Environmental Storytelling CNY: Narrative Sovereignty & Climate Action
When: November 3, 2023 at 6:00-7:30pm
Where: Salt City Market, 484 S. Salina Street, Syracuse, NY 13202
113 Euclid Grand Opening and Native Heritage Month Kickoff
When: November 6, 2023 at 2:00-4:00pm
Where: Women's Building, Field
"Listen to the Elders" Speaker Series
When: November 6, 2023 at 6:30-8:30pm
Where: 6680 Onondaga Lake Parkway, Liverpool, NY 13088
Tough Topic Tuesday: The True History of Thanksgiving
When: November 7, 2023 at 3:00-4:30pm
Where: 804 University Ave., Room 115
Beading Workshop - Hoop Earrings
When: November 7, 2023 at 4:00-7:00pm
Where: 113 Euclid
Beading Workshop - Pendant Earrings
When: November 8, 2023 at 4:00-7:00pm
Where: 113 Euclid
Rock Your Mocs Week
When: November 12-18, 2023
Ray Smith Symposium Lectures: Indigenous, Resilience, Climate Change, & the Environmental Humanities
When: November 12, 2023 at 1:00-4:45pm
Where: Eggers Hall, 220
Indigenous Student, Faculty, and Staff Perspectives on Campus Panel Discussion
When: November 14, 2023 at 3:00-4:00pm
Where: Bird Library, Room 114
Paint Night with Linda Infante Lyons
When: November 15, 2023 at 5:00-7:00pm
Where: 113 Euclid
Full Moon Ceremony
When: November 27, 2023 at 6:30-7:30pm
Where: Shaw Quadrangle
Native Heritage Month Closing Ceremony Social Dance
When: November 28, 2023 at 5:00-8:00pm
Where: Skybarn
Friendsgiving
When: November 29, 2023 at 6:00-8:00pm
Where: 113 Euclid
"Killers of the Flower Moon" Private Screening
When: November 30, 2023 at 7:00-10:00pm
Where: Movie Tavern, 180 Township Blvd, Camillus, NY 13031
Continuity, Innovation, and Resistance: The Art of Peter B. Jones
When: August 24 - December 15, 2023
Where: Syracuse University Art Museum
The Libraries' celebration of Native Heritage Month features books and videos selected by Syracuse University students Aysha-Lynn Estrella and Katsitsatekanoniahkwa Destiny Lazore, and Syracuse University staff member Bailey Tlachac.
Explore the titles featured on this guide, and be sure to visit the in-person display on Bird Library 1st floor during the month of November.
As the program coordinator of the Native Student Program and have had the opportunity to help curator this year’s selection of books for Native Heritage Month, I wanted to include books that show who we are in a modern light. With my role on campus, I want to also spread awareness of modern Indigenous issues while also showcasing new and upcoming authors. Something that we wanted to add this year was the tribe for each author. We felt this brought another layer into recognizing Indigenous people and showing that we still exist and are thriving. While looking through this year’s selection, you will find that we chose authors from across Turtle Island. Additionally, we included books that are now banned in a handful of states and school districts. We didn’t categorize them purposefully so viewers can try and determine which books are banned. I hope you find this year’s list engaging and shedding light on authors and people who are the unseen backbone of the United States.
Bailey Tlachac is the Program Coordinator for the Native Student Program within the Intercultural Collective Department.
For Native Americans, history did not begin when Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492. Prior to contact from Europe, Indigenous people cultivated the land and flourished in an organized society with moral codes, ceremonies, a complex political structure, and an economic system. State-funded public schools tend to favor a euro-centric approach, which is suffused with remnants of colonial ideologies.
This form of education is assimilative and harmful because it devalues Native American history and ancestry, and perpetuates damaging stereotypes about indigenous peoples. Many historians tend to dismiss Indigenous claims because they were not deemed valid by an “expert.” Unfortunately, Native American history has been taught in a declension narrative, which portrays them as an uncivilized and broken minority, that is not worthy of empathy.
As the curator of this display, I wanted to detach from colonial attitudes, and instead elevate Indigenous voices and cultural knowledge by selecting authors who are a part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy or other Native American tribes in the United States. Natives scholars and community members must have sovereignty over their narrative, in order to combat distorted claims and pass down the cultural traditions to the next generation. Reconciliation requires honesty and public truth-sharing that addresses past harms, which is why I included written topics from
Indigenous authors about Indian Residential Schools, decolonizing methods, oral traditions, First Nation films, and Native American Literature.
Katsitsatekanoniahkwa Destiny Lazore
Third-year Communications & Rhetorical Studies major, College of Visual and Performing Arts.
"Dispossession of the Haudenosaunee: A Chronology in Maps" is a StoryMap, an interactive web-based tool combining narrative with a chronological display of maps, detailing the immense loss of land the Haudenosaunee have endured since the arrival of Europeans on the continent.
"This is a brilliant summation of the territorial losses of the Confederacy.”
Doug George-Kanentiio, Bear Clan, Akwesasne Mohawk, is the vice-president of the Hiawatha Institute for Indigenous Knowledge. He previously served as a Trustee for the National Museum of the American Indian, is a former land claims negotiator for the Mohawk Nation and is the author of numerous books and articles about the Mohawk people.
Created by Darle Balfoort, Maps and Government Information, Syracuse University Libraries.
The link to the Story Map is below.
