One evening early last October, just past midnight, about 30 Native American students were holding their annual Columbus Day drum circle on the Green. A solemn yet energetic ceremony, it aimed to remind the public of centuries of genocide following Christopher Columbus's arrival and commemorate the death of Native Americans in the distant and recent past. A line of students outfitted in traditional blankets encircled a small group of backup singers and several drummers beating a large drum. In preparation, they had been practicing their songs and dances four hours a week.
Heather Yazzie '07, a member of the Navajo Nation from Heartbutte, N.M., stood inside the circle -- the fourth she had participated in -- singing backup with three other women. She saw two students stagger towards the circle from the west. Based on the way they were tacking and gibing, Heather assumed they were drunk. Even for a Sunday night, that was nothing too unusual. But then the two did something she had never seen: They broke through the ring into the middle, a space considered sacred, and began to mimic the dance. "It's like interrupting someone's funeral," explained Colin Calloway, a history and Native American studies professor. Sam Kohn '09, a member of the Crow tribe from Dunmore, Mont., was baffled. "I didn't really understand what gives people the right to do something like that. What compels them to do something like that?" He blames ignorance.
Also participating in the circle was Elliot Dial '08, a Lumbee tribe member from Sumter, S.C. He was "shocked" by the interruption, an offense especially difficult to deal with because one of the drunk students was his friend. Angry and disappointed, he approached his friend and explained to him why the incident was so inappropriate.
The group continued their songs and dances into the October night and then disbanded.
The circle incident was the first in a series of episodes that, according to many who observed the events of Fall term, including President Wright, highlighted racial insensitivity towards Native American students on campus. Three days later, a fraternity member hawked shirts during homecoming weekend displaying the long-since canned Dartmouth Indian mascot. In November, the crew team held a formal where some rowers dressed up as Native Americans.
Half a continent away in Mt. Vernon, Wa., Todd Mitchell '93 sat at his computer and read e-mails sent to Native American alumni about the events. An earth science major at Dartmouth, he now works as a geologist for his tribe, the Swinomish. He wasn't too surprised by the incidents, which he said have a way of popping up every few years.
Meanwhile, Matilda Larson '95, a member of the Siberan Yupik tribe, reacted with surprise to the alumni communiqus. "I just could not believe it when I heard that someone broke through a drumming circle," she said. But at another level, the situations reminded her of the attitudes she encountered in the early 1990s at Dartmouth. While she never experienced any out-and-out racism, she remembers how panels covering the Hovey murals in Thayer Hall -- which depicted drunken natives lapping up rum off the ground -- were temporarily removed just before alumni fundraising events, how bare-chested men donning headdresses would run around the bonfire during homecoming, and how seniors would pulverize clay pipes -- a sacred object in many tribes -- on a stump during graduation. (Following pressure from Native American students, the clay pipe ceremony was ended.) And while Native Americans at Dartmouth persistently worked to push their issues to the forefront, in terms of external support, "it was a mixed bag with the overall administration."
Larson attended Dartmouth at a time when she felt misunderstood by non-natives both in Hanover and in her hometown of Nome, Alaska. At Dartmouth she noticed a lack of racial intermingling, and back home a case determining the sovereignty of her tribe in Alaska was reaching the Supreme Court, a case that the tribes eventually lost. "I felt I was getting this adversarial affront from all sides," she said. "All of our rights and all of our privileges were being threatened." Plus, the campus she arrived at differed from the one she had imagined earlier. "It wasn't until after I attended that I found out it was conservative."
When Heather Yazzie saw The Dartmouth Review's Nov. 28 cover, she cried. "What did I do to them? It's not like we're trying to ask for our land back," she said. "All we want is to live in harmony and live together."
The Review cover depicted a half-naked Native American clenching a scalp under the headline, "The Natives are Getting Restless!" Elliot Dial was at the NAD house and looked at the cover after a NAD member sent an e-mail to the group with a link to the Review's website. "I was asking, Why would someone do this? I just thought it was a jackass move, just a childish move."
Sam Kohn was in Novack Cafe with other NADs when a Review member was distributing copies. He was particularly bothered by the historical connotations of the cover, and after student outrage reached a boiling point, different editors of the Review posted successive quasi-apologies on the paper's website.
Todd Mitchell remembers The Review's perpetuation of the Indian mascot logo, a logo he calls offensive then and offensive now. Through its website, the paper still sells T-shirts, baseball caps, coffee mugs and bottle openers emblazoned with the discontinued mascot. Professor Calloway said he simply could not understand why someone would want to buy or sell such items, products that "reduce [Native Americans'] diverse experiences and cultures to caricatures."
To Michael Hanitchak '73, the fervor was nothing new. Now the director of the Native American Program, he's been at Dartmouth since 1969 and was one of the Native American students who originally brought up concerns about the mascot. "I've seen it all before -- it's not something that is new," he said. "What is new is the number of things that happened in rapid succession this fall. It seemed like it never ended."
Part of the problem, Hanitchak believes, is that students don't understand the true history of Native Americans at the College, specifically the "couple hundred years of neglect." Although the College was founded to educate Native American students -- the charter establishes the mission of "spreading Christian knowledge among the savages of our American wilderness" -- only about 19 attended in the first 200 years of the school's existence, he said. In fact, Hanitchak was one of only three Native American students in the entire Class of 1973. When College President John Kemeny took office in 1970, the College recommitted itself to Native American education, recruiting 15 Native Americans for the Class of 1974. The Native American studies department was created in 1972 despite the objections of certain alumni and today, 40-some Native Americans matriculate each year.
But the campus has not always been so kind to Native Americans. According to Hanitchak, especially during the 1970s when the campus was reacting to a spike in Native American enrollment, NAD used to receive hate mail, and members were sometimes taunted while they walked down the street. He is especially frustrated that the recent incidents have tarnished the image of a campus he knows to have made great strides in its acceptance of Native Americans. "This fall, it looked like we were going backwards real fast," he said. "But those of us who had been around for any length of time knew that there was a great deal of support and that the things that happened were somewhat isolated incidents." The Nov. 29 protest in front of Dartmouth Hall, where students -- including Sam Kohn -- gave speeches on racism, publicized that support and attracted national media attention.
Both Dial and Kohn believe curbing ignorance of Native American issues is the first step to preventing anti-Native American incidents before they happen. They suggested the creation of an orientation program addressing the issue. Calloway thinks everyone should re-examine the true history of the Native American experience at Dartmouth -- warts and all. "We've certainly made tremendous strides in the last 30 years," he said, "but that doesn't alter the fact that Dartmouth has an Indian history, and that is a fairly troubled history."
