demographic were never great to begin with.
He’s previously done this event on other college campuses, and the conversation changes based on what the audience is most interested in.
“There are all kinds of human beings in the world, but Indians are a group of people in this country that are often imagined, from the mascots to the Boston Tea Party back in the day, often imagined, but frequently misunderstood. ” Treuer said. “The stereotypes are crazy.”
Above all, Treuer said he hopes to provide a better understanding to students about what Native Americans have experienced in both the past and present days.
“Every square inch of the United States of America is Indian Country one way or another,” Treuer said. “There’s been a process where it’s gone from native to non-native hands, and most people don’t know the story of the place where they live, which is kind of weird.”
Treuer hopes to encourage students to learn about the history of the Native Americans that first inhabited their hometowns.
“He’s going to talk again about cultural appropriation,” Billingslea said. “Representations in mascots, a little bit about Halloween costumes and things of that nature.”
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Talking about issues of Native Americans is timely around this time of year not only because it is Native American Heritage Month, but also it is important to think about and learn the roles of American Indians during holidays like Thanksgiving, and also how cultural appropriation during Halloween affects this group of people, Chunnu-Brayda said.
“Cultural appropriation is a challenge on a daily basis, because it seems to be that there is always somebody doing something that is disrespecting someone’s culture,” Chunnu-Brayda said. “Sometimes it’s intentional, sometimes it’s not. Around Halloween, because the focus is on costumes, is when it tends to be more prevalent on a larger scale.”
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