UPDATED: February 13th, 2020 at 5:40 p.m.

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Syracuse University will receive $1.5 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop the new Center for Global Indigenous Cultures and Environmental Justice and strengthen course offerings and curricula in Native and Indigenous studies.

Scott Manning Stevens, the director of the Native and Indigenous studies program at SU, will be the executive director of the center. Stevens said that while creating the proposal for the grant, he aimed to maximize the resources across departments to offer more resources not only to Indigenous students, but also to any students interested in the field of study.

Stevens said he was aware the Mellon Foundation has been providing grants to Indigenous studies programs at different schools with amounts ranging from $700,000 to $3 million. SU has a ready-made base of interest in such courses, he said, with a body of Indigenous students and others who share interest in the topic.

“I just thought, why not us?” Stevens said.

Ivana Xie | Asst. Digital Editor

SU is uniquely positioned to use the grant money to learn from and benefit local Indigenous people, said Karin Ruhlandt, the dean of SU’s College of Arts and Sciences.

“One of my thoughts has always been that Syracuse University is sitting in such a really fascinating geographical location. We have the Onondaga Nation very, very close by,” Ruhlandt said. “The Haudenosaunee culture is really fascinating in so many ways. I think it is a really good way of communicating that to our students and using that as a learning opportunity.”

Part of shaping a strengthened program means hiring faculty with Indigenous studies as their primary background, Stevens said.

“We were looking for hires of a similar type and were able to benefit from one of the proposed cluster hires that dealt with the environment and environmental change and energy,” he said.

Ruhlandt said there are two new hires in the Native American and Indigenous studies program: Mariaelena Huambachano, a native of Peru; and Chie Sakakibara, who is of Ryūkyūan descent of southwestern Japan. Huambachano has research interests in the areas of social justice and food sovereignty, Stevens said, and Sakakibara has research interest in Indigenous peoples in Japan as well as the circumpolar region.

Sakakibara explores how marginalized communities confront environmental crises and environmental injustice, she said, as well as how they reaffirm their cultural identities and give new life to social customs, sovereignty, politics and cultural performances.

She said that at SU, she will further explore the dynamics of Indigenous resilience and environmentalism in a collaboration with Danika Medak-Saltzman, an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies and a key contributor to the Native and Indigenous studies program at SU.

Sakakibara said she and Medak-Saltzman are working on a proposal for the National Science Foundation to fund a collaboration with the Ainu people of Northern Japan. She added that they aim to explore Indigenous culture revitalization and form global Indigenous alliances at SU.

“Both (Huambachano and Sakakibara) are very interested in environmental issues, and I do not believe that you can really talk about Native American culture and peoples without thinking about the environment,” Ruhlandt said. “But it’s not just the environment, there’s so much more. It’s clearly an interdisciplinary endeavor, and that is exactly what we want to do.”

When it comes to food systems, health, the environment and sustainability are all interrelated, Huambachano said. She added that she wants to bring attention to the importance of tackling issues in a holistic way.

“I can’t focus on healthy food systems if I don’t touch upon how bad our lakes are polluted, about expropriation of Indigenous lands, about extraction of oil and our natural resources — and that’s linked to environmental sustainability, environmental humanities,” Huambachano said.

Although she is beginning her position remotely, Sakakibara said she looks forward to collaborating with students and faculty.

“As much as I look forward to teaching there, I’m really looking forward to learning from my Indigenous collaborators and students,” Sakakibara said. “That’s why I say diversifying the learning experience is so important — it’s got to be a reciprocal, two way relationship.”

Because of the multi-disciplinary nature of Indigenous studies, Stevens said, it has been difficult to coordinate courses and establish a cohesive curriculum with collaborators housed in different departments such as religion and anthropology.

“Before I even arrived at the idea of a center, I was concerned about the needs of students interested in Indigenous studies,” Stevens said. “It was a real challenge for students trying to even plan the minor, so one of my long term goals was to figure out a way that we could do this without trying to invent something from whole cloth when we already had so many resources on the ground.”

Stevens said some approaches to a program as multi-disciplinary as Indigenous studies aim to create a single, centralized department. With so many disciplines involved, SU aims to collaborate across departments and specialties in order to better utilize assets to the program in terms of faculty and staff, Stevens said.

“It’s not easily siloed in just the humanities, or the social sciences or the sciences. It encompasses all of those things in different aspects,” Stevens said. “We have some wonderful affiliate faculty already, right in things like religion, art, history (and) anthropology.”

Philip Arnold, an associate professor and the chair of SU’s department of religion, will receive a grant from the Luce Foundation to conduct research on the Doctrine of Christian Discovery’s impact on the commodification of land, according to a Jan. 7 press release from SU.

Collaborating with departments and individuals in the creative arts aids in helping to achieve cultural transformation and make a difference in the world, Arnold said. One of the projects reinforced by the grant is a concert by Indigenous performer Buffy Sainte-Marie that takes on symbolic timing considerations.

Arnold said he and his colleagues are planning Sainte-Marie’s concert and conversation with Oren Lyons at Hendricks Chapel, which will reflect on the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. The event is planned between Good Friday and Easter this year, a significant season for all Christians, he said.

“We’re very interested in what the symbolism of that might be, for Christians to examine their past to think about what needs to die (with) Good Friday, and what needs to be reborn,” Arnold said.

Expression and education through art can promote healing on an individual basis as well as a cultural one, he said.

“When you’re talking to Native and Indigenous peoples, you’re talking to people who have been deeply traumatized. And maybe generations before them,” Arnold said. “So art becomes a way of working through their trauma.”

Ultimately, Stevens said, there is a turn happening with regard to Indigenous awareness and attention in the U.S.

“I’m hoping that this marks a new period where both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students will realize the value that this brings to their education in general,” Stevens said. “Whether it be about climate change and environmental issues, which are pressing in my mind, or just a basic knowledge of American history and how we got to the point we’re at.”

But there is still work to be done with respect to knowledge and learning about Indigenous peoples and cultures on the part of many Americans, Stevens said.

“It is a kind of mystery to me, and a bitter one at that, that we’ve gone on this long as a country without studying and recognizing Indigenous people,” Stevens said. “Like something we can’t talk about, like something we want to put into the attic or the basement because it’s too hard to look at — Indigenous history, conquest, genocide, boarding school for assimilation — it’s all part of it. But also, so is Indigenous resistance, endurance and contribution to society.”

CLARIFICATION: In a previous version of this post, Chie Sakakibara’s research interest was unclear. She has research interest in Indigenous peoples in Japan as well as the circumpolar region.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this post stated that Chie Sakakibara is Indigenous Japanese from Okinawa. She is of Ryūkyūan descent of southwestern Japan. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on January 31, 2022 at 10:47 pm

Contact Jana: jlseal@syr.edu | @JanaLoSeal