Category Archives: Heritage Month Reflections

Solidarity for Racial Justice & Hispanic Heritage Month

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Honoring and respecting humanity is integral to living the mission of the Congregation of Holy Cross and our faith. With the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops designating Friday, September 9th as a Day of Prayer for peace, the Center for Social Concerns and Multicultural Student Programs and Services called for the Notre Dame Community and Nevada fans to join us in standing for Solidarity for Racial Justice.  More than one hundred and seven faculty, alumni, administrators, graduate and undergraduate students and campus visitors processed from Geddes Hall to the Jesus statute with the inscription “Come to Me” ending at Father Sorin’s statute.  Victims of the senseless violence that has plagued our Nation over the past two years were lamented throughout the thirty minute service. Thank you to those who joined our Solidarity for Racial Justice campaign. During the remainder of the fall semester, you are invited to attend events sponsored by numerous departments in support of the campaign. The next is the Book Club, where we will read Citizen by Claudia Rankine.  If you are interested in join the club, contact Kyle Lantz at the Center for Social Concerns. You should note that Ms. Rankine is scheduled to visit campus January 2017.

 

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Thank you to the companies, Notre Dame Departments and DC of ND clubs for participating in the 2016 MSPS Picnic. The afternoon was filled with good music, performances and meeting new friends and connecting with old ones. Congratulations to the winners of the numerous door prizes provided by PWC, Accenture, and KPMG.

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On September 21st MSPS’ first Hispanic Heritage event, the Interrace Forum, focused on Latinas in the Media: Stereotypes and Critiques. The attendees will be challenged to think more critically about the messages sent by media.  The first event of the MLK Study of Race Series is the Diane Guerrero Lecture. Ms. Guerrero, actress in Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, will talk about her immigration reform advocacy work and growing up with undocumented and later deported parents. Please welcome Ms. Guerrero at 7:00 p.m. in DeBartolo 102 on September 26. As part of our Diversity in the Arts initiative, MSPS is sponsoring a dinner and theater trip on November 11 to see Hamilton in Chicago. Students will be eligible to enter the lottery to purchase tickets by attending designated events. Ms. Guerrero’ lecture is the first opportunity, the second will be October 10 at the lecture featuring Dr. Terrell Strayhorn, professor and director of the Center for Higher Education Enterprise at the Ohio State University.  Other opportunities will be noted in the MSPS newsletter. Tickets will only be sold via the lottery process.   If you have any questions, please feel to contact the office by emailing: msps@nd.edu or calling 574-631-6841.

We look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events.

Peace,

Iris Outlaw ` 90 MSA

Director

Work to be Done

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Fall 2015 was exciting and exhausting. The MLK Study of Race Series featuring John Quiñones, Sacramento Knoxx and Marcus Winchester challenged the community to become active bystanders and not be afraid of letting our voice be heard. Those in attendance felt the presenters were inspiring, knowledgeable and motivating for everyone to participate in the difficult dialogues on social justice and racial issues.  It was a reminder that not only charity; but effective change begins at home.

As the Spring 2016 semester begins and winter truly arrives, there are a plethora of opportunities to converse with your peers, faculty and staff. The celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. commenced with the Interrace Forum, where comparisons of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s and 2015 Black Lives Matter Movement.  Professor Richard Pierce provided insight and commentary during the discussion.

OSA Professional Development with Art Force 5Art Force 5 - SDN Community Project

Students and Student Affairs staff creating mosaic tiles for the MLK Community Project – January 14, 2015

MSPS hosted Art Force 5, Alfred University’s Drawn to Diversity team, as they worked with the Notre Dame community to create a social justice art piece. Student Affairs administrators, staff and students contributed to the mosaic mural at McKenna Hall, North and South Dining Halls and LaFortune student Center.  Look for the finished piece, which will be on the first floor of LaFortune. On Friday, January 15 Art Force 5 will conduct a workshop in the Notre Dame Room on Art and Social Justice.

The President’s Office is sponsoring a variety of events during their Walk the Walk Week. The first event will be a midnight candlelight vigil beginning at the Hesburgh Library on Sunday, January 18 (12:00 a.m.).  A community lunch will be held at the Joyce Center (ticketed) with acknowledgements also occurring in North and South Dining Halls for students, faculty and staff. Make sure to have your ID cards. Monday evening will conclude with MSPS MLK Study of Race Series Lecture, Black Lives Matter: The Hashtag behind the New Civil Rights Movement in Debartolo 101 at 7:00 p.m.

The month will conclude with the MSPS Unity Games from January 24 – 30, 2016.  MSPS will collaborate with other Student Affairs departments to sponsor team competitions throughout the week. Prizes will be awarded to the winning teams at the end of the week.  If you are interested in participating register at https://theunitygames.squarespace.com/registration/.

February is Black History Month. MSPS and student clubs are planning several events that will highlight the African Diaspora. It will begin on Thursday, February 4 with Dr. Shannen Dee Williams, History Professor from the University of Tennessee. Watch for advertisement on the remaining activities.

Peace,

Iris L. Outlaw

Iris Outlaw `90 MSA

Director

 

For Americans Fighting to Reclaim Their Culture, Thanksgiving Means More Than Food – Diverse Issues in Higher Education

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November 25, 2014 | Category: American Indian Issues,News,Views | :

by Colleen Fitzgerald

Every fourth Thursday in November, Americans find time for family, sharing food, traditions and language. Stories of that iconic first Thanksgiving evoke images of Pilgrims and Indians, but as is so often the case with history and popular culture, some details are missing. Two of the biggest ― those Indians were the Wampanoag, and within two centuries, their language ceased to be spoken.

Today, the Wampanoag and other Native American tribes give thanks for those who fight to bring their languages home again.

Food is not the only thing humans crave. Losing your language creates a hunger for that piece to make you whole again. This hunger is seen in so many U.S. indigenous communities. It is a hunger to reconnect with heritage, to regenerate culture and traditions, and to revitalize heritage languages.

Language is a powerful badge of identity. The Wampanoag know this. The restoration of their language, powered by Jessie Little Doe Baird and the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, includes summer language camps where children experience their tribal language ‘set within a cultural context,’ for example, learning how to plant, harvest and cook traditional foods. These foods, plants and animals are familiar to those of us who are not Native Americans. Words like squash, persimmon, hickory, chipmunk, skunk andpossum made their way into English in a route that originated in different Algonquian languages, writes linguist Ives Goddard.

Native American languages have more to them than words borrowed into English. Whether the language is Norwegian or Navajo, fluent speakers weave words into tapestries that express the full range of human experience, explain the natural world and its phenomena, and preserve memories across the generations. When a language ceases to be spoken, it means that intergenerational transmission of language, culture and memories gets interrupted.

In the centuries following European contact in North America, there was a series of destructive interruptions of Native American families. Particularly tragic were Indian boarding schools, which removed children from their families and sent them to schools off the reservation. Forbidden from speaking their Native languages, even amongst themselves, many Native students vowed that they would never teach it to their children. Physical and other punishments for violating school edicts linked trauma to Native American language use for generations of young indigenous children.

UNESCO classifies a language as safe when it is ‘spoken by all generations; (and) intergenerational transmission is uninterrupted.’ Boarding schools disrupted the acquisition of Native languages in the home. Decade after decade, intergenerational transmission declined, catastrophic to Native American languages.

A reversal of fortune, however, has come for these language communities. Like the Wampanoag, tribes are reclaiming their languages.  Like the Lakota, tribes are recreating environments for their youngest citizens, language nests, to transmit language to their children. Like the Chickasaw, tribes are using an intensive method of language teaching one-on-one, pairing an elder with a younger adult to create an apprenticeship of tribal language learning.

Another language hero, Daryl Baldwin, is a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. There were no fluent speakers when Daryl set out to learn his language. Among his grandfather’s belongings there was a word list of Miami words. Words led to more, learning linguistics (and a master’s degree) to learn his language, partnering with linguist David Costa to draw from documents in archives and knowledge of related language.

Now, once again, the Miami language is spoken, revitalizing traditions, culture and language. And Daryl helps those from other tribes who rely on archival documents to restore their languages and to wake them up from their hibernation, bringing language home.

Dinner blessings this Thursday will be said in many Native languages — fragile, but still surviving. Native American communities across this country will say chokma’shki, mvto, wado ― giving thanks for their languages, and for those tribal language champions who work to satiate that hunger.

There is a hunger for language. Reconnecting with tribal languages nourishes the soul.

Dr. Colleen Fitzgerald is a professor of linguistics and director of the Native American Languages Lab at The University of Texas at Arlington. She may be contacted at cmfitz@uta.edu.