About 150 Native and Indigenous studentsincluding 50 from 窪做惇蹋厙 and 100 from other Ivy League Institutionswill gather on campus later this month for the , an event that celebrates and preserves Native history and culture while fostering fellowship, learning, and mutual support.
As an institution that serves over 200 Native and Indigenous undergraduate students from over 70 different Indigenous communities, the Ivy Native Council Conference is a special time for undergraduate students across the Ivy League to come together to be in community with one another, says , director of the at 窪做惇蹋厙 and an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation.
This year, were excited to support students desire to learn about language revitalization efforts from a multitude of Indigenous perspectives. The Ivy Native Council student representatives and our 窪做惇蹋厙 planning committee have guided the selection of speakers. Im proud to support their hard work and commitment to learning from Indigenous language practitioners and teachers.
Thats exactly what Brown herself has been doing, first as curator of exhibitions and education at the Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur, Okla., and now at 窪做惇蹋厙.
As a descendant of boarding school survivors who were forbidden to speak their Native languages, Im an active student of Chikashshanompa in an effort to reclaim it, and Im proud of our communitys decade-long language initiative, she says.
Language is also important to Perciliana Moquino 26, a Native American and Indigenous studies and environmental studies major who grew up on the Kewa and Cochiti pueblos in New Mexico. As coordinator of this years April 19 to 21 conference, she invited her mother, Trisha Moquino, to give the keynote as a way of honoring her and my people.
Trisha Moquino is the co-founder and a Keres-speaking elementary guide at Keres Childrens Learning Center, a language revitalization school with a comprehensive cultural and academic curriculum for Cochiti Pueblo children and their families.
Because she was not fluent in the Keres language as a child, it was my moms hope to revitalize it for her own children, says the younger Moquino. Speaking it at home with my parents and grandparents, Ive been given an amazing opportunity to see the world in more than one wayfrom a Keres persons perspective, and through an English perspective, understanding different viewpoints. Coming to 窪做惇蹋厙, 2,000 miles from home, youre thrown into a place that youve never been to before, and what has really helped me navigate that personally is being able to speak my language, even if its just to myself.
Moquino says many Native and Indigenous students at 窪做惇蹋厙 are majoring in linguistics in hopes of bringing language back to their own communities. Members of have recently created the Indigenous Living Languages organization to serve as a community for all students interested in learning Indigenous languages and fostering revitalization efforts, she says.
Conference presenters include award-winning Indigenous writer, environmental historian, and ethnobotanist Rosalyn LaPier; Cherokee scholar Thomas Belt; Maskoke language revitalizer, scholar, and musician Marcus Briggs Cloud; Ojibwe educator Brooke Niiyogaabawiikwe Gonzalez 97; and Ashlyn Lovato, a 2023 alumna of Brown University, where she is now earning a masters degree in linguistic anthropology with a focus on unwritten Indigenous languages and cultural knowledge systems.
Attendees will be invited to visit the , home to more than 4,000 works by Native American artists. Following dinner and bingo at the Hanover Inn, a performance in Collis Common Ground will feature hip-hop artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, a well-known environmental activist who delivered a 2015 speech at the United Nations General Assembly in English, Spanish, and his native language, Nahuatl.
Sunday morning, says Moquino, will be a time for farewells and reflection.
I genuinely hope that as students leave us and go back to their everyday lives, our communities will remember that we support one another through language learning, strengthening our knowledge systems both within the higher institutions we attend and within our own Indigenous communities.
