Celebrating Native American Heritage Month in November

Three on-campus events will commemorate Native American Heritage Month in November, commencing with the free 5 p.m. kickoff event on Nov. 1 with Fort River, an intertribal powwow drum group who will perform in the 1941 Room in the College Center at Crozier-Williams. The public is invited to all three events.

Fort River is an intertribal powwow drum group comprised of singers from various U.S. Native American (U.S.) and First Nations (Canada) tribes and nations. The group members come from varying aboriginal cultural backgrounds and will share songs reflective of their own cultural backgrounds as well as songs from other indigenous nations. A short discussion about the drum and the songs will accompany the performance and a Q&A session will be provided by some of the singers, who include, among others, Justin Beatty, Drum Keeper/ Lead Singer (Ojibwe/ Saponi); Jon Hill (Cherokee); Anthony Melting Tallow (Blackfeet); Hailu Dyami (Apache); and Mish Conley (Narragansett).

On Friday, Nov. 11, OnStage presents ETHEL with Robert Mirabal: ‘The River’ beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Evans Hall. Three-time GRAMMY award winner Robert Mirabal is a Native American flutist and instrument builder. Tickets are $22; seniors, $20; students, $11; Connecticut College students, $7; and Connecticut College faculty and staff, $20 (General Admission).
Tickets may be purchased online.

On Tuesday, Nov. 15, an event titled “Ninniwonk: We Belong to the Land,” will include a reading of the book “Finding Balance” by Deborah Spears Moorehead, a descendant of Massasoit from the Seaconke Pokanoket Wampagnoag Nation. The event begins at 4:30 p.m. in the Charles Chu Room of Charles E. Shain Library and is free and open to the public.

Native American Heritage Month events are sponsored by the Student Activities Council (SAC), the Division of Institutional Equity and Inclusion, Community Partnerships, the Department of Religious Studies, Office of Student Engagement, the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), the Music Department, and Unity House.

For more information, contact Jennifer Nival, jnival@conncoll.edu, assistant director of Unity House Multicultural Center. 

As a part of Native American Heritage Month observations, the College is also offering transportation to those students who sign up to attend Pow Wow, a Native American festival with dancing, food and singing at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum on Nov. 5.



October 26, 2016