Northwestern’s Native American and Indigenous community has been pushing for recognition and resources for years. Though the work has been far from easy, it has paid off in recent years in profound ways. Alex Harrison talks with students and faculty at NAISA and CNAIR about what this community building has meant to them, and what challenges they still face on a settler-dominated campus.
Additional reporting by Seeger Gray.
ALEX HARRISON, REPORTER: Content warning: this story contains references to racist language and historical genocidal violence.
PATTY LOEW, CNAIR DIRECTOR: You know, universities tend to be very hierarchical, and they become increasingly corporatized. That doesn’t work in Native communities, we don’t operate like that. We’re community based, we have horizontal leadership structures. We operate on the basis of consensus, and that takes time.
Background sound: Round dance drumming and singing by Jordan Gurneau, with chatter and applause from participants.
HARRISON: How do you build community, and all the connections that flow through it, in a space that’s not only empty for members of your identity, but seeks to stay that way? How do you rally and include support from people outside of your identity? For years, Native and Indigenous people at Northwestern have worked to create answers to these questions – and though the work has been far from easy, it has paid off in profound ways.
The voice you heard at the start belongs to Patty Loew, who is a citizen of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa. At Northwestern she’s a Medill professor and the founding director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research, or CNAIR. CNAIR was created only five years ago in 2017, and in that time has grown its staff exponentially and secured a community house within Evanston.
Loew credits this growth to the work of the entire community, especially student activists demanding accountability from the university.
LOEW: It wasn’t me that built the center, it was a foundation of Native people here on campus. Staff members, Native students who continue to be really incentivized to help the center grow, and the community people who, after we built relationships with them, understood what we were trying to do and decided that they were gonna trust us.
HARRISON: Much of the student action on Native issues at Northwestern comes from the Native American and Indigenous Student Alliance, or NAISA. In 2013, NAISA demanded for the university to reckon with the role its founder, John Evans, played in the Sand Creek Massacre, when in 1864 the U.S. army killed around two hundred Cheyenne and Arapaho people in Sand Creek, Colorado under the direction of then-Governor Evans. This demand directly led to the creation of CNAIR several years later.
ISABEL ST. ARNOLD, NAISA MEMBER: Boozhoo, aniin. Onagoshi Anang Kwe nindizhinikaaz. Ma’iingan nindoodem. (Translation: Hello. My name is Onagoshi Anang Kwe. My clan is wolf.)
HARRISON: On Tuesday, members of NAISA held an open press hour at the CNAIR house. Students Isabel St. Arnold, Isabella Twocrow, Olivia Masse, and Kadin Mills spoke with student reporters about the challenges they’ve faced as Native organizers, as well as their successes. St. Arnold, a Keweenaw Bay Ojibwe descendant and SESP senior, said that just the growth of NAISA’s membership speaks to how far they’ve come in the time she’s been there.
ST. ARNOLD: So when I first joined NAISA, it was me and one other student, and then two staff members. And this year, our meetings have consistently been twelve to fifteen people. And that still sounds like a very small number to a lot of people, but seeing NAISA grow over these four years has been really impactful and powerful to me.
HARRISON: Though NAISA existed for years before CNAIR, the center’s founding gave the students a grounding of institutional support. A few years later in 2019, CNAIR secured its house at 515 Clark Street, which St. Arnold said was a huge step forward for the Native student community.
ST. ARNOLD: Having this space on campus signals to Native and Indigenous students like, “Here’s a space where you can come and be in community, and you don’t have to search very hard for it.”
HARRISON: Professor Loew said the house is so significant due to the loneliness and alienation often felt by Native people on Northwestern’s campus, as it provides a space where they can gather with cultural understanding and without judgement.
LOEW: You know, having a space where we understand smudging, we understand ceremonies, we understand how you need to heal and how important it is to be with others, to have a fire, to have a space where people really get you is so important. And we’re told over and over and over again by our Native students that that is really important to them.
HARRISON: Unfortunately however, the kind of organizing and advocacy done by NAISA and CNAIR does not go unchallenged, and recent events show that public attacks of anti-Indigenous hatred can still emerge on campus.
Last Thursday, November 4th, NAISA painted The Rock with imagery and messages to commemorate Native American Heritage Month. By the morning of Sunday, November 7th, their work was vandalized with racist and hostile messages. “You are on Anishinaabe Land” was warped into “You are on China’s land,” the sentences “Bring our children home” and “Happy Native American Heritage Month” were covered entirely, and a new message, “Ojibwe? No way” was added.
In the wake of this, NAISA called a community gathering Sunday night at The Rock, where members read their public statement and held a healing space.
ISABELLA TWOCROW, NAISA MEMBER: Silencing Indigenous voices speaks to the climate of our campus and that our work here is never done. We first want to acknowledge the targeted statements against all Ojibwe students, faculty, staff and community members. We stand with you and extend our support to you in any way we can offer it. Second, we acknowledge what was written about Chinese land and we extend our support to all Chinese community members hurt by this racist rhetoric. Finally, we offer our support to all Native American and Indigenous students, faculty, staff and community members on and off this campus who were affected by these actions.
HARRISON: Students and community members at this gathering also participated in a round dance, and NAISA hung a banner at The Rock as a response to its defacing.
TWOCROW: We have decided not to repaint over The Rock as of right now. As a community today, we took the time to heal together and process what has happened. So instead, we have painted a banner… and it says, “And yet we are still here.”
HARRISON: At the press hour on Tuesday, Twocrow and Mills thanked students for their show of support at the gathering, but added that non-Native allies and community members should continue to engage with resources posted online to educate themselves on Native issues.
TWOCROW: Thank you to all the community members that came out last night, and thank you for all the support, the food, absolutely everything that was given to us yesterday. But like, let’s keep fighting, let’s keep going.
KADIN MILLS, NAISA MEMBER: You can’t be a good ally if you really don’t understand the issues that we’re facing. Yeah, I think that students need to be engaging with the resources that we have for supporting the Indigenous community, MSA’s resources that they have published and put out there. But honestly, that’s just the start.
HARRISON: Professor Loew said she was surprised at the turnout of students at The Rock Sunday evening, and that this helped to replace the hurt of the initial attack with hope and encouragement.
LOEW: Holy smokes, look at all these people Sunday night that came up to support us. Students showing up, 10 o’clock on a Sunday night, almost spontaneously. I still don’t have any idea how they got organized so quickly.
HARRISON: So now, coming out of this attack, where does the Native community go from here? Loew said that real, material support from the university’s senior leadership is badly needed, or else CNAIR’s foundation of Native students will dwindle as fewer and fewer see Northwestern as a worthwhile place to apply to and attend.
LOEW: We’re building something remarkable, but if we don’t have the students to sustain it, our faculty are gonna leave. And everything that we built is gonna crumble.
HARRISON: For NAISA’s part, St. Arnold said they have no intention of interrupting their planned events, and will look to building deeper relationships with student groups across campus. She specifically thanked student activist groups such as NU Community Not Cops, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Fossil Free Northwestern for their commitment to prioritizing Native and Indigenous perspectives in their work.
ST. ARNOLD: I consistently feel like they always are not only thinking of how they’re being affected by these systems of oppression, but they’re also considering how other marginalized communities are being affected too, and amplifying that. I feel that a lot from those groups, and I’m very thankful for that, and I’m glad that we’ve been able to build those relationships.
HARRISON: Twocrow added that continued support and turnout from non-Native students is welcome and wanted, especially at the different public events NAISA holds, such as the recently-announced powwow planned for Spring 2022.
TWOCROW: You know, you see an event on campus, go to it. Right? We’re not exclusive to anyone, and I think a lot of people see our student group and think that these events are exclusive to the Native community. They are open to everyone on campus, and we’ll let you know if they’re not, like we did yesterday. But we want people to come out, we want those crowds.
HARRISON: At the Rock gathering Sunday, Mills expressed their thanks for the turnout directly in the event’s closing.
MILLS: Big thanks, chi-miigwech to all of you who came out here to heal with us, to share this space with us, to decolonize this space, Indigenize this space, and round dance in this space. It’s really, really beautiful to see so many wonderful people get together for something so important. So, with that, any other closing remarks? Alright, miigwech! Thank you!
HARRISON: From Anishinaabe land, this is Alex Harrison, WNUR News.
