Indiana University held several events at the Indiana Memorial Union today in celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
The celebration was in collaboration with IU’s First Nations Educational and Culture Center, Union Board, Native American and Indigenous Studies and the Kelley Office of Diversity Initiatives.
The events included Ryan Singer of the Navajo Nation presenting his work on Indigenous Futurism, a Native crafts vendor, live painting and dancing.
Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a holiday that honors Indigenous American peoples and their histories, typically held on the second Monday in October, like Christopher Columbus Day.
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The Indigenous people at the events want to celebrate their culture and spread the message that their Native American ancestors were already there before Christopher Columbus and other explorers arrived in America.
Norma Robertson, of the Sioux tribe and originally from South Dakota, was working at the Native crafts vendor set up at the Starbucks stage in the IMU, making beaded crafts.
She said, in her opinion, Columbus and the other explorers valued money, gold and silver more than anything, especially the people who were already there.
“In regard to Columbus and all of their early explorers, for people that was already here, just like any place else, Australia, New Zealand, Guam, and all of them, people were already there, and they already had stories on how they got there,” Robertson said.
IU Bloomington acknowledges that the university was built on the Indigenous homelands of the myaamiaki (Miami), saawanwa (Shawnee), Bodwéwadmik (Potawatomi), and Lenape (Delaware) people.
