Turtle Talk

From the Mich. Daily:

Alys Alley, external co-chair of the Native American Student Association, is on a mission to spark dialogue among students about the obstacles minorities face on campus.

Alley, an LSA sophomore who is a member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, began this dialogue last Friday at an event called “Reflect, Remember, Regroup.” Alley led a discussion with about 20 University students in the multicultural lounge in South Quadrangle Residence Hall to talk about past and current cultural barriers for minority students.

Alley began the dialogue with a movie called “Fight Like Hell,” which describes the history of the controversy surrounding the campus senior society Michigamua, now officially called Order of Angell, to show the difficulties minority students and minority groups face on campus.

Order of Angell is a senior honor society formed in 1902. The society allegedly both used Native American artifacts as part of its proceedings, and members spoke in a dialect that mocked Native Americans during group meetings.

In 2007, Michigamua was renamed the Order of Angell and has since remained mostly secretive about its role on campus, though it now releases the names of its incoming members each year.

After the movie, Alley led the students in a talking circle — a Native American tradition for community building where everyone takes time to discuss how they feel about the issues at hand.

For some students at the event, this was the first time they had heard about the society. Most expressed shock and could not understand how something like Michigamua had existed and how they had not heard about the group before.

Other students expressed frustration that groups like Michigamua not only existed but also seemed to have been condoned by University administrators.

LSA senior Josh Voss, internal co-chair of the Native American Student Association and a member of the Chippewa tribe, said though Michigamua is now the Order of Angell and denies having any racial biases, he cannot forget what happened in the past.

“The racism of the past is never going to go away,” Voss said. “I know that my decision on coming to this University would have been a lot different if I had known about the Order of Angell and Michigamua and their history, and all of the issues with the Native American community.”

LSA senior Andrew Dalack, spokesman for the Order and former co-chair of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality told The Michigan Daily in April that the group aims to repair relationships with groups on campus that are upset by the society’s controversial past.

“We do not intend to dismiss the past; rather, we look forward to building and strengthening relationships with groups that are affected by certain aspects of the organization’s history,” Dalack wrote in an e-mail interview at the time.

At yesterday’s event, Voss also said that he felt minority issues are not stressed enough on campus, which makes it especially hard for Native Americans to feel connected with the rest of the community.

“The University says that this should be a place for diversity, and as a Native American, it’s really tough to take that message seriously,” Voss said.

LSA senior Gary Davis said he often feels issues of racism fly under the radar at the University.

“I’ve always felt that the University has not been supportive, or even sensitive, to the plight of students of color and the isolation and the incidents of race and bias and everything that goes on in the dorms, and even in the classrooms in most situations,” Davis said.

However, he said he believes that in order for change to alleviate racism, “something radical” needs to happen.

The students agreed that collaboration and conversations between diverse groups are necessary.

LSA sophomore Precious Jenkins, a member of the Black Student Union, said she could sympathize with many of the issues Native American students face on campus.

“I just think it’s important that we have these sit downs, and we get to watch the movies and have a forum and talk about it,” she said.

LSA junior Kati Lebioda, a member of the United Asian American Organizations, said “collaboration is the most important thing” students can do.

At the end of the meeting, Alley opened the discussion to anyone who had ideas to change racist views on campus.

Though the purpose of the meeting was to spark a dialogue, Alley said she hopes there will be ongoing discussion that eventually leads to a campus filled with students comfortable with diversity.

“I think that it’s really important that we keep the dialogue among our student groups and really work together in order to create institutional changes within the University,” Alley said.

While the discussion centered mostly around ways students and groups on campus could work together to deal with challenges that many minority students face on campus, the film focused on a past collaboration of student groups.

In February 2000, the Students of Color Coalition entered Michigamua’s office on the seventh floor of the Michigan Union and found the office was designed to look like a wigwam and held Native American artifacts, like headdresses, despite an agreement the society signed in 1989 to stop using Native American artifacts and rituals, according to the film.

In response, the SCC staged a protest to remove Michigamua from its office in the Union. After 37 days, the artifacts were removed and University administrators formed a panel to look into the issue. In July of that year, Michigamua vacated its office after the panel recommended that it leave the space, though it was never confirmed that the group used the artifacts for the purposes alleged by the SCC.