Native American Day observations planned at DSU

October 9, 2020

The Native American Student Association of Dakota State University (DSU NASA) has planned several experiences in honor of Native American Day, Monday, October 12.

Because classes will be in session on Native American Day this year, there is an opportunity to provide meaningful programming that will benefit students. The group hopes this will be the beginning of an annual event that will grow every year with more tribes, traditions, and lives being acknowledged in the same way American culture and people are acknowledged.

“Learn from the past and move forward; don’t forget or deny it.” said DSU NASA treasurer, Nathan His Law. “We are not a myth; we are the reality of the past,” he said. His Law is a computer science major from Chamberlain, S.D.

DSU NASA, with the support of DSU’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee, has organized the following experiences:

• The advertising monitors across campus will continuously scroll the names of the 574 federally recognized tribes in the USA, to honor the indigenous people of the current day.
• Sodexo, Dakota State’s food service vendor, will provide a noon meal menu that will include foods with traditional ingredients, plus the famous “post-colonialist twist” of frybread tacos.
• In the evening (weather permitting) Heston Hall will be illuminated in black, white, red, and yellow, the colors which represent the four directions.