Celebrating Native American Heritage Month, every month

Vice-Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Dania Matos and Stephen Sutton, Vice-Chancellor for Student Affairs, sent the following message to the campus community on Wednesday:

November is National Native American Heritage Month. Please join us in celebrating the contributions, traditions, foods, languages, and futures of people on campus who identify as Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, First Nations or otherwise as natives. We want to acknowledge the deep and significant history of the Native Americans and Indigenous peoples of this country, and while celebrating the contributions and successes, we also recognize that history is charged, that challenges remain, and that much remains to be done. to do. You can read President Biden’s proclamation for this year’s Native American Heritage Month here. Of course, we’d be remiss not to acknowledge that Berkeley is in the territory known as xucyun (Huichin), and as we write this post, we have a responsibility to build relationships and partnerships with locals. of East Bay Ohlone, raising issues affecting these communities, and learning to be better allies with Indigenous peoples and the first stewards of this earth.

Native American Heritage Month, monthly

Of course, we honor and celebrate Native American peoples and communities throughout the year. In September, California Native American Day was observed across California, first created in 1998 to clarify misperceptions about California Indians. In early October, we saw the 30th anniversary of the Berkeley Indigenous Peoples Day Pow Wow and Indian Market. In fact, Berkeley was the first city in the country to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day – five years before the day became a federally recognized holiday. that of San Francisco Native American Film Institute held its 47th film festival this month, continuing the annual celebration of Indigenous cinema and storytelling. As we head into the popular American holiday of Thanksgiving, it’s important to reflect on the fact that there is an array of experiences around this holiday and its meaning. The Alcatraz Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Gathering hosted by the Indigenous Treaty Council is a way some Indigenous and allied peoples choose to observe the day. The event aims to honor the traditions of indigenous communities on a day to which attention is normally devoted elsewhere. It is also sometimes called Unthanksgiving Day or Un-Thanksgiving Day.

With the growing popularity of land reconnaissance in recent years, we encourage you to explore this Land Recognition Toolkit created to encourage academic communities to recognize the home nations in whose lands we live, learn, and work and was created by the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center and the Department of Native American Studies at California State University San Marcos, in partnership with Palomar College and the Southern Association of California Tribal Presidents.

UC Berkeley shows strong at SACNAS conference

Late last month, a cohort of employees, faculty, and students attended the Society for Advancing Chicanos, Hispanic people, and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) conference in Puerto Rico. SACNAS is an organization dedicated to fostering the success of Latinx and Native Americans, from students to professionals, in obtaining advanced STEM degrees, careers, and leadership positions. Their conference is the largest multidisciplinary and multicultural event on STEM diversity in the country.

Migdalia Sanchez, a Cal NERDS Mechanical Engineering undergraduate student who was part of our cohort, shared some thoughts on her experience: academics and opportunities where my identity and passions intersect. It was wonderful to be able to have conversations with fellow scholars about how our identity as Indigenous peoples plays a crucial role in how we deal with the world we live in, the spaces we find ourselves in, who we interact with and how our identity takes a central role in how we want to solve the world’s problems as engineers, lawyers and scientists.

Learn about the ongoing work to repatriate artifacts to indigenous tribes and communities

The PBS NewsHour team recently visited campus to report on ottoy, a collaboration between Cafe Ohlone and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, and the museum’s efforts to change its approach to the repatriation of ancestral remains. , funerary objects and objects of cultural heritage. Our Public Affairs Colleagues covered the story on the Berkeley News website.

Arts Research Center welcomes Beth Piatote as new director; organizes events with indigenous artists

The Center for artistic research welcomed new Director Beth Piatote earlier this fall: “She will serve as Director of ARC Faculty for the next three years and will bring her genius, creativity and political engagement to ARC as she continues to show how the arts act as vital research. Beth is a creative writer, playwright and scholar, as well as an Indigenous language activist and founding member of luk’upsiimey or North Star Collective, a group dedicated to using creative expression for Nez Percé language revitalization. . She is one of the co-creators and current chair of the Designated Focus on Indigenous Language Revitalization at Berkeley and an associate professor of English and Comparative Literature.
Last month, the Research Center hosted award-winning Dine poet Jake Skeets for a craft talk and poetry reading; you can read a blog post review talk about his job to learn more about his creative process. Seneca Nation filmmaker Terry Jones joined Beth Piatote for an artist talk – a registration which is now available for viewing and sharing.

Take time to visit ottoy

Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino, the chefs of the 2018 pop-up restaurant Cafe Ohlone, have developed a new collaboration, rooted in healing, with the Hearst Museum of Anthropology and Cal Dining. ottoy is an outdoor dining and education space located just outside the museum; its name means to repair or mend in Chochenyo. Medina and Trevino’s efforts were recently featured in a Berkeley News story and, on their website, they mention being motivated by two goals: “to provide a physical space for our Ohlone people to be represented in the culinary world with an organized space that represents our living culture; and to educate the public, about Ohlone cuisine, in a dignified and honest manner about the original and continuing inhabitants of this land. Cafe Ohlone remains today the only restaurant/food project of its kind in the world.

UC Systemwide Efforts: Native American Opportunity Plan, Programs in Medical Education (UC PRIME)

The UC system introduced the Native American Opportunity Plan this autumn. The program is dedicated to providing state and system-wide tuition and student services coverage for California students who are also enrolled in Native American, Native American, and Alaska Native tribes recognized by the federal government. This plan supports both undergraduate and graduate students.

This year, Transforming Indigenous Doctor Education (TIDE) was added to the University of California Medical Education Programs (UC PRIME). UC PRIME is a unique medical school program that complements standard training with an additional curriculum tailored to meet the needs of diverse underserved populations. PRIME TIDE, based at UC San Diego, was created to prepare medical students for careers focused on providing health care to Indigenous populations. This will be accomplished through didactic and experiential training on specific health care needs, the cultural context in which that care is provided, and how medical research can inform decisions made by health personnel.

Resources, Events and Groups

There are many organizations, resources, events, and spaces on campus that are dedicated to people who are Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, First Nations, or who otherwise identify as Native. Initiated by students in 1991, the Indigenous Indigenous Coalition Recruitment and Retention Center provides resources, advocacy, welcome spaces and opportunities to prospective and current students (follow them on instagram!). the native Graduate Student Association provides graduate students with ways to connect academically, culturally, and socially; the Native American Law Students Association promotes Aboriginal student success, raises awareness of Aboriginal issues, and fosters a positive culture of unity, cooperation, and respect (and he has a great instagram matters!) Indigenous faculty, staff and postdocs can get involved in the Native and native council: a staff organization that supports networking and other community development opportunities. The American Indian Graduate Program works to improve the higher education experience for Native American students on campus; increase the number of Native American graduate students applying, enrolling, and graduating from UC Berkeley; and supporting contemporary applications for the Indigenous graduate student experience at UC Berkeley. The Native American Student Development Office exists to support Native and Indigenous undergraduate and graduate students during their time at UC Berkeley and oversees the Indigenous Community Center.

The Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in honoring the rich ancestry and to Native American traditions by sponsoring several events throughout the month and online information. Check National Native American Heritage Month website. The National Museum of the American Indian hosts a Indigenous Cinema Showcase in November from the 18th to the 25th, with films available on demand.

This CalMessage was written in partnership with Phenocia Bauerle, Elisa Diana Huerta and Diana Lizarraga. The Equity and Inclusion and Student Affairs Divisions express their deepest gratitude to this network of individuals who contributed their insights and expertise.