Haskell Indian Nations University KU Engineering Partner to Develop ‘Center for Justice’

Haskell Indian Nations University, KU Engineering Partner to Develop ‘Center for Justice’ on Haskell Campus

by Joel Mathis

Officials at Haskell Indian Nations University are partnering with KU engineering students to develop a justice center on the Haskell campus.

The Hiawatha Center for Justice is the brainchild of Dan Wildcat, a longtime Haskell professor. The project is to redevelop historic Hiawatha Hall—an 1898 stone building on the campus that has fallen into disuse and disrepair after being shuttered in 2005—into an interdisciplinary center for work on systemic justice issues.

Members of IHAWKe (which stands for Indigenous, Hispanic, African-American KU engineers)—KU’s association of underrepresented and women engineers—held an “IHAWKe-athon” in October 2020 to generate ideas on how to rehabilitate the building and best use it for its new mission.

Wildcat first came up with the idea for the center in the summer of 2020, as the nation was convulsed by Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“As people took to the streets and watching the demonstrations and everything, I was really moved and I kept thinking—there’s got to be some way that our school as an institution of higher education—and really the de facto national tribal college—could play a role in education and helping to heal some of the wounds we have in this society,” he said.

At the same time, Wildcat had been a champion to find a new use for Hiawatha Hall on Haskell’s campus

The 123-year-old Hiawatha Hall, center, on the campus of Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, will be the home of the new Haskell Center for Justice. KU Engineering students are assisting in reimagining the possibilities for the space.

in Lawrence. “It’s just been in horrible, horrible condition,” he said.

“It is clear the time has come for Hiawatha Hall to undergo a major physical renovation and a spiritual rejuvenation befitting its namesake,” Wildcat wrote in an article for Media Voices Quarterly.

He contacted Andrew Williams, who at the time served as as Engineering Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, to discuss the concept. “Andrew just immediately seized on the idea,” Wildcat said. Williams—who has since become Dean of Engineering at The Citadel—proposed having IHAWKe students take a look at the matter.

“I decided that the theme of our hackathon in 2020 would be hacking for justice and equity,” said Williams in early 2021. “We have every year, at least once a year, and they’re focused on helping our students see how they can use engineering to change the world.”

The October 2020 IHAWKe-a-thon was held virtually, due to the pandemic. Engineering students worked with Wildcat, as well as other faculty and students at Haskell, as they developed their proposals—competing for scholarship prizes made possible with donations from Black & Veatch and HNTB.

“We can all really benefit from learning from each other and learning from different backgrounds, because we all come from a different community,” said Samuel Riding In, a student in the American Indian Studies department at Haskell who served as a consultant on the project. “I really benefited from being a participant because it let me speak more on these small, minute details of my own identity that I haven’t really explored in that way.”

“This (collaboration with Haskell) shows students that want to further themselves in STEM can build a group of people they can count on once they come to KU to further themselves,” added Bahozhoni White, a 2021 graduate in electrical engineering from KU.

The students faced several questions as they worked on the project.

“(Hiawatha Hall) was built for a different purpose, so how could it be restructured or rebuilt so that it can facilitate collaboration for racial equity forums, interaction through virtual and augmented reality, and other educational displays?” Williams said.

Wildcat said he was impressed by the students’ proposals to renovate the hall, as well as ideas to use virtual reality elements to bring Haskell’s history—and that of the Indigenous Peoples it serves—alive.

“I was really amazed at the ideas they had. They had ideas I had not thought about,” he said. “They had some great ideas about some interactive virtual kiosks where people who came in the front could get information and really get engaged and knowledgeable about the history of the First Peoples of this land. I thought that was really a wonderful idea.”

Implementing the proposals will take money—Wildcat estimated Haskell will need to raise up to $20 million to make the project happen. In the meantime, he plans to get the Center for Justice up and running with virtual conferences and online programming.

The partnership with IHAWKe students is a good fit with the new center’s ideals, he said.

“I think engineering, architecture and design are critical. Too many people tend to think about justice only in terms of a set of values or virtues or laws and policies,” Wildcat said. “But justice also has to do very much with how we live, where we live. And I cannot think of any better area than architecture, design and engineering to literally build a real improvement in justice in our society.”

Haskell Indian Nations University is a federally funded tribal university located in Lawrence for members of federally recognized Indigenous tribes and incorporated Alaska Native villages in the United States. Hiawatha Hall is named for the Onondaga man who sought out the Peacemaker (Mohawk) to help co-found the Iroquois Confederacy.

The KU Engineering Diversity & Women’s Program was founded to address the needs of historically underrepresented students. IHAWKe is an academic support program that seeks to recruit, retain and graduate innovative, team-oriented engineers who change the world, connect with others and conquer their classes. This is done through advising, peer mentoring, tutoring and various engaging engineering activities for students.