On a warm Thursday afternoon, Lashiva Gonnella-Sigworth walked into the colorful, sunlit lounge at 113 Euclid Ave. The freshman had come to be with her friends, her community and her people.

The home of the Native Student Program at Syracuse University, 113 Euclid Ave. is where indigenous SU students and Haudenosaunee Promise Scholarship winners gather weekly to attend workshops, discussions and work through the transition into college life.

But to most indigenous students, it’s more than that: it’s the nucleus of their community. For Gonnella-Sigworth, a freshman communication and rhetorical studies major, and two others in the room, it was the place they would meet up to design and create posters to commemorate Indigenous Peoples Day Monday.

Syracuse University officially recognized Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day in 2016. For the second year of its recognition, the student organization Indigenous Students at Syracuse, the Native Student Program and the Native American Law Student Association plan to educate the campus community about indigenous people with information sessions and panels.

Students like Gonnella-Sigworth, and her friends, Rhiannon Abrams and Carmen Rinaldi, remember getting days off school for Columbus Day. While the day off was welcomed, the three students always had the significance of the national holiday in the back of their mind.

“They don’t know the actual story behind it or the devastation it brought,” Gonnella-Sigworth said. “It’s a huge part of our history that people don’t know much about or if they do know about, they don’t want to talk about it because it makes them feel shameful in a way because it’s a dark part of our history.”

Abrams, a freshman nutrition science major, said they believe Columbus Day should not be celebrated or declared as a national holiday. Having addressed this with fellow students in the past, Abrams has noticed the awkward silence that tends to follow — which only feeds into the lack of awareness surrounding indigenous people.

Questions about living in longhouses and teepees, whether their family had electricity or if indigenous people still existed have all come across the students and their families.

“(There should be) awareness that we still exist, that we’re not the past,” Abrams said. “I wish they knew we’re just like them, that we live in houses, that we were colonized — not savages.”

Abrams, Rinaldi and Gonnella-Sigworth all went to the Onondaga Nation School, where they were part of a close-knit community of native students. Later, they shifted to a different school where they were placed in a larger community, which posed its own set of challenges.

“It was like walking in two worlds,” Abrams said. “One foot in the native world, one foot in the non-native world. You go to school and you have to be this person to fit in well. When I went back home to the reservation, I was more myself.”

Differences within the public school itself posed another problem — Rinaldi, a freshman enrolled in the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, felt expectations weren’t high for the native student population.

“When I was younger, there were a lot more native students I knew, but a lot of them left because they didn’t feel that sense of community, they felt like we were the only ones there,” Rinaldi said. “It wasn’t as welcoming there as it is here.”

Transitioning into college, Abrams, Rinaldi and Gonnella-Sigworth said they found a more open-minded atmosphere than some of their experiences in high school. With initiatives like the Native Student Program, the recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day and spaces such as 113 Euclid Ave., they felt more accepted.

Paul Schlesinger | Asst. Photo Editor

Regina Jones, the assistant director of the Office of Multicultural Programs and founder of the Native Student Program, spearheaded the idea of an open space for the indigenous student population at SU.

Jones, who has been at SU for 28 years, remembered the days before the Haudenosaunee Promise Scholarship was put in place. There were no more than three to five indigenous students on the entire campus, she recalls.

But today, that number has increased “exponentially.” And with those numbers, Jones foresaw the importance of having a space on campus where indigenous students felt accepted — that space became her office at 113 Euclid Ave.

That’s exactly what Jones envisioned with the creation of the Native Student Program and the Haudenosaunee Promise Scholarship in 2006.

“To other native students looking at SU, they see that there is a support system in place, there is a program, there is a scholarship and that means a lot to our people,” she said. “I think it’s saying something to the world: SU is committed and cares about the education of indigenous students.”

Administratively, Jones believes there is reason to be encouraged about the status of the indigenous community at SU. The Haudenosaunee flag is now present in the Carrier Dome, Hendricks Chapel and Manley Field House. However, issues troubling the indigenous community are ever-present.

“If it isn’t the pipeline, (it is) the Onondaga Land Rights, the pollution of the lake, there’s global warming that people don’t take seriously!” she said. “We are stewards of the environment. We, as people, are ruining mother earth and the environment. We, as stewards of the natural world, need to start thinking differently.”

Jones, a member of the Turtle Clan of Oneida Nation, said her community had started to move to more sustainable ways of living. Through recycling, transition to solar energy and fighting construction of pipelines, the community is able to partake in something as a larger whole.

Jones and her students are focused on addressing these issues, as well as the resilience of the indigenous community. They hope to create a dialogue and spread awareness beyond just their own community.

With the flyers for Indigenous Peoples Day declaring “We’re still here!” the message comes across clearly.

“Hopefully we can make them understand that the Haudenosaunee are still here throughout all the history of the genocide and the awful treatment to us as a people,” she said. “We still have our samurais, language and traditional dress despite war, boarding schools and the constant struggle to keep our culture and traditions, with all of the efforts from the United States to rid us of it.”

Published on October 8, 2017 at 9:22 pm

Contact: dmurthy@syr.edu