Students Celebrate Native American Heritage Month
A festival Nov. 3 will feature dancing, food and music
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Durham, NC -- Members of North Carolina’s Waccamaw Sioux, Lumbee and Haliwa-Saponi tribes will come to the Duke campus Nov. 3 to showcase and honor Native American culture with dancing, music and food.
November is Native American Heritage Month and Duke’s Native American Student Alliance (NASA) will host its second annual “Plaza Party” on the West Campus Plaza.
The plaza will be filled with dancing and singing, and vendors will sell authentic dishes. The event is one of several Native American-themed activities planned for the month, which honors the contributions of Native Americans to American society.
“We will showcase the foods indigenous to America, including corn, squash, beans, pumpkins, tomatoes and potatoes in wonderful dishes,” said Jessi Bardill, a Duke graduate student and a member of the Eastern Band Cherokees of Tennessee.
“We want to not only focus on what we have contributed but on what we are doing now and what we will contribute to society. We are a part of America’s past and we are a vibrant part of America’s future,” said Bardill, a NASA member.
The Duke students are working to build relationships with the Native American community off campus, and also hope to draw a diverse crowd to their celebration.
“All people can benefit from Native American culture,” said Joe Liles, an art instructor at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics who attended last year’s event. “I appreciate the music and I leave each event feeling an overwhelming sense of community.”
Other events planned for November include a free lecture on “Indigenous Language Revitalization: A Local Perspective” by Tom Belt, a member of the Cherokee tribe and a Cherokee language instructor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C.
Belt will speak in the Multicultural Center, in the basement of the Bryan Center, at 5 p.m. Nov. 6.
“Tom Belt wants to teach the Cherokee language to all Cherokee students so that our culture can be preserved,” Bardill said.
NASA is also co-sponsoring a free Powwow Comedy Jam with First Nations Graduate Circle, a Native American student group at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. It is scheduled at 8 p.m. Nov. 15 at UNC’s Sonja Haynes Stone Center in Chapel Hill.
“We are encouraging people to come and engage in fellowship,” Bardill said. “We hope to continue the traditions started before us and that will go on after us.”