Drawing students from each Ivy League school and several others in the northeast, the All-Ivy Native American Student Conference discussed "Indigenous Minds Uniting" at a weekend conference held at the College.
The conference witnessed the founding of the Ivy Native Council, to be comprised of one representative from each of the eight Ivy League schools.
The council, organizers said, will convene regularly to discuss Native American issues and to further the development of both Native American studies departments and Native American community programs at the universities.
Beginning Thursday, Feb. 18 and concluding Sunday, Feb. 22, the conference hosted four separate workshops, each with six sections. The workshops addressed areas ranging from developing career skills to maintaining cultural identity.
The conference opened with remarks from Jacqueline Johnson, the Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians. NCAI recently came out in strong opposition of the musical group Outkast's performance at the 46th annual Grammy Awards. At the awards show, Outkast's Andre Benjamin performed the group's hit single "Hey Ya" to an "Indian" theme that the organization deemed to be extremely offensive.
The conference concluded with a keynote address by Native American studies professor Dale Turner.
Turner spoke on "what it means for Native students to participate as intellectuals in the Ivy League and what it means when they return to their tribal communities after spending time away," Wallace said.
The idea for a conference had been circulating around campus for several years, participant Stephanie Whisnant '06 said. However, it only became a reality under the leadership of Cara Wallace '03, Natasha Singh '04, Cody Harjo '04 and Gilbert Littlewolf '07.
According to Harjo, the group's hard work and planning paid off.
"I think it was successful because it had a larger than expected turnout of schools," Harjo said.
Wallace attributed the success of the student-run conference to the support shown to Native American students by the greater Dartmouth community.
"The support given to the conference by the Dartmouth community is evidence of its continued commitment," Wallace said.
"The conference participants who joined us from the other seven schools were impressed by the vast amount of resources and support that the Native students receive from the administration, faculty and student body."
The conference also coincided with a showing of Jay Rosenstein's critically acclaimed documentary, "In Whose Honor? American Indian Mascots in Sports." The film looks at the use of the Native American mascot at the University of Illinois, and its showing on Saturday in Brace Commons was organized by Yuki Kondo-Shah '07 and Michelle Hunscher '07.
The event boasted a "good turnout of both Native and non-Native students," Whisnant said.
The next All-Ivy Native Conferences are tentatively scheduled to take place at Yale in the spring and at Brown next fall.
