Native American center celebrates first year

Beyond the hustle and bustle of dorm life in Eigenmann Hall, two offices on the sixth floor are a reminder of America’s first inhabitants.\nThe First Nations Educational and Cultural Center, created for Native Americans, Native Hawaiians and Alaskan natives, will celebrate its one-year anniversary Friday. The event, which will include food and an awards presentation, will take place at 3 p.m. Saturday in the Indiana Memorial Union’s Georgian Room, said graduate student and First Nations Educational and Cultural Center board member Rebecca Riall. \nBut the members of the center aren’t finished trying to improve their surroundings. Although the Eigenmann offices are an improvement from the center’s first home, members said, the group still hopes to obtain a cultural center of its own one day. \nRiall said the center started off as an idea by some Native American students a couple of years ago.\nRiall said many first-year Native American students at IU left after their first year because they did not have the support of other Native American students who could relate to them culturally. Students from Native American backgrounds began to come together in order to support students who were from the same background, she said.\n“(Our) goal is that they can go to college and not give up their tribal life,” Riall said.\nAfter the organization’s belongings were destroyed in a flood, members decided to apply to for their own cultural center, Riall said. The organization was previously working out of the bottom of the Graduate House, she said. \nThe students still have not gotten a cultural house. Instead they have two offices on the sixth floor of Eigenmann Hall. Although the offices are an improvement, the current location still has its drawbacks, Riall said. She said it is hard to conduct meetings in such a small place. \nSophomore Nathen Steininger said the location is less than ideal because it is not as visible as the other centers.\nStieninger said he did not know about the center until a couple months ago. He said he found it through an exhibit at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures about Native Americans. \nSince then, Steininger said the center has been able to help him get the best of both worlds, being an IU student while still celebrating his cultural background.\n“I felt like if I came to this school I couldn’t be Native and a mainstream student,” Steininger said. \nRiall said the First Nations Cultural & Educational Center’s sense of community is critical for students to have in order to succeed at IU. \n“Community is so important to Native people,” Riall said. \nRiall and Steininger said the center created a Native American film series and a program where Native American high schoolers can come to visit IU. The two programs helped create a sense of community, they said. \nRiall also said the programs helped “show our reality” and broke stereotypes about Native Americans. \nRiall and Steininger said they would both like to see the center evolve to eventually have its own house and director. \nThe center has a difficult time organizing programs because the people in charge of the center are all students at IU, Riall said. \nDirector of the La Casa Latino Cultural Center Lillian Casillas, who Riall said helped put together some of the center’s programs, said a director would help take pressure off the students who organize all of the First Nations Educational & Cultural Center’s programs together. \nCharles Sykes, executive director of Multicultural Initiatives and director of the African American Arts Institute, said over the years other cultural centers on campus had to work up to what they are today. \nSykes said lack of funding is also why the First Nations Educational and Cultural Center does not have a director or a house. \n“I think what we have to do is look at the positive side of this,” Sykes said. “It represents the effort of IU to increase diversity on campus.”