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Despite the signage of 113 Euclid Ave. reading “Native Students Program,” Indigenous students who utilize its meeting room have to reserve it to avoid conflicts with Biology classes. A whiteboard in the room reads “la muerte,” left over from a Spanish class.

Syracuse University has turned the building designed to be a “home-away-from-home” for Indigenous students into an overflow space for other organizations and classes, its occupants say.

“I don’t think they’re gonna build us a space anytime soon, so we would just like this entire building to be ours,” Native Student Program Secretary and senior Viola Ieianerahsta Rourke said.

In response to #NotAgainSU in 2019, Indigenous students compiled a list of concerns within the Native Student Program. Nearly a year later, Chancellor Kent Syverud signed a document committing to address the concerns. But students in the program say they have seen very little progress on some actions SU has stated it completed.

“Our space kind of feels like we’re being pushed onto a tiny reservation again,” Rourke said.

To better reflect the students occupying the space, the council requested in 2019 that either the building be redesigned or a new building be designed by an Indigenous architect, Treasurer and SU senior Kalani Bankston said.

“Ideally we’d like for this whole building to be just completely redesigned for us by an Indigenous person,” said Yewelah^wi:se Cornelius, the program’s vice president.

According to SU’s website, renovations on 113 Euclid Ave. are complete, but Indigenous students have seen no renovations done by Indigenous people on the building. SU only updated the house to meet disability standards, occupants said.

“It’s frustrating when you hear these issues are resolved,” said SU senior Tehosterihens Deer, the program’s president. “It seems to be a trend with this university where they’ll say ‘we’ll take action, we’re gonna do this’ and then… you don’t hear anything.”

SU will meet with members of the Native Student Program on Oct. 14, the first meeting between the two groups since Syverud signed the concerns list. A university spokesperson said those in attendance will discuss advancing academic commitments made, faculty hiring and enhancements to 113 Euclid.

“We are looking forward to providing an update to our students on Friday and gathering their feedback for next steps/action items,” a university spokesperson wrote in an email to The Daily Orange. “We hope this conversation provides an opportunity to really strengthen our collaboration with our students as we move forward collectively to develop, refine and advance these plans and ideas.”

The council also argued in 2019 that the program needed more staff to support itself. However, SU lists the concern as “completed,” as it found its resources were either comparable to or exceeded similar programs on campus.

SU also reviewed the current staff at the Native Student Program and concluded that the additional two staff members requested by the council were not needed. Currently, new Director Bailey Tlachac works alongside the students, but has no staff to assist her as she previously held the only supporting role. Rourke said Tlachac often works 50 hours a week in addition to being a graduate student.

“We are looking to fill the role (Tlachac) vacated,” a university spokesperson wrote to The D.O.. “Ensuring appropriate staffing is a priority, and equally important is recruiting the right staff to meet the needs of our Indigenous students.”

Students in 2019 also called for SU to increase mental health resources made available to Indigenous students. Indigenous students asked the university to hire a minimum of two Indigenous mental health counselors.

The council said this concern was only partially addressed with the hiring of Diane Schenandoah as SU’s first Indigenous healer. The Native Student Program hopes to see this hiring pattern continued and asks that SU bring Schenandoah on full-time.

SU also hired a full time Indigenous therapist at the Barnes Center at The Arch. According to a university spokesperson, SU will continue to build cultural literacy for all of its counselors to better support Indigenous students and other minoritized communities.

Additionally, the council encouraged SU to include more information about the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Onondaga Nation in what is now the First Year Seminar program. SU said that resources regarding the Onondaga Nation are available via Blackboard and that professors and peer advisors receive regular information to share about events like Indigenous Peoples’ Day happening on campus.

The group also requested that SU set up a Haudenosaunee language course. According to SU, the course is offered through the College of Professional Studies, but without enough student interest, the class cannot be held.

The program also requested that the university create a fund for graduate students, yet SU has not announced anything regarding funding.

Indigneous students in 2019 also sought to update SU’s Land Acknowledgement statement, which is given at the start of every university event. The Land Acknowledgement was not created by Indigenous students or tribal members, and members of the program hoped to help rewrite it alongside a land acknowledgement committee to be more accurate to their values.

“I remember working on it and we had come to a point where we had a (reworked) paragraph and I don’t think they ever instituted that,” Cornelius said. “I remember it was a lot better than what it is now.”

The Native Student Program proposed that the community reflect on their relationship with the Onondaga Nation, all Indigenous people and the ancestral lands SU occupies in addition to honoring their relationships with all living beings.

The Land Acknowledgement was condensed without consent to a one-line statement acknowledging the ancestral lands SU resides on. Bankston said that the university was supposed to go to the Longhouse in Onondaga to work on the Land Acknowledgement with the community, but never did.

“They pretty much put all the work on the Native Student program and Indigenous students at Syracuse,” Bankston said. “They like to say they have a great relationship with the Onondaga Nation, but I think they haven’t proved that.”

The Native Student Program asked that the university actually implement the revised Land Acknowledgement.

Today, Indigenous students within the building are also concerned about security guards stationed near the building utilizing the Native Student Program building and resources, such as the kitchen and bathroom.

“(It feels) kind of degrading, honestly, because it’s like they don’t really respect us enough to realize that this is kind of our space,” Bankston said. “They kind of treat this as their break room.”

The current lounge, decorated with old posters and dried corn, is located in a small room on the first floor of the building. The room cannot fit all 160 members, and the Native Student Program hopes when renovations are made, a larger space will be provided for them to gather.

“It definitely feels like this building is not for us,” Bankston said.

Published on October 10, 2022 at 1:33 am

Contact Katie: ksmcclel@syr.edu | @katie_mcclellan