Native American panelists speak about fractured identity, hope for future

Members of the St. Louis area Native American community gathered at the Center for Spirituality and Sustainability to discuss the mistreatment of Indigenous people by the United States and relationship building between these two groups, both in the past and present.

During their introductions, the panelists provided background on themselves and the Native American peoples as a whole. Saundi Kloeckener, a panelist and Cherokee and Ojibwe descendant, described her place of residence not as St. Louis, but as Cahokia.

“I live in the old trading town, and when I say that, I mean Cahokia, and I don’t mean right there at that avenue and at that museum, I mean the region,” Kloeckener said. “They didn’t have state lines, there was no Illinois, there was no Missouri, there was no Iowa. This was a Mecca of trading.”

Galen Gritts, another panelist and enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, reflected on insensitive remarks and stereotypes he has encountered throughout his life. Gritts said he has heard everything from, ‘We should have killed you all when we had the chance,’ to ‘You’re still here? I didn’t think there were any of you left.’

Gritts said people tend to forget that Native Americans are not solely a people of the past.

“There are more ideas about who we are than there are Native Americans,” Gritts said. “We’re not frozen in time in John Wayne movies.”

Tina Sparks, a Diné and Hopi descendant, spoke about some of the present effects of the discrimination Native Americans faced, as well as how they tried to avoid such discrimination.

“Sadly, I think that there is some kind of legitimizing that happens when you find the documentation for what you already feel on the inside and what you already know on the inside,” Sparks said. “Because of all the splintering that happened during colonization, it has caused a lot of skepticism … Part of the fallout for that is that a lot of mixedblood people have a hard time finding their way home if their paperwork was destroyed.”

Sparks also gave examples of some of this fallout, including her own ancestors’ experiences in the New Mexico area.

“[My ancestors’] paperwork was stored in church basements,” Sparks said. “A lot of times, those buildings caught fire and there is no paper trail, and so you can go to some census bureaus, but a lot of times people were lying about who they were, if they could pass for Mexican or Spanish, to avoid the discrimination against indigeneity. It’s very challenging when you don’t have a road to go home.”

Kloeckener said Native Americans, though not a monolithic group, have had to deal with a fractured identity because of colonization and discrimination.

“One of the highest prices that we’ve all paid as Indigenous people is the fracture to our identity,” Kloeckener said. “When you look at it through that lens, that encompasses every aspect of colonization that they encountered, whether it was displacements from our lands, which displaced us from our food, which displaced us from our absolute knowing of who we are, because each tribe did not just live on the land, they lived with the land.”

Sparks also works as a therapist and said she incorporates some Indigenous ideas into her practice.

“I think the more that a therapist knows themselves, the more they have to offer to their clients,” Sparks said. “Everybody has intuition, and our society cul- tivates it out of us from the time we’re little kids.”

Sparks said she emphasizes intuition in her patients, as well as for herself.

“Intuition is active and natural. The more we tell them, ‘There’s nothing there,’ we dismiss what they know, and we teach them not to trust what they know,” Sparks said. “So they start to shut it down, because they can’t rely on it … and then we grow up and we don’t know how to trust ourselves, so we wind up relying on education, doctors, priests, religious leaders [and] political leaders for them to tell us what’s real and right.”

Sparks said regaining that intuition can be a very lengthy process because of some of the current structures in place in the psychological field.

“We have to retrain ourselves to trust that we have knowing inside that’s valid and valuable, and that it is there for us, not against us, and while mental illness is real, there are times when the Western medical model pathologizes that natural knowing,” Sparks said.

Sparks said children are often considered sacred in Native American traditions due to their intuition and connections with the spirit world.

“We believe we come from the spirit world, and we’re born into this world and live, and then we go back to the spirit world,” Sparks said. “So when we’re born into this world, we’re still very much intact and connected to all the elements of that [spirit] world. So kids, we believe, are sacred, they’re still sacred because they’re still very much connected to all the threads of the spirit world.”

Mary Weber, a student in contemporary Native American studies class at SIUE, attended the panel with hopes of hearing the points of view textbooks cannot offer.

“I’m looking forward to a personal perspective, not a perceived one — what’s actually happening for them,” Weber said.

Weber, whose minor is in anthropology, said she took the class in part because Indigenous history is often glossed over in standard history classes.

“It really touches on the contentious history that I think was pushed under the rug for a really long time,” Weber said. “Our focus is on our own issues.” For more information on events at the Center for Spirituality and Sustainability, visit its website online.

Study Abroad brings immersive, world-spanning educational experiences

EMILY STERZINGER editor-in-chief

Study abroad programs at SIUE allow students to further their learning by taking various kinds of trips around the world.

Ryan Donald, SIUE’s study abroad specialist in the Office of International Affairs, said there are two main types of study abroad programs. There are faculty-led programs and programs run through partners of the university.

“The ones that most of our students use are what will be referred to as either ‘travel study’ or ‘faculty-led programs,’” Donald said. “That’s where a faculty member here at SIUE, or a couple of faculty members are putting together a program, usually taught within their discipline, and those range anywhere from eight days to a full month.”

The other type of program is run through partners of the university. They can run up to a semester long, and sometimes occur in the summer.

“Students are able to go to over 300 locations around the world where they can take a whole range of courses, internships, field research, all sorts of unique things like that,” Donald said.

Keena Johnson, a junior business administration major from Peoria, Illinois, has been in the second kind of program, spending four months in Granada, a small city in southern Spain. She said her choice of taking this trip was influenced by her minor in Spanish.

“The whole reason why I wanted to come [to Spain] was to become closer to fluency because I knew there’s only a certain amount I can learn from Spanish classes in the United States,” Johnson said. “My ulti- mate goal for coming here was to learn the language and to be as close to fluency as I possibly could be.”

John Pendergast, a professor in the English department, has teamed up with Johanna Schmitz, a professor in the theater department, to create a program that will allow students to visit England and learn more about William Shakespeare.

“[Schmitz] is currently living in London, so she’s doing research at the Rose Theatre which is a Renaissance theater just across the street from the Globe Theatre,” Pendergast said. “It is a complicated process, especially finding good housing for students, but she’s very good at it, so she’s handling that side.”

The trip will be roughly four weeks, from June 17 to July 15.

“Students will probably take six credit hours. We’re going to be offering an [Interdisciplinary Studies] course, a theater course and an upper-division open topic English course. But I want to stress this, it doesn’t have to be English majors,” Pendergast said.

The trip will include tours of the tower of London, the British Library, the British Museum and Westminster Abbey. Alongside this, students will attend several show- ings of

Shakespeare’s plays, including at the Globe Theatre, and visit Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace.

Johnson said that if a student is considering studying abroad, they should definitely do it. She faced difficulties in planning, but recommended it despite that.

“It’s only been a little bit that I’ve been here, and I feel like it’s completely worth it. I feel like SIUE doesn’t emphasize the power of study abroad, and I feel like it’s not really given enough credit,” Johnson said.

NEXT alestlelive.com

Cougar Controversies

EMILY STERZINGER Editor-in-Chief

GABRIEL BRADY Managing Editor

Do you like the deer on campus?

76%

BRUCE DARNELL Sports Editor

24% yes! no!

Questions go up at 10 a.m. every Monday on Twitter: @TheAlestle

NICOLE BOYD

Online/Opinion Editor

KIRSTEN O’LOUGHLIN Graphics Manager

ELIZABETH DONALD

JANA HAMADE

AUDREY O’RENIC

Sometimes our teachers seem like those boring people you have to listen to for a couple of hours a week, but they do not just teach us; they do research and projects on the side that students don’t often recognize.

HAVE A COMMENT?

Let us know! opinion@alestlelive.com

Campus Box 1167 Edwardsville, IL. 62026-1167

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR POLICY:

The editors, staff and publishers of The Alestle believe in the free exchange of ideas, concerns and opinions and will publish as many letters as possible. Letters may be submitted at The Alestle office: Morris University Center, Room 0311 e-mail: opinion@alestlelive.com

All hard copy letters should be typed and double-spaced. Letters should be no longer than 500 words. Include phone number, signature, class rank and major.

We reserve the right to edit letter for grammar and content. Care will be taken to ensure that the letter’s message is not lost or altered.

Letters to the editor will not be printed anonymously except under extreme circumstances. We reserve the right to reject letters.

Professors spend hours teaching different courses all week while making time to grade our work, answer our emails and set hours to help us if we are having trouble with anything. They do all this while maintaining personal lives and completing other job requirements.

Many professors spend almost a decade getting a degree in whatever field they want to teach. They spend so many years learn- ing all that they can, just to give us their knowledge.

Other professors may also spend years working industry jobs in various fields.

Theresa Pauli, who now teaches in the Mass Communications department, worked in the St. Louis television industry for 30 years. She covered many events, including the Ferguson protests in 2014. Now she works as a broadcast engineer helping manage equipment and teaching students. She also uses her connections in the industry to help students find jobs after graduation.

Besides teaching, many professors are required to do research. They spend time developing studies and writing scholarly papers or books in order to receive tenure. They put hours of work into these projects while continuing all of their other work.

Some professors take different routes. Candace Hall, who is an Assistant Professor of the School of Education, Health and Human Behavior, recently produced an award-winning documentary. Instead of going along with what is considered normal in academia, she used video production to talk about what she wanted to in a more accessible way.

Lots of professors also spend their time giving students real-world experiences. Across the different departments, professors will spend their time planning trips for their students to get more hands-on learning. These programs range from learning about the criminal justice system in Ireland and Northern Ireland to surgical missions to Ghana or Honduras.

Our professors do all this work while maintaining their personal lives. Many teachers have families that they need to take care of or other jobs to which they dedicate their time.

So, the next time you are cursing your teacher for assigning you an essay or you start falling asleep in their class, remember they are not just the people you are forced to listen to every week. They have spent so much of their lives learning what they are teaching you right now and they have dedicated their lives to teaching it.