Native American Heritage Month, observed in the United States each November since 1990, celebrates American Indian cultures, traditions, and histories, acknowledges the contributions of Indigenous people to American society, and raises awareness about issues impacting Native America, historically and today.
LMU first celebrated Native American Heritage Month in 2021. Coordinated by the Indigenous Working Group – faculty, staff, and students under the leadership of LMU’s Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – it included columns on Indigenous issues in LMU This Week, an Indigenous Community Hub website to highlight Indigenous resources at LMU, and on-campus programming featuring Indigenous speakers to facilitate conversation. IWG members also developed a land acknowledgement now used at major university events.
These were important steps for a university founded on the unceded lands of the Tongva peoples that has over the years been home to Native students and faculty and staff committed to Indigenous issues, but which has never developed more comprehensive and lasting initiatives toward, investments in, or partnerships with Indigenous peoples and communities.
Native American Heritage Month is upon us again. Following a series of discussions, the Indigenous Working Group takes this opportunity to call for LMU to build on its past work but to go much further: We argue it is time to Indigenize LMU.
What does it mean to Indigenize LMU?
Indigenizing LMU means foregrounding an Indigenous perspective throughout our campus. Informed by the history of colonial violence and Indigenous survivance, it highlights the Indigenous present and supports an Indigenous future. It is in contrast to a long history of physical and cultural genocide, omission, erasure, and denial that is at the foundation of settler colonial projects throughout the world.
What does it look like to Indigenize LMU?
We can indigenize LMU by reckoning with our own history as a Catholic institution implicated in the history of settler colonialism, a project best carried out with the expertise of our faculty, in consultation with an Indigenous Advisory Board composed of community members, and benefiting from the models provided by other institutions grappling with their difficult histories, including Jesuit universities.
We can indigenize LMU by increased outreach to Indigenous students, from California, across the nation, and around the world, to diversify the student body, bring Indigenous perspectives into the classroom, and serve Indigenous peoples and communities. This also means providing services tailored to Indigenous students and creating and supporting an Indigenous Student Association whose concerns are taken seriously.
We can indigenize LMU’s curriculum by recruiting faculty and designing courses that work towards the establishment of an Indigenous Studies program. Many faculty currently teach Indigenous issues through the lens of their specific disciplines, including Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies, history, journalism, linguistics, literature, theological studies, and women’s and gender studies, among others. By coordinating these classes, encouraging the development of additional courses, and bringing in more faculty, including Indigenous scholars, we can create a vibrant Indigenous Studies curriculum robustly supported by library and other campus resources. An annual Indigenous Issues speaker series would further invigorate our engagement of Indigenous issues on campus.
We can indigenize the physical structure of our campus to invoke an Indigenous past, present, and future. This is already underway, with the work being done by LMU’s Center for Urban Resilience in Discovery Park and efforts to redesign the University Hall display cases, two projects that need continued support. The Tongva Memorial, a meaningful space established in response to Playa Vista’s desecration of Tongva graves, should be redesigned to reflect Tongva resilience and their ongoing connections to the land. In other places throughout campus, native plants and art installations can help transform our campus environment.
During Native American Heritage Month, on this 50th anniversary of the Loyola and Marymount merger, we can reflect on the numerous ways that LMU has lived up to its core values of encouraging learning, educating the whole person, and serving faith and promoting justice, to ignite a better world for Indigenous people. Guided by these values, let’s build on the work we have done and Indigenize LMU.
