Native American Heritage Month coming to an end

By Gus Bode

Native American Heritage Month ends today after a successful lineup of events, said Carl Ervin, coordinator of Student Development.

Closing ceremonies will be held at 5 p.m. today in the Missouri Room of the Student Center. They include a slideshow of a mission trip to the Rocky Boy reservation in Montana by Melissa Haithcox, a graduate student in health services.

The group worked with Chippewa and Cree children and were particularly interested in studying the lifestyle on the reservation, said Chesaree Rollins, a graduate assistant in human resources and development.

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Haithcox will return to the reservation in the spring and hopes to take SIUC students with her, Rollins said.

More people attended each event than was anticipated, Ervin said.

Participation in each event has averaged about 20 to 30 people, said Robert Alcala, a graduate student studying accounting who helped coordinate the events. The best attended event, Taleypo the Storyteller telling “Mother Earth:Father Sky,” drew a crowd of about 300.

Event attendees gave positive feedback on the month and already have expressed interest in helping plan for next year, Alcala said.

Tuesday night’s event drew about 80 people, filling the Illinois Room in the Student Center with latecomers sitting on the floor. The high attendance was nearly double what they had expected, Ervin said.

William Iseminger, assistant site manager for Cahokia Mounds State Historic site and 1971 SIUC alumnus, told the audience how the Native Americans used astronomy. He focused on Cahokia Mounds, located near St. Louis and the only prehistoric Indian city north of Mexico.

Astronomy as practiced by Native Americans was highlighted because it is not a well-known aspect of Native American culture, Ervin said.

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“We’re looking to find out things we didn’t know about those cultures,” Ervin said. “It’s kind of curious. You want to find out about people and their culture and world views.”

Iseminger said astronomy was an important aspect of Native American culture that has been somewhat lost to history because the prehistoric people who developed it, such as those who made there home at Cahokia Mounds, are no longer in existence.

Native American civilizations developed different devices to track the movement of celestial bodies. Consistent tracked movements were used to establish calendars, Iseminger said.

“People have always kept track of time in some way,” Iseminger said. “Things in nature that are consistent are basically things in the sky.”

Religious activities were often timed by the calendars, he said.

“Religious activities were connected to everything,” Iseminger said. “They didn’t separate church and state back then.”

Ervin said the event also was selected to help showcase Native American history and awareness of other cultures in general.

Awareness was not as common when he was a student here, Iseminger said.

“When I was here is when they started doing Afro-American studies,” Iseminger said. “At that time, there wasn’t very much done with Native American studies.”

Reporter Katie Pennell can be reached at [email protected].

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