By: Dr. Heather Shea, W*SS Director
Yesterday--Monday, October 12--was a national holiday. Indigenous People's Day. We recognize and honor the grassroots movement to rename and reimagine the October holiday (formerly known as Columbus Day) that, for far too long celebrated settler colonialism, genocide, and forceable removal of indigenous people from their land.
Indigenous people's day also calls upon us to recognize that all of us (who are not indigenous to this place) are settlers upon this land. In the last few years, you may have noticed an increased practice of offering a land acknowledgement at the beginning of meetings and events. These statements of recognition (see MSU's here) are important first steps in paying attention to the ways that past injustices are reinscribed on our campuses. MSU's land acknowledgment prompts us to hold our campus more accountable to the needs of indigenous students, scholars, and current and former residents of this land.
But, is the "land acknowledgement" enough? In today's Student Affairs NOW podcast, my colleague Dra. Susana Muñoz speaks with three scholars, student affairs educators, and practitioners about how we might Move Beyond Land Acknowledgements and address the larger issues at stake on our college and university campuses. For example, MSU's status as a Land Grant University is, while often celebrated, should also be interrogated as Lee and Ahtone describe in this article. The photo at the top of today's zine is from their website: https://www.landgrabu.org/universities
We also want to recognize the ways in which settler colonialism reinforces patriarchal structures and undermines women's power and abilities. One way that this occurs is through the "divide and conquer" tactics and putting women into competition against one another. In 2018, the Indigenous Rising blogger, Jade Begay, wrote in Medium, that "There is a narrative that is fed to women that we must compete with each other for everything; a man’s love, for validation, in beauty, in success, and this is normalized to nausium by the media. This way of thinking is based on a patriarchal belief that women aren’t enough or that we are somehow lesser than."
And so, on Indigenous People's Day (like every "history day/week/month"), let's not only honor and respect the people to whom the day is dedicated, but also do some additional self-work to better understand the historical context and current factors contributing.
Interested in sharing your own "Thought Of The Day" or TOTD? Email us at wss@msu.edu.
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