Kiara Tantaquidgeon

“I was talking to a lot of people and every time me being Native American would come up, I was just realizing how uneducated the community was as a whole, especially at a school that’s literally named Quinnipiac.”

Toyloy Brown III

A lot of people doubt if Kiara is Native American until they hear her last name: Tantaquidgeon. “They are generally surprised until they hear my last name because that’s kind of hard to deny,” Kiara said. Kiara Tantaquidgeon is a member of the Mohegan tribe. She grew up in a town over from the Native American reservation in Uncasville, Connecticut, with her mom and two sisters and as the only person in the household with Native American roots from her father’s side. Kiara spent a significant part of her childhood around her Mohegan great-grandparents at the reservation. They helped make sure she stayed connected to her Native American heritage early. “It was the perfect situation,” Kiara said. “I got to live with my mom and my sisters and we always had a roof over our head. And then I got to live this almost other life with my great-grandparents and learning about who I am. And now being able to merge the two experiences and make them who I am today.” At Quinnipiac, Kiara is a health studies major with a minor in global public health and an independent minor in Indigenous cultures and diversity studies. She wants to one day have a career in public health policy, especially when it pertains to Indigenous populations. “Growing up in a tribal community and meeting other Indigenous people, I have been exposed to health inequity in these communities and want to give back and one day make a positive impact.” In the meantime, the biggest thing Kiara has done so far in making an impact at Quinnipiac is by creating the Indigenous Student Union (ISU) in September of last year. The organization is a big reason why she is still a student here. For starters, Kiara did not plan on staying at Quinnipiac past her first year. Instead of going to a different school, she decided to stay near her home. “I had a lot of family stuff at the time, and I wanted to stay close to home,” Kiara said. “And of course, consequently, the only school I applied to in Connecticut ended up being Quinnipiac.” While she was set on leaving Quinnipiac after her freshman year to go to a school with a bigger Indigenous community, she realized how much QU was lacking in its Native American presence. One example of the ignorance she had experienced are times when she’s asked what percentage she is Native American? “(Sometimes) when you tell someone you’re Native American it’s either like ‘well, how much, what percent?,’ which we don’t do. We don’t do blood quantum (anymore),” Kiara said. “So I don’t know, and I’m not going to tell you because it’s not important. If it’s not important to my tribe, it’s not important to you. I’m who I am and it doesn’t matter what percentage.” Kiara said this is a lack of education on colonization, when tribes were forced to reproduce with white men and women in an effort to assimilate. This is something she is very connected to as someone with a light complexion that allows her to be as she described as “white-passing.” “I was talking to a lot of people and every time me being Native American would come up, I was just realizing how uneducated the community was as a whole, especially surprisingly being at a school that’s literally named Quinnipiac,” Kiara said. The school’s namesake is the Quinnipiac people, Native Americans that originally encompassed the land university is on. The fact that this was not recognized openly in her first year discouraged her. “If I stay here and I try and make this organization or I try and talk about my heritage and who I am, why are they going to care about me when they don’t even care about the people whose land they’re on,” Kiara said. This concern was worrying, but she was motivated by something bigger than herself and knew these problematic ideas do not evaporate overnight. “I knew that I didn’t want to just transfer and leave Quinnipiac without making some sort of change because I thought about my family members,” Kiara said. “If they end up coming here, we need something. There needs to be something here. I can’t leave it like this, it just doesn’t feel right.” When it finally came to creating the organization, it wasn’t easy. “The whole process itself was quite painful” and “discouraging” initially,” Kiara said. “They all told me ‘you know this is going to take years to implement. Having an organization is this, this, and this’ and I was like ‘OK. But let’s think about the fact that we need this because y’all walking around with a native name and on native land and this doesn’t look good for you guys.’” Kiara ended up having to independently write about seven different constitutions for the ISU. Eventually, faculty like Sean Duffy and Christina Dickerson supported her efforts in forming the ISU, along with student leaders of other multicultural organizations. “So as hard as it was at first, ... it is definitely worth it now to see how much support we’ve gotten,” Kiara said. “And to finally start the conversations about Quinnipiac, in terms of inclusion and in terms of educating about the Quinnipiac people. And bringing light to what life is like as an Indigenous student.” Kiara wants the ISU to not only advocate and uplift Native Amerians but also other Indigenous and diverse groups. “I don’t do this just for the Native American students,” Kiara said. “I do this for the kind of advocacy of the inclusion and acceptance of diversity and celebration of diversity at Quinnipiac in general,” Kiara said Kiara, again, is deeply motivated by something bigger than herself. “I’m a firm believer in all of the strength I have is from the people who came before me and I do everything I do today with their strength and so that I have strength to give future generations,” Kiara said. “That’s something that we’re taught a lot in my community … And that’s kind of how I lead every day.”