Dartmouth 'racist' to Native Americans

[Okwes]

Dartmouth 'racist' to Native Americans

By Associated Press

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HANOVER -- The president of Dartmouth College has apologized for a
string of incidents this fall that many Native American students viewed
as racist.

In an e-mail sent to students Monday, President James Wright urged
students to do more to make the university a welcoming and respectful
place.

"They are members of this community "� they are your classmates and
your friends," Wright wrote of the Native American students. "And they
deserve more and better than to be abstracted as symbols and
playthings."

The Native American Council, a group made up of faculty, staff and a few
students, took out an advertisement in the student newspaper Monday
describing a troubling series of events.

According to the ad, fraternity pledges disrupted a Native American
drumming circle on Columbus Day, and earlier this month, the crew team
held a party with a "Cowboys and Indians" theme. Team captains later
apologized.

Though the school discontinued its unofficial American Indian mascot in
the 1970s, some students and alumni have continued to use it. The
Dartmouth Review, a conservative, independent student newspaper, gave
incoming freshmen T-shirts featuring the symbol, and at Homecoming, at
least one Dartmouth student sold shirts depicting a rival school's
mascot performing a sex act on a "Dartmouth Indian," the university
said.

The ad also expressed concern about a dining hall mural painted in the
1930s depicting the school's founding. It shows one Native American
holding a book upside down and another lapping rum from the ground. The
mural, which has been covered for years and is set to be removed during
renovations, will be preserved at the school's art museum.

"I really feel like the college does not care enough about Native
students," said Samuel Kohn, a sophomore who is from Montana and a
member of the Crow tribe. He praised Wright's letter and his decision to
meet with Native American students last week, but said the comments were
long overdue and didn't go far enough.

Dartmouth's 1796 charter describes the school's mission as educating
"Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land "� and also of English Youth
and any others." But only 19 Native Americans graduated from the college
over the next 200 years.

In 1970, Dartmouth renewed that mission and began recruiting Native
American students. There now are about 150 Native American students,
making up 3 percent of the student body.

The school has an office dedicated to working with those students and a
Native American studies program. Wright said he is considering other
ways to address the problems, such as speaking in greater depth at
freshman orientation about the school's history with Native Americans.

[Okwes]

Dartmouth Reviewed
Community protests anti-Native American imagery.

By Nichola W. Tucker, Dartmouth College
Friday December 1, 2006

Loud enough to penetrate the famous granite of New Hampshire, senior Michelle Davis’ strong words pulsated through the PA-system and reverberated across the Dartmouth College campus:

“We have the right to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!”

Usually bare, the lawn in front of the venerable Dartmouth Hall was packed, with people spilling over onto the side of the road—a surprising sight considering it was the last day of fall term classes, when students tend to lock themselves in the library in preparation for finals. But more than 600 students, faculty, and staff came together on the afternoon of Nov. 29 for a rally that banners, fliers, and emails advertised as “Solidarity Against Hatred.”


President Wright Addressing the Rally
The previous day’s edition of The Dartmouth Review, with a cover depicting a scalp-wielding Native American and the headline "The Natives Are Getting Restless!," mobilized members of the Dartmouth community to speak out at the end of a term plagued by allegations of racism, sexism, and intolerance. Six students and eight members of the faculty and administration, including Student Assembly President Tim Andreadis and college President James Wright, gave speeches condemning hateful expressions such as the Review’s recent cover.

Since September, Dartmouth students have reported and sought help from the administration about a number of incidents perceived as offensive to Native American students. During freshman orientation, the Review sold T-shirts emblazoned with the college's outdated Indian mascot, which College trustees eliminated in the early 1970s, but which the Review has publicly championed ever since. A group of fraternity pledges interrupted a Native American ceremony commemorating genocide by clapping, dancing, and then running through the center of a drum circle. Gamma Delta Chi members sold homecoming T-shirts depicting a Holy Cross crusader performing oral sex on a Native American. A crew team formal chose “Cowboys, Indians, and Barnyard Animals” as its unofficial theme.

Dartmouth’s history as a college founded to educate the youth of northeastern Native American tribes makes these recent representations and actions towards Native Americans particularly contentious. Students and alumni continue to be divided on how to reconcile the message of Dartmouth’s founding with the unofficial Native American mascot still in use by some today. The mascot’s detractors see the symbol as a stereotypical misappropriation of Native American culture that engenders inaccurate understanding of and insensitive behavior. Supporters of the old mascot argue that tradition should not be overshadowed by an attempt to placate the modern-day feelings of a small minority.

In the Nov. 20 issue of The Dartmouth, the campus daily newspaper, a coalition of students from different campus groups called the Native American Council (NAC) contributed to this history with a two-page spread addressed to the Dartmouth community about the recent events. This advertisement called on “the perpetrators … to meet in open dialogue” and indicted the “president, the trustees, the provost, the dean of faculty, and the dean of the college [for failing] to respond swiftly and visibly by denouncing these acts.” President James Wright issued an open letter the same day in which he addressed the concerns of the NAC and extended his support, saying, “When any one individual or group is singled out to be demeaned or diminished, the entire community is the victim, and we all should share in the response. I apologize on behalf of the college.”

However, his letter also informed the community of other racist and sexist comments that had been brought to the administration’s attention, which sources say refer to reported incidents of verbal and physical abuse against African American students.

On Nov. 27, three Vermont high school students drove through campus and threatened an African American student using racial slurs and taunts, and Wright issued another letter to Dartmouth undergraduates the afternoon of Nov. 28, notifying students of the investigation.

So for many students upset and rattled by the term’s events, the Nov. 28 issue of the Review was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Students from NAC and other campus organizations started communicating via email, voicing anger and frustration with the publication’s choice.

“So many people were angry and wanted to do rash things, like publicly burn issues of The Review or storm the editor-in-chief’s dorm room,” said junior Elizabeth Sherman, an organizer of the rally. “Others realized that wasn’t going to be productive.” Fellow organizer and senior Danielle Strollo added, “We needed to do something big and dramatic, and this was our time. People were like, ‘let’s stop with the [emailing] and get together for a mass meeting.’”

More than 150 students showed up, and preparations for the rally in front of Dartmouth Hall began. A variety of different student organizations sponsored the event, including but not limited to the Afro-American Society, Native Americans at Dartmouth (NAD), Dartmouth Progressives, and the Dartmouth Free Press. [The writer is editor-at-large of the Free Press, a Campus Progress-supported publication.] Students also collaborated extensively with the faculty and administration.

While cheers and applause sounded throughout the hour, the rally was marked by a kind of quiet solemnity. Only a handful of people carried signs, but those that appeared read “Silence = Complicity,” “Stop the Hatred,” and “Civil Discourse.” At the rally’s end, the majority of attendees lingered, talking with each other and signing banners with permanent marker.

The speeches varied in tone, style, volume, and content. After shouting “enough is enough,” Davis’ voice crescendoed with each use of the word “unacceptable” to describe the recent events. Native American Programs Director and Dartmouth class of ’73 alumnus Michael Hanitchak opened his speech by “thank[ing] the Abenaki nation for allowing us to be guests here in their homeland.” Student Body President and senior Tim Andreadis asked his peers, “When will racial hostility be replaced by understanding and activism?” Wright repeated the phrase “my Dartmouth, our shared Dartmouth” in describing his vision of “a learning community that is built upon relationships.” And Sexual Abuse Program Director Leah Prescott blew a whistle four times, deafening the crowd before stealing the show with her performance poem she wrote that concluded with a emotional and seemingly endless refrain, “We won’t let you go.”

While many of the speakers referenced and indicted the Review, most conspicuously avoided making the publication the focus of the rally. “This rally is not about the Review,” Davis said. “It isn’t about this term. This rally is about pervasive, overwhelming, and devastating institutionalized racism, sexism, and marginalization.” Indeed, all of the speeches focused more broadly on the creation of a respectful and inclusive Dartmouth, free from expression that targets individual members or groups in its community.

Senior and editor-in-chief of the Review, Daniel Linsalata said he did not attend the event but only because he felt he would be “publicly pilloried.” While he initially made an effort to involve himself in the previous night’s meeting, he said, “I figured it wasn’t worth my time to engage in a place where I would be the single object of attention.”

When asked if he had any regrets about the issue, Linsalata stood by the content, but said “I would try to contextualize [the cover] so that fewer people would be taking it literally. … The cover was an ironic tongue-in-cheek comment on the reaction from the NADs. The important thing that people missed is that this wasn’t an attack on Native Americans as a whole, just the leadership. I really don’t think that NADs is the voice of every Native at Dartmouth. I’ve had a lot of Natives me, and say, ‘I hear what you’re saying and the NADs are not a group I believe in.’”

[Okwes]

Dartmouth Rallies In Support Of Minority Students

HANOVER, N.H. -- More than 500 Dartmouth College students, faculty and administrators have rallied in support of the college's Native American community after a controversial newspaper headline and picture.
The Dartmouth Review published a picture Tuesday of a Native American warrior brandishing a scalp with the headline "the Natives are getting restless" on its front page.
Students said the Review's response to Native American students' complaints about a string of incidents deemed offensive and racist was the trigger for the demonstration, held on the last day of classes before exams. However, complaints about insensitive acts toward minority students have been persistent on campus this fall.

Dartmouth president James Wright last week released a college-wide message apologizing for the incidents and encouraging the community to build a more welcoming atmosphere for minority students. Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[Okwes]

Paper: Cover of Indian scalper wrong


By BEVERLEY WANG, The Associated Press

File photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dartmouth college Native American student Elliott Dial of Sumter, S.C., holds an edition of The Dartmouth Review in Hanover on Nov. 29.

CONCORD – An independent student newspaper at Dartmouth College says it was a mistake to publish a Page 1 illustration of an Indian brandishing a scalp as part of a debate over the treatment of minorities on the Ivy League campus.

“It distracted attention from the serious journalism The Dartmouth Review has been publishing, not least in the articles that came after the cover. The result was that people are discussing the cover, the scalp and the offense felt by descendants of the original Americans,” editors Nicholas Desai and Emily Ghods-Esfahani wrote in a letter published Wednesday on The Review’s Web site.

The offending issue was published a week earlier under the headline “The Natives are Getting Restless.” It contained articles critical of College President James Wright, athletic director Josie Harper and a student group, Native Americans at Dartmouth.

The issue sparked a rally of more than 500 students, faculty and staff calling for more sensitivity to minorities and an end to racist speech at Dartmouth, which was founded more than 230 years ago as a school for American Indians.

“We certainly agree with the statement of President James Wright that all students at Dartmouth, whatever their background, should feel welcome here,” wrote Desai, the managing editor, and Ghods-Esfahani, an associate editor.

The two gave no ground, however, on the Review’s criticism of recent college actions – particularly Harper’s college-wide apology for scheduling a hockey game later this month against the University of North Dakota’s “Fighting Sioux.” North Dakota is one of several schools whose use of American Indian imagery has been labeled “hostile and abusive” by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

“There is such a thing as minding your own business. There is also such a thing as achieving a bit of perspective, even a sense of humor,” the two wrote. “There are no ‘racists’ or people who ‘hate’ at The Dartmouth Review.”

Dartmouth went on break this week after fall term exams, but The Review’s top editor, Daniel Linsalata, forwarded the letter to The Associated Press, which covered the Nov. 29 protest.

In an interview then, Linsalata said he was surprised by the furor over the cover, which he said was intended as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on “unreasonable” demands of American Indian students and faculty leaders.

The week before, Dartmouth’s Native American Council – a mostly faculty group – demanded a response to a series of provocations. They included fraternity pledges disrupting a drumming circle in October, homecoming T-shirts showing a Holy Cross knight performing a sex act on an American Indian, and The Review’s distribution of Indian head T-shirts.

Wright, the college president, publicly deplored the incidents.

The college stopped using its Indian mascot decades ago, but The Review continues to sell Indian head canes, T-shirts, neckties and other souvenirs, calling them proud symbols of the school’s past.

In a statement last weekend, Linsalata repeated that the provocative Review issue – with its cover art showing a wild-eyed warrior clutching a scalp in one hand and a knife in the other, reprints of old Dartmouth Indian mascots and satirical articles mocking those upset by a crew team formal with a “Cowboy and Indians” theme – was aimed strictly at Native Americans at Dartmouth, the student group, and not at American Indians in general.

“The accusation, then, that this cover was maliciously designed as a wantonly racist attack on . . . Native Americans is patently false. All the same, I regret that it could have been construed as such,” he wrote.

Members of Native Americans at Dartmouth say there’s no other way to interpret it.

“I don’t think it’s being oversensitive at all that I’m upset that our entire culture has just been taken and used as a satire by these guys,” freshman Shaun Stewart, a Cherokee, said last week. “To me, that’s a blatant attack on the Native American community here at Dartmouth.”

Senior Melody Jones, a member of the Pascua Yaqui tribe, agreed.

“Free speech doesn’t mean that you can write whatever you want and not be held accountable. What they’re asking for, it seems to me, is to have unaccountable speech.”

[Okwes]

Damage Control at Dartmouth
By Mark Anthony Rolo
Dec 28, 2006, 15:40

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Damage Control at Dartmouth
Anti-American Indian incidents at the Ivy League college create unease
for Native students.
By Mark Anthony Rolo

American Indian students at Dartmouth College may be enjoying their
winter break more than other students after experiencing a semester
marred by what many say was an onslaught of racist attacks against the
school's Native community.

Students at Dartmouth College rally in support of American Indian and
minority students on Nov. 29.Prior to the homecoming game against the
College of the Holy Cross, one fraternity sold T-shirts featuring Holy
Cross' mascot performing a sex act on an American Indian
representing Dartmouth. On Columbus Day, a Native drumming group's
performance was crashed by fraternity pledges. And on Dec. 29, the
Dartmouth hockey team hosts the University of North Dakota Fighting
Sioux, whose nickname has angered American Indians because the National
Collegiate Athletic Association has deemed it "hostile and
abusive."

One incident caught the attention of the national media and led to an
anti-hate rally attended by more than 500 faculty, students and
administrators. In the Nov. 28 issue of the independent, conservative
student paper, The Dartmouth Review, a caricature of an American Indian
warrior waving a scalp appeared on the cover alongside the headline
"The Natives Are Getting Restless." A week later, the paper
called the cover a mistake, adding that the image distracted readers
from the point of the article, which charged American Indian leaders
with overplaying the race card throughout the fall term.

Dartmouth boasts that it has one of the best Native American studies
programs in the country. Stanford University has modeled its program
after Dartmouth's. The college leads all Ivy League schools with 160
American Indian students enrolled, making up 3 percent of its total
student body. That percentage is also considerably higher than those
found at most non-tribal higher education institutions nationwide.

The incidents at Dartmouth this semester have some American Indian
students on campus wondering why they are being targeted, especially
since the institution was founded specifically to education American
Indians. But according to Heid Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain
Ojibwe and a 1986 Dartmouth graduate, the college has struggled against
anti-Native sentiment since it abolished its American Indian mascot in
the 1970s. With each generation of students, there remains a core group
who resent the loss of the mascot. In the past, The Dartmouth Review has
resurrected the mascot to use on their Web site and on T-shirts.

"There's always been a feeling of intimidation that began in the
'70s, when the school started to recruit women and minorities,"
says Erdrich. "We always had to fight against some White
conservative frat boys. We'd go to a party and someone would start
passing around condoms with the Indian Head, or there would be beer cups
with the Indian symbol drawn on them."

Erdrich, who is a professor of English at the University of St. Thomas
in St. Paul, Minn., is in constant touch with Dartmouth's American
Indian community. As the chair of the Native American Alumni Committee,
she is concerned about the continued atmosphere of hostility towards
Native students. "We make certain to support our students by giving
them an experience in a broader community context so they won't feel
isolated," Erdrich says.

Samuel Kohn, a sophomore and member of the Crow tribe, believes there is
a fringe group of students who are bent on pushing the limits of what is
acceptable and tolerable, and that has made for a sense of unease on the
campus. "I believe that Dartmouth's environment is not
necessarily hostile to Native students alone, but a campus which has
demonstrated itself as unwelcoming for all minority students," he
says.

According to Erdrich, a big part of the solution will be in how
Dartmouth addresses the question of whether the anti-Native incidents
are violations of the student conduct code. "The school needs to
make the policies clearer. They must give more support to Native
students, and it may mean a change in the student conduct rules,"
she says.

In a campuswide e-mail to students last month, Dartmouth President James
Wright exhorted students to help build a more welcoming and inclusive
community. The school has also apologized for hosting the University of
North Dakota hockey team, and is in the process of convening a task
force to review Dartmouth's policies on competing with schools that
use American Indian mascots.

But Kohn is not convinced that the Dartmouth administration is doing all
it can to stem the tide of hostility. While he applauds Wright's
calls for greater acceptance, he says he realizes it does not represent
true reconciliation.

"These actions are simply steps in the right direction, and do not
constitute a lasting solution," he says. "I definitely believe
that more can be done, and hopefully this
is in the process of being done."

[blackcrowheart]

President of Review steps down over cover
By Laura Glickman, The Dartmouth Senior Staff
Published on Thursday, January 11, 2007
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Kevin Hudak '07 will resign from his post as president of The Dartmouth Review, he announced at a staff meeting Monday.

His decision comes as a result of the cover on the newspaper's Nov. 28 issue, according to sources involved with The Review.

The cover, which triggered a rally outside Dartmouth Hall that attracted national news coverage, depicts a Native American holding a knife and scalp under the headline "The Natives are Getting Restless!"

Jeffrey Hart, the former chairman of The Review's Board of Directors and a retired Dartmouth professor, said he was initially surprised that Hudak resigned, but "retrospectively," was not.

"He felt that his opinion was not being really listened to," Hart said. "I think I would have done that myself.

"I don't find any great enthusiasm for returning to the Indian symbol or agitating about it. I mean it's gone, so who wants an argument about it?" he said.

"I didn't detect any great enthusiasm for the Indian symbol on their part or on much of the staff, so the offending cover was basically the job of the editor-in-chief."

Editor-in-chief Dan Linsalata '07 declined requests for an interview, but issued a statement praising Hudak for his contributions to The Review.

"While I am certainly sad to see him leave, I speak for many editors and staffers, past and present, in saying that we are greatly appreciative of his years of service to the paper," Linsalata wrote.

On Dec. 6, The Review posted a letter on its website that called printing the cover "a mistake," and noted that some staff members voiced reservations about it before going to print.

Managing editor Nicholas Desai '08 and associate editor Emily Ghods-Esfahani '09 -- who were also upset by the decision to publish the cover but will continue to work at The Review -- authored the statement.

"They felt that it was a needless controversy to get into and distracted attention from the serious journalism they wanted to do," Hart said of Hudak, Ghods-Esfahani and Desai.

Hudak declined requests for an interview and Ghods-Esfahani could not be reached by The Dartmouth.

Desai refused to be interviewed, but said many staffers "felt put off by the cover."

Hudak's resignation will become official once he submits a letter to The Review's Board of Directors.

[blackcrowheart]

Navajo Supreme Court to hear oral arguments at Dartmouth
Dartmouth College Office of Public Affairs • Press Release
Posted 01/17/07 • Genevieve Haas • [phone]

Dartmouth College and Vermont Law School are pleased to announce the Navajo Nation Supreme Court will hold oral arguments on one of its Winter term cases at Dartmouth College, Monday, February 12, 2007, in Cook Auditorium, at the Tuck School of Business. The event begins at 2:00 p.m. with a presentation by Vermont Law School Professor N. Bruce Duthu on the role of tribal courts within the American legal system. Supreme Court oral arguments will begin at 2:30 p.m. Both the presentation and the oral arguments are free and open to the public.

The case, Navajo Transport Services, Inc. v. Schroeder, concerns the authority of the Navajo courts to exercise judicial power over an off-reservation party for conduct that produces harmful effects on the reservation. The suit alleges that an off-reservation liquor store acted negligently in selling liquor to a tribal member whose intoxication contributed to a serious accident on the Navajo Reservation. The tribal district court in Kayenta dismissed the lawsuit on grounds that the court lacked jurisdiction over the liquor store. The appeal will be heard by the three Justices of the Navajo Nation Supreme Court, Chief Justice Herb Yazzie, and Associate Justices Lorene Ferguson and Irene Black, who normally hear cases in Window Rock, Arizona, the capital of the Navajo Nation.

According to Duthu, who teaches courses at both Dartmouth and Vermont Law School on Native Americans and the law, the Navajo Supreme Court has held previous formal hearings on the campuses of Harvard Law School and the University of Michigan School of Law. "American Indian tribes occupy a unique place in the United States legal system by virtue of their legal status as distinct governments. This event provides a rare opportunity for members of the general public to see and experience American Indian tribal sovereignty in action," says Duthu. "The Navajo Supreme Court works actively to help enhance our national literacy about tribal sovereignty. That broader community and national education plays a vital role in bringing about greater understanding and respect for tribal systems of justice."

Professor Colin Calloway, chair of the Native American studies department and one of the organizers for the event adds, "This is a great chance to see that when, in Native American studies, we talk about tribal sovereignty, we're not just talking about abstract theory. We'll be able to see how justice works in a Native America court. This is something that should be of interest to all students.”

The Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United States (after the Cherokee Nation) with more than a quarter of a million enrolled members.

Parking for members of the general public is available in the Dewey Parking Lot on the north end of the Dartmouth campus behind the Dartmouth Medical School. A shuttle bus provides regular service to the central campus, including to the Tuck Business School. For further information please contact Linda M. Welch at 603-646-3530 or N. Bruce Duthu.