SHARE is available to all members of the Yale community who are dealing with sexual misconduct of any kind, including sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking, intimate partner violence and more. Counselors are available any time, day or night, at the 24/7 hotline: (203) 432-2000. 

Student leaders from Native and Indigenous Student Association at Yale hosted a vigil on Feb. 14, in remembrance of the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women and relatives and to increase visibility of the historical and contemporary injustices Indigenous communities endure. Native and Indigenous students, faculty and other community members gathered at the Women’s Table on Cross Campus for the vigil, which featured speakers and a community dinner later hosted by the Native American Cultural Center. 

Every year, NISAY organizes a vigil on Valentine’s Day to honor the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women and raise awareness of the MMIW movement in the greater University community. According to current NISAY President Avery Maples ’26 (Eastern Band Cherokee), Feb. 14 is the designated National Day of Action and Awareness for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, or MMIW, movement. 

Since the first Valentine’s Day vigil was hosted in 2020 by the organization — formerly named  Association of Native Americans at Yale — the date has been resonant to “uphold promises towards Indian Country and the crisis of MMIW [so that] relatives will not go unheard or without redress,” Maples wrote to the News. 

Although a longstanding historical crisis, the MMIW movement first gained political momentum in Canada in 2016, when the Canadian government commissioned an inquiry into its national missing and murdered Indigenous women, naming the violence an “epidemic.” Three years later, former U.S. President Donald Trump established the Presidential Task Force on Missing and Murdered American Indians and Alaskan Natives to pursue unresolved MMIW cases in the United States.

“Indigenous women are vulnerable within these communities due to the lack of accountability towards men and outside communities,” Mara Gutierrez ’25 (Diné/Navajo Nation), former co-president of NISAY, told the News, naming settler colonial ideologies, environmental exploitation, a lack of resources for law enforcement and a lack of tribal jurisdiction as several of the forces that perpetuate the MMIW crisis. 

According to a study conducted in 2016 by the National Institute of Justice, more than four in five American Indian and Alaskan Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime. As of that year, at least 5,712 American Indian and Alaskan Native women and girls had been declared missing. The same year, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that the murder rate for Native women living on reservations was ten times greater than the national average — yet even this report falls short in collecting national data on American Indian and Alaskan Native women in urban areas. In an attempt to fill this research gap, the Urban Indian Health Institute identified 506 unique cases of missing and murdered American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls across 71 cities in a 2018 study.

The crisis of MMIW is not limited to the contiguous United States: according to Joshua Ching ’26 (Kanaka Maoli), executive director of the Indigenous Peoples of Oceania student group, the crisis is “especially salient for Pasifika communities” because of the imperial legacies in Hawai‘i and the greater Pacific region. 

Indeed, a “Missing & Murdered Native Hawaiian Women and Girls” report released in 2022 highlighted that more than a quarter of missing girls in Hawai‘i are Native Hawaiian. The same report states that in 2021, the Missing Child Center Hawai‘i assisted law enforcement with 376 recoveries of missing children, which are only 19% of the estimated 2,000 cases of missing children in Hawai‘i annually. 

In 2021, following the appointment of Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland—the first Native American to serve in a presidential cabinet—the Bureau of Indian Affairs formed a new “Missing & Murdered” unit under Haaland’s leadership. The unit leverages federal resources and aims to liaison tribal police, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and FBI investigators on active missing and murdered cases. It has not reported any progress. 

Students, faculty and community members gathered on Wednesday afternoon at the Women’s Table on Cross Campus to honor these women. Organizers spoke on the history of the MMIW crisis and offered Native and Indigenous students the chance to speak on their lived experiences with the crisis. 

According to Jairus Rhoades ’26 (Samoan), current co-president of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, attending the vigil was a “visceral” and “intimate” experience that “reminded him of the missions of the [Native American Cultural Center] and the responsibilities of stewardship as an Indigenous person.”

Following the vigil speeches and testimonies, NISAY student organizers read the names of current missing and murdered Indigenous Peoples, including women, children and entire families. The vigil ended with a period of silence in remembrance of the lives claimed to the MMIW crisis and an Indigenous travel song, performed by Angie Makomenaw, community wellness specialist at Yale College Community Care and wife of NACC Dean Matthew Makomenaw. 

“It was especially powerful to hear [Makomenaw] sing because song and performance crosses Indigenous cultures,” Helen Shanefield ’26, a member of both IPO and NISAY, told the News. “The song universally felt emotional, without having to understand the words—it was clearly personal and intimate.” 

As an act of visibility and protest for MMIW, some students painted a red handprint on their face and tied red ribbons around trees near Cross Campus. In light of faculty and administrative backlash to red handprints left on the stone walls surrounding tables in 2022, forms of protests on Wednesday focused on the presence of people, rather than University property. Madeline Gupta ’25 (Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians), who imprinted a red handprint on her face, wrote to the News that she had been “excited about this as a means of body sovereignty.”

“If we cannot exist on stolen land peacefully, then let us show ownership of our bodies in this space,” Gupta wrote in a statement to the News. 

Beyond the vigil’s day of remembrance, Maples wrote to the News that on Mar. 6, NISAY will be hosting a panel with the Yale Undergraduate Legal Aid Association on Native and Indigenous domestic and sexual violence prevention and advocacy. 

Furthermore, according to Ching, the three Native American Cultural Center affiliate organizations — NISAY, IPO and American Indian Science and Engineering Society, or AISES — will additionally be planning collaborative events in the spring semester that can be educative of issues that deeply impact Indigenous communities.

“The larger push of what the Native community and affiliate organizations are trying to do is ingrain within the student body and administration that these issues are not just insular to Indigenous communities or tribal nations or Hawai‘i,” said Ching. “Instead, they’re entangled in places like Yale, where there’s so much political and economic capital to influence change.”

The National Day of Action and Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women is Feb.14, during which the largest MMIW march takes place annually in Vancouver.

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Following the models of the current four cultural houses — the Afro-American Cultural Center, the Asian American Cultural Center, the Native American Cultural Center and La Casa Cultural — MENA students will have its own dedicated space, peer liaisons and an assistant director, per Senior Associate Dean of Strategic Initiatives and Communications Paul McKinley. 

Salovey’s public commitment to establish a MENA space is the culmination of Yale College Council lobbying and student group organizing, dating back to at least 2018. In the spring of 2022, the AACC dedicated a room on its third floor to MENA students, which since has hosted affiliated student organizations, such as the MENA Students Association, Arab Students Association, Persian Students at Yale and Yale Armenian Network.

In September, the inaugural AACC-MENA peer liaisons spoke with the News about the difficulty of keeping track of the racial demographics and identifying their PLees. McKinley wrote that the new space will have its own peer liaisons, independent of the AACC.

Following Salovey’s announcement, AACC Dean Joliana Yee was put in charge of a search this month for the MENA Assistant Director in preparation for hiring someone in time for the upcoming fall semester, according to a written statement by McKinley. Furthermore, McKinley told the News that Yee has already reached out to the current AACC-MENA peer liaisons for input on qualities for the candidate. 

“Since starting my tenure at Yale in 2018, the AACC and the other cultural centers have always been supportive of MENA-identified students in their efforts to have increased programming and resources to celebrate their distinct cultures and histories,” Yee wrote to the News.

Zahra Yarali ’24, co-head AACC Peer Liaison and the first MENA-identifying PL at the AACC, also expressed appreciation for Yee’s efforts to incorporate students’ opinions in the process.

Yarali wrote that Yee asked for her general input when drafting the job description.

“That’s one way I appreciated how intentional she’s being about including students throughout the hiring process,” Yarali said.

Although unable to provide any prospective addresses of a potential MENA cultural space, McKinley, wrote to the News that they “expect to have a suite of rooms for the MENA space not far from the AACC,” which will “replace the existing space in the AACC and provide additional functions such as a kitchen.”

In order to fund this space, McKinley added that a current priority is determining the size of Yale College’s MENA community. However, because of the limitations of the United States Census — which only has options for  “white,” “Black,” “American Indian or Alaska Native,” “Asian” and “Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander” — students have not had any opportunity to identify as MENA formally in the University’s system, and the admissions office and Student Information Services do not recognize MENA status. As a result, McKinley wrote to the News that the YCDO will be working with student groups to help identify students across the broad range of countries and cultural and socio-religious identities that the MENA label includes.

This problem of not being able to formally track MENA students has proven difficult for the AACC-MENA peer liaisons, who did not have an official way of identifying their potential PLees at the beginning of the year, unlike other cultural centers, who receive lists of their potential students.

Similar to the AACC, the Af-Am House has also affiliated with and provided support for various MENA student organizations, such as the Arab Student Association and Yale Muslim Students Association. In response to Salovey’s announcement of the MENA space, Af-Am House Dean Timeica Bethel told the News that she imagines that The Af-Am House’s involvement with MENA communities will continue. 

“I envision the House collaborating on programming and events with the MENA cultural house, just as we do with the other cultural centers and affinity spaces on campus,” Bethel wrote to the News.

Salovey’s announcement creating the new MENA space came amid student concerns about safety amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and the resulting campus tensions.

Palestinian and Muslim students expressed safety concerns following the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont. Concerns also grew in October when messages declaring “Death to Palestine” were written on a Grace Hopper College whiteboard, and in November when at least 15 students had their personal information displayed on “doxxing trucks” that drove through New Haven. 

On Oct. 7, Hamas launched a surprise attack against Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry. Israel then launched a full military offensive in Gaza, and as of Jan. 26, has killed at least 26,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Gazan Health Ministry.

Also in Salovey’s December announcement, titled “Against Hatred,” were steps to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia on Yale’s campus, including two standing committees on Jewish life and MENA and Muslim life. Salovey further promised permanent security at the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life and noted one incident of physical confrontation on campus against a student wearing a keffiyeh. 

In addition to the MENA space, the announcement pledged to hire a second Muslim chaplain, although none has yet been hired. In December, Yale’s chapter of the Muslim Students Association called on the University to hire additional staff to support Muslim life at Yale, such as a female assistant Muslim chaplain and more Muslim mental health counselors.

Yale’s first cultural center, the Afro-American Cultural Center, was established in 1969.

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This special issue is a labor of love stewarded from and to the Native and Indigenous student community. Thank you to our guest contributors from within our community who have poured their time and effort into creating content for this issue. Thank you to the members of the News — including reporters, desk editors, copy editors, the production and design editors, the DEI committee, audience editors, photographers, illustrators, and Management — whose work ensured that this issue came into fruition and provided this community a platform to share our ways of knowing, our issues and our sovereign lives as members of the University. 

The News is the nation’s oldest college daily — an epithet which reflects the News’ history of reporting and the power  of our stories . Yet, it was 142 years after the publication’s founding and 110 years after the graduation of Yale’s first Native undergraduate, Henry Roe Cloud (Winnebago), that the News finally in 2020 created a special issue for the Native and Indigenous communities of the University.

As reverberated by three recent introductory letters in Yale Daily News special issues celebrating Latinx History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander History Month and Black History Month, the News has fallen incredibly short in substantively and accurately representing people of color — it goes without saying that this is a shared experience of the University’s Native and Indigenous community. The most recent Yale Daily News demographics report, from spring 2023, reflected zero staff members who identified as either Native or Indigenous last semester. While there have been some Native and Indigenous guest contributors in the past, there has historically been no stronghold of representation within the News’ staff. 

This issue is a testament to the small yet powerful genealogy of the University’s Native and Indigenous community. In this issue, readers will find that this past month has been one of prolific contributions from our community — across students, faculty and alumni — who are beacons of inspiration and standard bearers for our generation of Native and Indigenous students. At the beginning of November, Jairus Rhoades ’26 (American Samoan), among other members of the Indigenous Peoples of Oceania, hosted a benefit concert to support relief efforts for the wildfires that devastated Maui in the summer — the deadliest wildfires in modern United States history. The next weekend, the Native American Cultural Center both celebrated its decennial anniversary and hosted the sixth annual Henry Roe Cloud conference. On Nov. 15, American Studies and history professor Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) won the nonfiction National Book Award for his book, “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples And The Unmaking of U.S. History.” November concluded with weeklong programming from the Indigenous Peoples of Oceania in honor of Lā Kūʻokoʻa, or Hawaiian Independence Day, on Nov. 28; that programming featured lei-making and panels with guests prominent in Hawaiʻi Sign Language, Native Hawaiian scholarship and political activism. 

Over the past month, I have bore witness to what is not only a community committed to unstitching history, but many generations committed to restitching history. Native and Indigenous authorship will continue to be a gateway to tell our history on our own terms, and this gateway will certainly not close with this special issue.  

On behalf of the News, I welcome any feedback. Please send any comments to editor@yaledailynews.com, or to my individual email address below. 

With gratitude and love to Yale’s Native and Indigenous community, 

Connor Arakaki ’26 (Kanaka Maoli)

University Reporter

The post Welcome to the Indigenous Heritage Month Special Issue! appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The national bestseller was shortlisted for the nonfiction National Book Award on Oct. 3 and since has been named a New Yorker Best Book of 2023, New York Times Notable Book of 2023 and Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction of 2023, along with winning the National Book Award’s nonfiction category. 

Other nonfiction finalists for the 2023 National Book Award include Cristina Rivera Garza’s “Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice,” Christina Sharpe’s “Ordinary Notes,” Raja Shehadeh’s “We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir” and John Valliant’s “Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World.”

At the award ceremony, Blackhawk began his finalist reading with the question in the introduction of “The Rediscovery of America”: “How can a nation founded on the homelands of dispossessed Indigenous peoples be the world’s most exemplary democracy?” In the reading, Blackhawk noted that he considers this to be the question that “haunts” America, and underscored later in his finalist reading that “it is time to reimagine U.S. history outside the tropes of discovery.” 

Several Yale faculty across Native and Indigenous studies told the News that they support Blackhawk’s self-described “reimagining” as a critical intervention in academic understandings of American history. lecturer Stephen Pevar — who currently teaches “Advanced Federal Indian Law: Contemporary Issues” at the Yale Law School  — told the News that “The Rediscovery of America” is an “enormous contribution” that “starts the discourse on not only what happened to American Indian tribes, but how these Indigenous peoples in turn influenced United States history.” 

Echoing Pevar, Tarren Andrews (Confederated Salish/Kootenai Tribes), an assistant professor of ethnicity, race and migration, said that “The Rediscovery of America” is a text that “changes minds in intellectual strongholds” and a necessary historical critique.

“If you want to have an American national canon, then by that logic, [the national canon] has to be built on the people who were telling stories here first,” Andrews said. 

According to the National Congress of American Indians’ 2019 “Becoming Visible” report, only one-third of 28 surveyed states allocated funding for Native American education curricula and less than half of surveyed states required Native American education to be taught in K-12 schools. 

Citing this report, Pevar told the News that Blackhawk’s latest project aims to fill a dearth in Native and Indigenous curricula in secondary and higher education. According to Pevar — who has taught federal Indian law for the past two decades at the University of Denver School of Law and the New York University Law School — there has been a growth in foundational federal Indian law courses across law schools in America. He noted, however, that fewer than 10 law schools have advanced federal Indian law courses such as those offered at Yale. 

“In the future, I hope law schools can first increase their offerings in federal Indian law, and second, recognize federal Indian law as a part of American law,” Pevar said.

Referencing Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natalie Diaz’s (Mojave) upcoming advanced creative writing seminar, “Breathing Poetry into the Archives,” taught in the spring semester, and the over-enrollment of her current fall semester courses “Critical Reading Methods in Indigenous Literature” and “Indigenous Thought and Anticolonial Thought,” Andrews believes that “The Rediscovery of America” supports what is also an Indigenous literary movement at the undergraduate level.

“Students who are interested in literature and storytelling more broadly, are showing every day that they’re really committed to learning about Indigenous stories,” Andrews said. 

Both Pevar and Andrews told the News that “The Rediscovery of America” not only increases student engagement with Native and Indigenous studies but also supports the Native and Indigenous student community, who see Blackhawk’s academic work as an inspiration for their own coursework. 

“Professor Blackhawk, more than anyone I’ve encountered here, is so committed to the student community and the faculty community. He’s so committed to Indigenous representation that more than anything it felt like a win for all of us,” said Andrews.

Blackhawk is also the author of “Violence Over The Land,” which won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award and the John C. Ewers Award, among other accolades. 

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The conservation project, slated to finish before the museum’s reopening in 2025, includes replacing the roof of the museum and its 224 skylights, according to Building and Preservation Manager Dana Greenidge. These skylights were a standout feature of the original architecture and were famously dubbed by building architect Louis I. Kahn as the “building’s fifth elevation.” 

Nonetheless, Greenidge wrote to the News that the current project is an opportunity to “take advantage of the many advances in technology since the 1970’s, including materials that are more durable and environmentally sustainable than their predecessors.”

In addition to these replacements, the museum will be transitioning its entire lighting system, which uses halogen lights, to LED lighting with financial support from the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative, or FCI. 

Founded by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in 2021, the FCI supports clean energy use for the visual arts.

“FCI was established by the Foundation in association with RMI and Environment & Culture Partners in 2021, and it is the largest private national grant-making program to address climate change action through cultural institutions,” the Foundation wrote in a statement to the News.

In 2022, the YCBA and the Yale University Art Gallery each received $100,000 grants from the FCI to undergo an LED lighting conversion project. 

To date, the FCI has garnered over $10 million in funding to support 175 energy efficiency and clean energy projects at 147 institutions across 34 states, according to spokesperson Shea Sherry of the initiative. According to Sherry, clean energy projects such as that of the YCBA speak to a “trend” of accountability for museums to have climate-friendly infrastructure — which not only includes the efforts of the FCI, but also an international Gallery Climate Coalition that aims to reduce the art sector’s carbon emissions by a minimum of 50 percent by 2030. 

To ensure that these new climate design choices preserve the aesthetics of the museum, the YCBA consulted with Yale-affiliated faculty and greater industry experts, such as School of Architecture Dean Deborah Berke. For Greenidge, the conservation project is an infrastructure upgrade that must be approached “holistically” because of the cultural and historical significance of the Louis I. Kahn building. 

Khan was a modernist architect known for designing massive, heavy buildings. The architecture of the YCBA is renowned for combining these characteristics with a simplistic interior that, during the daytime, is illuminated without artificial light. The building was the architect’s final project and was completed two years after his death in 1974.

“One of our priorities is to select high functioning materials and products while also preserving the essence of Kahn’s aesthetic vision for the building,” Greenidge wrote to the News. 

In light of the museum’s closure, the YCBA has introduced online and in-person events, off-site exhibitions and art loans to continue engagement with the Yale and Greater New Haven communities, and also to reach a broader international audience. 

Throughout closure, the YCBA continued its online Artists in Conversation series and has also offered in-person events in collaboration with other campus institutions. In September, the YCBA co-presented a concert with Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae, celebrating her fourth studio album “Black Rainbows.” In November, the museum held the annual Norma Lytton Lecture featuring former president and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Daniel Weiss Yale MPPM ’85. 

In addition, over 60 works from the YCBA’s collection have been moved to the YUAG as a part of a special exhibition titled “In A New Light: paintings from the Yale Center for British Art.” Since March, the exhibition, running until Dec. 3, has featured works by John Constable, Gwen John, Angelica Kauffman, George Stubbs and J. M. W. Turner. 

According to YCBA Deputy Director and Chief Curator Martina Droth, the museum’s education department coordinated weekly tours of the exhibition with YCBA docents and student guides, and after the exhibition’s conclusion, some paintings will remain on view at the Gallery into the new year. 

The YCBA has also loaned its works to national and international institutions in order to preserve audience engagement and reception of the museum’s collection. Over the summer, drawings and paintings by William Blake, John Linnell and Samuel Palmer were included in a solo exhibition at SITE Santa Fe. The museum has also lent works to the Baltimore Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Jewish Museum in New York. In addition, Sir Reynold’s painting, “Mrs. Abington as Miss Prue, in ‘Love for Love’ by William Congreve,” was spotlighted in an exhibition titled “Crown to Couture” at the Kensington Palace in London.

In preparation for the museum’s reopening in 2025, the YCBA is working on two special exhibitions that will accompany their collection reimagined by the conservation project’s renovations. The special exhibitions will celebrate the 250th anniversary of Romantic painter J. M. W. Turner’s birth and will present drawings and paintings by contemporary artist Tracey Emin. Citing the audience turnout of a symposium on J. M. W. Turner, hosted by the YCBA in September, the museum anticipates similar reception with their reopening exhibitions. 

“The phenomenal turnout is indicative of interest in and excitement about one of Britain’s most celebrated painters, who will be the subject of an exhibition at the YCBA in 2025,” YCBA Associate Director of Research Jemma Field wrote to the News. 

The YCBA will be making a formal announcement about the reopening in January 2024.

Correction, Nov. 30: A previous version of this article stated that the YCBA is set to reopen in 2024, but it is currently set to reopen in 2025. The article has been updated accordingly.

Correction, Dec. 6: A previous version of this article misspelled Dana Greenidge, Deborah Berke, William Blake, Louis Kahn. The article has been updated accordingly.

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The conference, which began in 2005, is named for Henry Roe Cloud (Winnebago), who graduated from Yale College in 1910 with a double major in psychology and philosophy and earned a master’s degree in anthropology from the University in 1914. With his Yale degree, Roe Cloud became a pioneer of Native American education and advocacy. The conference dedicates him as a standard bearer for current and future Native and Indigenous students of Yale to emulate. 

This year marked the sixth Henry Roe Cloud Conference, which also fell on the 10-year anniversary of the Native American Cultural Center’s founding. The two-day conference celebrated the NACC’s history — particularly, the emergence of Yale’s Native and Indigenous community over the past decade — through academic and community panels, an archive gallery and performing arts showcases.

On Friday morning, Howard R. Lamar Professor of History and American Studies Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone), alumna Meghanlata Gupta ’21 LAW ’25 (Ojibwe) and co-president of the Native and Indigenous Students at Yale Mara Gutierrez ’25 (Diné/Navajo Nation) spoke at a panel on the importance of Indigenous Studies at Yale. 

Gupta, who graduated from Yale College with a degree in ethnicity, race and migration and is currently a second-year student at the Yale Law School, said that her undergraduate grounding in Indigenous studies, now applied in a legal context, has been “empowering.”

“Knowing and understanding Native history to a rigorous level is really important for vindicating our rights and ways of life in the present day, so I think that history becomes an integral part of our ability to survive across generations and to pass down knowledge,” Gupta said at the panel.

At the panel, Blackhawk — the first and only tenured Native American in the University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences — spoke on the current institutional barriers to creating a Native and Indigenous studies certificate or major. Blackhawk said he believes that with higher numbers of Native and Indigenous tenured faculty in Yale College and senior faculty within the sciences, there could be “a lot of strength” to create a standalone major or certificate — especially with administrative support and commitment. All current Native and Indigenous faculty at Yale College teach in the ER&M, English, history and American studies majors.

In the afternoon, alumna Haylee Makana Kushi ’18 (Kanaka Maoli), the first Native Hawaiian president of the Native and Indigenous Student Association at Yale, Mikiala Ng ’24 (Kanaka Maoli), Jairus Rhoades ’26 (American Samoan) and Dane Keahi ’27 (Kanaka Maoli) spoke at a panel on the recent growth and lasting presence of Pasifika students in the University. 

During the panel, all four Pasifika students expressed gratitude to the NACC for being a space that evolved to support globally Indigenous communities such as those within Oceania. 

“For Native Hawaiians and for students from the Indigenous Pacific more broadly, the NACC was an amazing space that really welcomed me,” Kushi said at the panel. “I would have struggled to make it through, and perhaps would have transferred had the NACC not been there.” 

Five years after Kushi’s graduation, Kushi said, the NACC remains a place where the presence of Pasifika students is legitimized and recognized. 

Ng specifically credited the NACC for being the home base for the Indigenous Peoples of Oceania, a student organization created for Pasifika students now that there is a critical mass within the University community.

“The NACC has ensured that our community spans more than Native Hawaiians, but to Pasifika communities,” Ng said at the panel. “In my senior year at Yale now, I’m so honored and so excited that [the] IPO is here and thriving.”

On Saturday, the conference kicked off with another panel featuring current NACC Dean Matthew Makomenaw (Odawa Tribe), former NACC Dean Kelly Fayard (Poarch Band of Creek Indians), ER&M Assistant Professor Tarren Andrews (Confederated Salish/Kootenai Tribes) and former Native admissions officer and alumna Dinée Dorame ’15 (Navajo Nation). In honor of the 10-year anniversary of the NACC, the panel discussed the milestones of the cultural house’s history, such as the official construction of the center, the mobilizing of Native students in intersectional issues such as the renaming of Calhoun College and the creation of the ER&M program.

The panel was followed with a performance by the Yale Guild of Carillonneurs of “Into the Glittering World” by Connor Chee (Diné) at Harkness Tower. Later in the evening, a reception honored the conference’s awardees for the Community Ally Award, Distinguished Alumna Award and Distinguished Alumnus Award — George Miles ’74 GRD ’75 GRD ’77, Raina Thiele ’05 (Dena’ina Athabascan/Yup’ik) and Robert Warrior DIV ’88 (Osage), respectively. 

Miles, the lead curator of the Western Americana exhibit at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was awarded the Community Ally Award for his contributions to archival work within Native American scholarship. Thiele, the Tribal Outreach leader under the Obama administration, was honored for liaising between the White House and American Indian and Alaskan Native tribes. Finally, Warrior was recognized for spearheading Native and Indigenous Studies within academia, as the first Native American president of the American Studies Association and the founding president of the Native and Indigenous Studies Association. 

For Warrior, although his studies at the Yale Divinity School were an important reckoning with the University’s colonial and missionary history, he said he also cherishes the University for providing him the academic grounding for his future scholarship.

“I really have always valued that this institution allowed myself and other Indigenous students their own intellect, and passion for learning,” Warrior told the News. “For students today, that is remembering that it’s academic excellence that brings you here, and everybody has this sort of excellence behind them.” 

In celebration of Indigenous Heritage Month, the NACC will be hosting its annual Indigenous arts night on Nov. 14.

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During the three-day national conference — which featured 196 college and university chapters, three tribal chapters, and 500 different STEM employers — AISES students met with internship recruiters, toured colleges and STEM industries in the local area and met with leading Indigenous figures in STEM. 

The Yale chapter of AISES won first place in the conference’s Student Hackathon. The students created a Google browser extension that added chatbots to travel websites that recommend clean energy decisions related to tourism. 

For current yAISES Co-Presidents Madeline Gupta ’25 (Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians) and Jordan Sahly ’24 (Eastern Shoshone), attending the national AISES conference felt like proof that being Indigenous and interested in STEM are not mutually exclusive. 

“Something we focus on a lot is how science at its core is Indigenous, and Indigenous people were the first scientists on these lands — especially when it comes to waterways and taking care of the earth,” Gupta said.

For Kyra Kaya ’26 (Kanaka Maoli), attending the national conference was an important networking platform because it is one of the few opportunities where students get to interact with the Indigenous people in STEM. 

Kaya said that the community has grown tremendously at Yale in the past years, but it is still a relatively small group relative to all of STEM at Yale.

Gupta told the News that she believes yAISES has existed for over a decade but dissolved in 2019 and did not resume during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In December 2021, however, Gupta and Mara Gutierrez ’25 (Diné/Navajo Nation) revived yAISES. Prospective data science and chemistry students, respectively, Gupta and Gutierrez said that they were motivated to restart an AISES chapter on campus after recognizing a dearth of Indigenous representation in their STEM courses and extracurricular activities.

Members of the organization say they have committed to promoting the visibility of Indigenous students in STEM — not only within the University community but also in the workplace.

“A lot of our work is really going off [the phrase], ‘you can’t be what you can’t see,’” Gupta said. “And so we try to connect our students with people that have done this and are successful in their careers and industries that have to do with STEM, whether it’s graduate school, or an industry job: making sure our students know that representation is out there and exists.”

To do so, yAISES also hosts speaker events in order to support their members’ professional development. Last year, the organization hosted a College Tea in collaboration with Morse College, featuring Larry Bradley who is involved in related anthropological and archaeological work.

yAISES meets every Friday at the Native American Cultural Center to plan community events. During these meetings, Sahly emphasized that yAISES members have shown a “strong commitment” to learning Indigenous approaches to science, ecology and environmental studies. 

“Historically, Indigenous peoples were scientists and observed medicine and foodways — being Indigenous and STEM is something that’s always been a part of Indigenous culture,” said Matthew Makomenaw, director of the Native American Cultural Center.

This semester, yAISES also began working on college application outreach — especially in the wake of the United States Supreme Court decision that axed affirmative action. Called the “Branches Program,” the program matches undergraduates at the Native American Cultural Center to Indigenous high school students who are applying to colleges this year. 

In addition to providing college application and essay writing assistance, yAISES provides support for students looking to pursue STEM undergraduate courses and professional development in higher education. 

“For the up-and-coming scientists, who haven’t even really broken into our upper-level sciences, we can make sure that they make it all the way to upper-level education,” Sahly said. “And so our chapter has been really committed to how we can find these pathways into STEM, specifically at institutions of higher learning.”

Although yAISES members credited Yale for providing institutional funding — which allowed 10 members to attend the national AISES conference — members like Kaya believe that the organization is one of the only gateways for Indigenous students to interact with the sciences at Yale. 

Gupta urged that the University hire more Indigenous faculty within the sciences, which she believes would provide additional institutional support to Indigenous STEM students. 

“If you look towards Yale’s STEM departments, you’ll notice that they don’t tend to reflect the same [Indigenous] diversity that the humanities departments do broadly.”

yAISES will host its next College Tea on Pathways to Big Tech at Saybrook College on Nov. 13.

Correction, Dec. 7: This article has been updated to rewrite references to “NAISES conference” as “national AISES conference” and to correct two incorrect attributions.

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At the start of fall semester, Maui native Kala‘i Anderson ’25 (Kanaka Maoli) and Hawai’i locals Joshua Ching ’26 (Kanaka Maoli) and Jairus Rhoades ’26 (American Samoan) — all members of the student group Indigenous Peoples of Oceania — organized the fundraising initiative. However, as the semester continued, the fundraiser evolved into a collaborative effort, involving the Chinese American Students Association, Japanese American Student Union, Kasama and Native and Indigenous Students at Yale. 

On the evening of Aug. 8, a series of wildfires broke out in Lahaina, Maui, along with other parts of Western Maui. Due to the island’s historically arid environment, along with high winds from recent Hurricane Dora, the wildfire rapidly spread throughout the island — most of all, on the coastal town of Lahaina. 

The Hawai’i state government issued an emergency declaration hours later, on the morning of Aug. 9. The next day, President Joe Biden issued a federal major disaster declaration on Aug. 10 in order to secure federal funding for relief. 

The Lahaina wildfires alone claimed 99 lives and have displaced at least 7,200 Maui residents.

From the Lahaina wildfire alone, the Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that over 2,200 buildings were destroyed, many of which were cultural or historical preservation sites, as Lahaina was chosen as the capital of the Hawaiian kingdom by King Kamehameha II in 1820. According to FEMA, the overall damage caused by the wildfires has been estimated to be $6 billion. 

The August wildfires have been named the deadliest natural disaster in Hawai’i and modern U.S. history. 

For Ching, executive director of IPO, the purpose of the fundraising efforts was to spread awareness of the historical causes of the wildfire. Ching called the wildfires “a reckoning with the colonial histories and legacies of tourism, of water diversion, of climate change, that all culminated into this moment of devastation and tragedy.”

Indeed, numerous sources have found the wildfires to be caused by Maui’s extractive agricultural history, during which sugar plantations destroyed restorative waterways and created competition for water rights on the island. These land and natural resource issues were later exacerbated by the proliferation of golf courses, rental homes and hotels on Maui for the sake of Hawai’i’s tourist economy. 

Native Hawaiian sovereignty groups have been fighting for water restoration and control on Maui for decades.

In order to engage the University community with this history, Rhoades decided to direct and organize a benefit concert spotlighting Pasifika arts, hosted at Sudler Hall on Nov. 4. Performing arts groups at the concert included forms of Pasifika dance such as hula and Siva Samoa, and traditional songs of Hawaiian sovereignty, such as Pule A Ka Haku and He Mele Lāhui ʻO Hawai’i, written by the last reigning monarch of the Hawaiian kingdom, Queen Liliʻuokalani. In addition, Lux Improvitas, The Alleycats and WORD performed at the concert in solidarity with the impacted communities of the Maui wildfires. 

Rhoades believes that music and the performing arts have been a medium for understanding personal identity and history and, prior to the concert, said that he hoped the benefit concert would similarly be a medium to understand the historical context of the Maui wildfires. What’s more, Rhoades credits supporting student organizations, such as NISAY, JASU, Kasama and CASA, for contributing to fundraising efforts and creating diverse ways for the Yale community to support wildfire relief efforts. 

“As far away as Yale is, I want the benefit concert to create an atmosphere that gets conversations started and gets people wondering how they can give back to Hawai’i’s community,” Rhoades said. “We have people selling artwork, bags, food and we’re hosting the benefit concert — we’re actively gathering different types of engagement for students to support and fundraise.”

For family weekend, the Yale Symphony Orchestra, the Yale Glee Club and the Yale Concert Band hosted a benefit concert on Oct. 7 to aid the reconstruction of ‘Aha Pūnana Leo, a Hawaiian immersion school that stewarded the growth of Hawaiian language and culture. 

In addition, on Saturday, Oct. 28, CASA organized a sale of li hing mui candy containing salted dried plum powder — a popular snack in Hawai’i. On Halloween at the Asian American Cultural Center, Kasama sold halo-halo, a Filipino iconic dessert frequently made in Hawai’i, to support Maui wildfire relief efforts. 

Later in November, JASU will be selling tote bags and NISAY will be selling beaded earrings in support of the Maui wildfires, per the leaders of IPO. Additionally, IPO will be selling Hawai’i local snacks and stickers at a separate fundraising event at the end of the month. All proceeds from these cultural affinity groups will be donated to the Hawai’i Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund. 

Before the benefit concert, many Pasifika performers told the News that they felt called to support the Maui community in light of the wildfires and emphasized how the concert bridges performing arts across Indigenous communities. 

For the concert, Angela Chen ’26 decided to perform Siva Samoa, a traditional dance of her home community in American Samoa that she has been practicing since childhood. 

“I hope that events such as this concert will spark more interest and participation in Polynesian arts. There’s so much variation — whether in song or dances — that I think [students] don’t see as much here at Yale,” Chen said. “This isn’t a problem that the Hawai’i community has to bear alone — it’s important for different Pasifika cultures, especially within Polynesia, to band together to fundraise for Lahaina and the wildfires.”

Echoing Chen, Hawai’i local Erin Nishi ’25, who performed at the benefit concert, wrote to the News that although she is from the island of Oʻahu, she feels “strongly connected” with the community and culture that makes up all of the islands. 

Along with other YSO members, Nishi decided to perform string quartet and piano duo arrangements of Queen Lili‘uokalani’s music, including songs that were composed during her imprisonment in ʻIolani Palace and the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom. 

“We wanted to showcase some of these songs [written by Queen Lili‘uokalani], which deliver a powerful message about standing together during times of crisis,” Nishi wrote to the News. “The Queen’s music remains important because it inserts into the world of music the essential themes of Hawaiian culture, kinship and hope.”

The benefit concert’s attendance was free, however, event organizers and speakers from IPO encouraged audience members to donate in support of wildfire relief efforts. According to IPO leaders, the benefit concert alone raised more than $3,000, of which all proceeds will be donated to the Hawai’i Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund.

After attending the concert, Anderson said that he’s encouraged by the positive reception of the benefit concert, and hopes the event is a gateway to Pasifika issues such as Hawaiian sovereignty, which IPO will continue to support throughout the school year. 

“I was surprised by how many people were reposting IPO’s videos and posts to promote the benefit concert, and by the turnout of people at Sudler Hall — there were many faculty members and graduate students, which was so encouraging to see,”Anderson said. “After the concert, I believe that the student body is more aware of Pasifika students and community issues at Yale. Not only because there are more Pasifika students at Yale now, but because these Pasifika students are involved in making a community.”

The Hawai’i Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund aims to provide financial resources to support the immediate and long-term recovery needs for the people and places affected by the devastating Maui wildfires. In distributing these funds, the HCF is working in close collaboration with state and country leaders, nonprofit organizations and community members to better understand evolving wildfire relief priorities.

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A latitudinous narrative of U.S. history spanning five centuries, “The Rediscovery of America” argues for the centrality of an agent-focused Indigenous history in understanding the evolution of modern America. The book begins with the Spanish colonial conquests in the Americas throughout the 15th century that precipitated Indigenous-foreign relations and proves the enduring impact of Native Americans on the country’s history. Comprised of 12 chapters, the book concludes with a focus on the rising tide of 20th-century reservation activism that reversed terminative policies against Native Americans during the Cold War. 

Before its official publication by Yale University Press in April, Blackhawk included “The Rediscovery of America” in the syllabus of his course “Introduction to American Indian History” and gave students an advanced copy of the book. Students enrolled in the course told the News that reading the book was empowering and a gateway to understanding the historical agency of Native Americans. 

“Professor Blackhawk positions Native history as something central to American history, that you cannot separate the two,” Sunni Parisien ’25 (Anishinaabe) told the News. “The lens is flipped — too often in history, settlers affect Native people, but in this book, he argues that Native people instead affected settlers.”

Avery Maples ’26 (Cherokee), wrote to the News that Blackhawk’s “reframing of colonial American history from a more accurate perspective makes [her] more proud to be Cherokee,” leaving her with a “greater appreciation for the sacrifices, strife, perseverance, and endless hope of Native people.” 

The first half of Blackhawk’s book examines the subjects of U.S. colonial history, prior to American independence, and the second half examines the history of federal Indian relations after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Blackhawk told the News that he included pre-Revolutionary era history in his book as part of an intentionally sweeping timeline, to challenge the notion that European colonization of America was a predetermined success. 

“A lot of the most important findings are in the first part, this earlier period of time, when the history of the continent was yet to be fully determined,” said Blackhawk. “The United States was never predetermined, despite what some might call ‘manifest destiny’ — it was never clearly the outcome of American expansion.”

Rather than relying primarily on written narratives, “The Rediscovery of America” engages with multimedia, drawing from oral storytelling and arts as a way to retell history in the Indigenous tradition. 

Several students the News spoke with noted that focusing on Indigenous artistry as a historical resource felt like an important opportunity to engage in the rich methodology of Indigenous history.

“I remember reading, and focusing on for our class exam, about the wampum in the Iroquois Confederacy — how wampum and art were used to document treaties and political agreements. The book was full of oral histories, and other Indigenous methods of history, that aren’t often legitimized by Western academia,” Lex Schultz ’24 (Cherokee) told the News.

Although Blackhawk formally began writing “The Rediscovery of America” in 2018, during his term as a visiting senior scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies, he said that the seeds of the book were planted far before then. 

Prior to putting pen to paper, Blackhawk told the News that the book’s principal ideas were longstanding, realized in other essays, lectures and seminars. 

“The book took many forms, so it doesn’t have a very clear start date,” said Blackhawk. “But I knew I wanted to write this book 15 or 20 years ago — even before I made tenure.”

Still, 15 years after his hiring and tenureship offer at Yale in June 2008, Blackhawk remains the first and only tenured Native American in the University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. 

Native students the News spoke with described Blackhawk’s contributions to Yale’s Indigenous community as nothing short of prolific: he was a longtime advocate of a cultural center for Native students and helped found the Native American Cultural Center in 2013 under University President Peter Salovey. Schultz noted that Blackhawk’s efforts to build the NACC “from the ground up” are a testament to his dedication to an on-campus Native community that has grown in the past decade.

In 2022, the Ethnicity, Race and Migration program hired two new ladder faculty — Assistant Professor of Native and Indigenous Studies Hi‘ilei Hobart and Assistant Professor in ER&M Tarren Andrews. Along with Professor of Environmental Studies and Yale School of the Environment Kealoha Freidenburg (Kanaka Maoli), their hiring contributed to a total of four Indigenous faculty at Yale College, and 14 at the University as a whole, according to NACC Dean Matthew Makomenaw (Odawa tribe). 

Students the News interviewed also credited the recent increase in hiring positions for Indigenous faculty to Blackhawk’s advocacy. 

In light of Hobart and Andrews’ recent hiring, Jordan Sahly ’24 (Eastern Shoshone) wrote to the News that “Professor Blackhawk deserves immense credit for the path he’s paved, the space he’s helped create on campus for Native students and academics, and the leadership he’s maintained on our journey towards increasing Indigenous professorship and representation on campus.” 

Recognizing the Native community that emerged out of Yale, in the first page of “The Rediscovery of America,” Blackhawk dedicates his book, in part, to the NACC, “with gratitude.”

Indigenous faculty and students have shared gratitude to Blackhawk for spearheading Native studies, culture and overall presence at Yale as the University’s first Native American faculty member. 

“Because of [Blackhawk] we don’t just have programs that are culture or history-based — but we also have faculty writing books, students of Blackhawk getting fellowships in law school,” Makomenaw told the News. “We’re not just a community of culture, but we are a community of scholars.”

During his time at Yale, Blackhawk has established two fellowships: the first for Native American students to attend the Western History Association’s annual conference, and the second for doctoral students working on American Indian Studies dissertations at the University. In 2021 he co-founded the Sovereignty Project with his wife, Maggie Blackhawk. The project, a partnership between NYU Law and Yale University, aims to support the sovereignty of Native nations and federal Indian policy. 

Blackhawk’s academic and community contributions have been a source of inspiration for current Native students, several of whom told the News they hope to continue his Native scholastic efforts for future students at Yale. 

“The book makes me think about how I can open the door, or provide more access to Indigenous opportunities to the students who come after me — in a way that Professor Blackhawk has really made his purpose here at Yale,” said Parisien. 

Blackhawk said that the impetus of his book has been to provide the next generation of Native students with an empowered retelling of their history. 

Blackhawk said that in order to “rediscover America,” students and teachers alike need to “unmake the paradigms of received knowledge” whose definitions of American history depend on Native exclusion. 

The National Book Award ceremony will take place on Nov. 15.

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“We’re reclaiming this day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day to really celebrate Indigenous joy, revitalization, resurgence, resistance and persistence,” Mara Gutierrez ’25 (Diné/Navajo), co-president of NISAY, told the News. “There are not many Indigenous spaces at Yale, so being in community with each other for an extended period of time, and having it be really visible to Yale more broadly, has been really great.”

The state of Connecticut recognizes Oct. 9 as Columbus Day, and Yale does not include Oct. 9 as an official Yale holiday or a recess day. 

In the afternoon, undergraduate students marched from the Native American Cultural Center on High Street to Cross Campus for a vigil, wearing cultural attire and holding posters to increase the visibility of the Indigenous community on Yale’s campus. 

This year’s celebrations are the first to include the IPO, founded this fall following two years with record numbers of Pasifika undergraduates at Yale, according to NACC Dean Matthew Makomenaw. Student leaders said that because of the IPO community, there is newfound solidarity among Indigenous students at Yale.

“There’s a lot of solidarity between our Pasifika community and the many other Indigenous peoples at the NACC,” Joshua Ching ’26 (Kanaka Maoli), executive director for the IPO, said. “It’s so assuring to know that there’s so much support from Native American faculty and students, in really broadening the definition of what it means to be Native at Yale.”

After the Cross Campus vigil and performance from Yale Native drum group RT, afternoon programming included smudging in the Branford College courtyard led by Joaquín Lara Midkiff ’24 (Nahua Chilapantec). Smudging is a spiritual practice among some Indigenous peoples and involves burning sage, sweet grass or cedar.

Although Yale Hospitality previously hosted dinners dedicated to Indigenous People’s Day in Branford and Saybrook dining halls, this marks the first year in which all 14 residential dining halls served an Indigenous-inspired menu.

According to student leaders across Indigenous cultural affinity organizations, the menu planning required months of coordination for food sourcing with Yale Hospitality. 

“It’s a momentous cause for celebration for us that Yale Hospitality was willing to work with us, so that we can continue to show our visibility — facets of our home — through food, and through communal meals,” said Truman Pipestem ’24 (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Osage Nation, Otoe-Missouria Tribe), co-president of NISAY. 

Later Monday night, undergraduates Helen Shanefield ’26 (Kanaka Maoli), Jairus Rhoades ’26 (American Samoan) and Ching performed hula and traditional songs celebrating Hawaiian sovereignty in Branford College. 

In preparation for Indigenous People’s Day, Pasifika students from IPO also hosted a lei-making workshop at the NACC on Sunday so that students and faculty could be adorned with lei for the holiday. 

“It’s important to me to continue the practice of Native arts and culture into places like Yale, where it’s not prevalent, or was never prevalent historically,” Shanefield told the News. “It’s a great reminder of who I am and where I come from—to perpetuate my culture, even in places far from home.”

Events recognizing and celebrating Indigenous people will continue throughout the week. On Tuesday, Branford will have a college tea with Indigenous residential school scholar Benjamin Jacuk Dolchok, followed by an NACC dinner with Dolchok. On Wednesday, AISES and the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science will host a scientific conference panel at the Watson Center.

Wednesday will also include beading at the NACC, and on Friday, the Asian American Cultural Center will host a Zoom meeting in celebration of Fijian Independence Day with the Fijian ambassador to the U.S., Jesoni Vitusagavulu. 

“If we’re not invisible, we’re historical or deficit-based — it’s really important to also highlight that Indigenous people are succeeding and we are human, and we have humor and laughter. We’re not just history and culture, but we’re human beings,” said Makomenaw. 

Indigenous Peoples’ Day falls on the second Monday of November each year. 

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