On Wednesday, I AM OZ presented “Indignation: Indigenizing Campus Culture.” Chelsea Sunday, Jonel Beauvais and Louise McDonald Herne were the three Native American speakers at the event.
Sunday is in the Turtle Clan and is a mother of two from the Mohawk Territory of Akwesasne. She is a graduate of the SUNY Potsdam and the co-founder of the Haudenosaunee Student Alliance, a grassroots organization that advocates for Indigenous students in higher education.
Beauvais is a Mohawk woman and mother of three. She works meticulously to empower and induce healing within all Native and Indigenous communities. She is a new member to the Neh Kanikonriio Council “which is a restorative Justice Initiative that integrates Indigenous way of mediation to reduce incarceration and provide a more interpersonal means of healing.”
Herne is a Bear Clan Mother for the Mohawk Nation Council. She has presented at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues. Herne also lectures at universities throughout Canada and the United States on the Haudenosaunee philosophies and self-determination in respects to women.
Sunday, Beauvais and Herne started off the event with a traditional song of friendship while symbolically wiping away tears with an eagle feather. The main focus of the event was education and the empowerment of Native women and all women.
Since some are not aware of the history of Native Americans, the three women explained some their ancestral history. They discussed some of their recent experiences as Native women.
“The fact that us three women are standing here is a miracle because there was a whole extermination of the race,” Herne said. “The fact that there are survivors is a miracle.”
Two sets of images were presented and the crowd was asked if they recognized what the pictures were and what they represented. Sunday asked why students learn about the holocaust and the KKK in school, but not Standing Rock, Wounded Knee and the largest execution in U.S. history.
Children were taken from their homes and put in residential schools where they had their language, culture and race taken from them. The children were taken and kept there for many years without the consent of the parents. The government made it seem as though the children were being educated in a boarding school, but in reality they were being trained as maids and miners. They were meant to forget who they were and where they came from. This is what Sunday refers to as the largest execution in the United States history.
“It’s important to note that this is recent history, not just hundreds of years ago,” Herne said.
Herne continued the night by speaking of her grandmother who was put in a residential school at a young age.
“We carry her pain with us,” Sunday said. “The wound is still with us, it’s still raw. We could get over it, maybe, if it wasn’t still happening. The last residential school [in the U.S.] closed in 1996.”
Ending on a more positive note, the women shared their strength.
“There’s justice for [my grandmother],” Herne said. “I’m not going to stop fighting.
“Somewhere in the process of losing everything you could think of, I chose to live,” Beauvais said. “I chose to forgive. I discovered my voice, my resilience and my light.”
“We’re putting the Indian back into our children,” Sunday said.
“It was very inspirational and eye opening to what America really hides and what we’re taught,” said Mike Batista, a student in the Native American Studies class.
“It was entirely necessary, especially with the recent events, to find a message of unity” said Justin Carmona, another student in the Native American Studies class.
Keeping with tradition, the three women closed with another song.
