CMGMH November 2021 Update

November 2021 in the CMGMH

Greetings CMGMH Friends & Colleagues!

November is Native American Heritage Month, a time to celebrate the rich culture, traditions, ancestry, and contributions of American Indian and Indigenous Communities. This is a meaningful opportunity to raise awareness about the oppression and violence Native People have faced historically and face today in addition to learning more about the work that has been done to overcome these challenges.

"Indigenous people are not relics of the past. We are still here, and we continue to demonstrate our talents and gifts amidst a backdrop of ongoing colonialism and oppression. We are worth celebrating."

-Native Governance Center

This November update has been created to provide you with several resources to learn about Native American history and culture. Below you will find articles, exhibits, videos, and profiles of influential Indigenous individuals with the goal to celebrate the plentiful histories, diverse cultures, and compelling impacts of the nation's first people.

Additionally, this message includes updates from CMGMH concentrations and upcoming events that you are welcome to attend.

All the Best,

Anna Ustun

Program Coordinator, Center for Workforce Development

AmeriCorps VISTA Member

Native American Heritage Month

Native American Change-Makers To Know

Shaandiin Parrish

Crowned Miss Navajo Nation in 2019, Shaandiin Parrish carried the honor for 2 years and through the Covid-19 Pandemic. She is now a graduate of Arizona State University and a former staffer in the state's senate.

"Nobody really tells you how to be Miss Navajo in general, let alone how to be Miss Navajo Nation during the pandemic,"

Parrish told NPR.

Learn More About Shaandiin Parrish

Nathan Phillips

Nathan Phillips is a former director of the Native Youth Alliance, a group aiming to uphold traditional culture and spiritual ways for future Native Americans. He is a well-known Native American activist who was among those leading the Standing Rock protests in 2016 and 2017 against the construction of an oil pipeline in North Dakota.

Read The Power of Nathan Phillips’s Song

Secretary Debra Haaland

Secretary Deb Haaland made history when she became the first Native American to serve as Cabinet secretary. She is a member of New Mexico's Pueblo of Laguna and a 35th generation New Mexican.

Her confirmation is symbolic considering the Interior Department's history of oppression against America's Indigenous peoples. The Interior Department is responsible for managing the country's public lands, natural resources, and government-to-government relations between the U.S. and Native American Tribes.

Haaland is passionate about addressing climate change and economic inequality as well as transforming the relationship between the U.S. government and Native American tribes.

Follow Secretary Deb Haaland

A New Era of Representation

Jordan Marie Daniel

The striking images of Jordan Marie Daniel running in marathons with a red hand painted across her mouth is to increase awareness for the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people.

The handprint represents the silenced voices taken from Indigenous communities from violence and racism. In her social media captions, she often lists the names of the missing and murdered people she’s running for.

Learn More About Jordan Marie Daniel

A Conversation With Native Americans on Race

This video grapples with the racist contradictions of a country that, many feel, would prefer if Native Americans didn’t exist.

Celebrate Culture

Developing Stories

Native Photographers in the Field is a series of three photo essays created by Native photojournalists, Donovan Quintero, Tailyr Irvine, and Russel Albert Daniels, in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

These photographers share the same desires:

Break down stereotypes of Native peoples
Portray the diversity and complexity of their contemporary lives

Each photographer explores an issue that is of deep personal interest to them and touches the lives of Native people. Together, they provide compelling insights into contemporary Native life and nuanced viewpoints on an American experience largely invisible to mainstream society.

The photograph above, taken by Russel Albert Daniels, captures The Santo Tomás feast day ceremony and the El Cautivo (The Captive) Dance. Performed at Abiquiú for more than 150 years, dancers dress as their ancestors, with face paint, feather hair ornaments, and ankle bells.

Power of Love during the Darkest of Time

Gloria Colon

Tribe: Mi'kmaq

Find this art piece on the 3rd floor near the elevators.

From the artist: "This door represents to me strength and resilience. The bottom of the door shows a woman that suffers domestic abuse. She holds a child in her arms as she is murdered. The middle of the door represents her spirit that watches over the child. The top of the door represents the strength that happens as the child grows into a strong and beautiful woman. It is important to realize that even in the most horrible event, one can rise and become a stronger person. This door is a strong representation of the horrifying events that happen to indigenous women."

This painted door was created for the North American Indian Center of Boston (NAICOB) 2017 Gala, where it hosted "Doors Unhinged: An Exhibition on Untold Native Women's Stories".

Native Cinema Showcase: Nov 12-18

The National Museum of the American Indian’s Native Cinema Showcase is an annual celebration of the best in Native film. This year's showcase focuses on Native people boldly asserting themselves through language, healing, building community, and a continued relationship with the land. Activism lies at the heart of these stories.

The Showcase will feature films such as:

We are on Indigenous Land

“When we talk about land, land is part of who we are. It’s a mixture of our blood, our past, our current, and our future. We carry our ancestors in us, and they’re around us. As you all do.”

-Mary Lyons (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe)

Indigenous people have lived in Massachusetts for 12,000 years. Today, there are close to 40,000 Native-Americans living in Massachusetts, according to the 2010 Federal Census.

This land is the territory of the Massachusett and their neighbors, the Wampanoag and Nipmuc Peoples, who have stewarded this land for hundreds of generations.

Recognizing the land is a way to express gratitude and build consciousness to those whose territory we reside on. As colonialism is an ongoing process, land acknowledgments do not simply exist in a historical lens.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT FROM THE UPSTANDER PROJECT:

"Today, Boston is home to thousands of Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to live and work here.

We recognize the repeated violations of sovereignty, territory, and water perpetrated by invaders that have impacted the original inhabitants of this land for 400 years. We extend our respect to citizens of these Nations who live here today, and their ancestors who have lived here for over five hundred generations, and to all Indigenous people. We also affirm that this acknowledgement is insufficient. It does not undo the harm that has been done and continues to be perpetrated now against Indigenous people, their land and water."

TAKING ACTION

Do your research to make meaningful Land Acknowledgements
Listen, learn, unlearn, grow, act and ask local Native people how you can be helpful
Contest how public spaces are named, challenge popular narratives that erase Native peoples
Transform curricula, make it interdisciplinary and place-based, highlight Native voices and authors, and support Native makers like Urban Native Era, Wabanaki Marketplace, B.Yellowtail, From the People, We are the Seeds , Abbe Museum, and Wampanoag Trading Post

The North American Indian Center of Boston has a wealth of local resources including advocacy services for housing and mental health needs.

The Aquinnah Wampanoag Indian Museum (Aquinnah, MA on Martha's Vineyard) supports the exploration of Wampanoag culture from multiple viewpoints.

The Black Mental Health Graduate Academy is delighted to welcome 12 new Scholars!

An Update from The Black Mental Health Graduate Academy

An Update from The Latino Mental Health Concentration

Frida Kahlo: POSE

An Exhibition at the Rose Art Museum

Open until December 2021

Organized in five overlapping sections – posing; composing; exposing; queering; and self-fashioning – this research-based show examines the relationship between photography and art within Kahlo's world, explores her mode of composing herself and her paintings, and shines a light on Kahlo’s queer identity and gender fluid self-presentations.