Civil Rights trip explores American Indian culture

In the spring of 2010, junior Eli Major will escape the winter weather in Indiana and travel west to student teach on a Navajo reservation.

But on Thursday, Major and 50 others bundled up against the Indiana cold before traveling to Lawrence, Kan.

The annual Civil Rights Immersion trip, organized by the commUNITY education program in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, focused on the rights of American Indians and was the first civil-rights-related trip to another university. The bus filled with faculty, students and community members traveled to Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence and Cahokia Mounds in Collinsville, Ill.

“The best way to help folks understand present issues is by interacting with someone of their own age,” said Barry Magee, assistant director for diversity education and supervisor of the CUE program.

For Major, visiting another university was a chance to experience American Indian culture before going west for the first time next January. Haskell Indian Nations University grew from a former American Indian boarding school, and more than 120 different Indian nations are represented there, Magee said.

Graduate student Patrick Hale, a member of the CUE program, said he was interested in visiting Haskell and gaining a vivid account of American Indian culture.

Eigenmann community educator and sophomore Dylan Rudy said he wanted to learn the culture to help educate others, and he added most people don’t know the history of American Indians.

Magee said his goal was to come away with an understanding of current American Indian civil rights struggles and to connect their civil rights issues to the civil rights issues of other groups.

“Students often think of Native Americans as something out of a history book, and there is no context for where they are today,” Magee said.

Magee said he hoped the trip would be more interactive than past ones. Along with spending time with students at Haskell, the members of the trip attended Haskell men’s and women’s basketball games with children from the Prairie Band of the Potawatomi Nation.

“If we don’t know what other people go through, we can’t understand them,” Marilyn Cleveland said. Cleveland is involved with American Indian groups on campus and has taught American Indian beading at several universities, including IU.

Cleveland looked forward to learning more about her culture on the trip and also learning from the students.

Magee said members of the trip have an opportunity to interact with like-minded people from different walks of life who are passionate about the same issues and want to discuss them on a deeper level.

“Civil rights are important and allow people to see human struggles,” Hale said.

The idea to visit Haskell University stemmed from discussion after the 2008 trip. The group wanted to do something different, Magee said, because most people think of civil rights as the struggle of black Americans, but civil rights are for all people.
Hale said the trip would be stimulating and would allow him to explore an identity.

Senior Candice Williams, a member of the Ashton CUE, added that she went on the trip because Martin Luther King Jr. Day is about both celebration and awareness.
“I think every day should be like MLK Day,” Williams said.