When did you first become interested in learning about the Indigenous experience?

“Honestly, I think there is a long term and short term answer to that question.  I was raised on a TV diet of early American Western series that included the likes of F-Troop, Bonanza and reruns of The Lone Ranger.  I was amazed as I chased myself down an endless rabbit hole driven by this reawakened curiosity how often the trail led me to the cinematic mis-representations and even romanticizing of the early relationships between our Native Americans and the American cowboy, settler, and pioneer.  The current catalyst for my reawakening seems to exist in a confluence of sparks and experiences.  During my very first weeks at Sacred Heart, I learned of our long standing relationship with Pine Ridge and the Oglala Lakota.  As the world was slowly emerging from the pandemic, the higher education landscape was also wrestling with tremendous issues of inequity, lack of access and diminishing diversity.  College counselors spend a remarkable amount of time connecting with, participating in, and listening to programming from college admissions partners.  In these virtual Zoom spaces, I caught wind of the emergent trend of colleges initiating every presentation with their institutional land acknowledgement statement.  Almost immediately, this drove me to ponder and explore the ancestral history of 1177 King Street.  It was a quiet, personal investigation that over the next 18 months shaped-shifted and morphed into a Sacred Heart Network Summer Service and Learning Workshop, The Land on Which We Stand: An Examination of the Indigenous Experience.”

Why do you think that it is important to recognize different perspectives of the native experience and the impact of United States expansion?

“The art of civil discourse challenges us to entertain and validate the existence of opinions, perspectives and, in this case, truths that may exist in contrast to and conflict with our own.  We know that the formation of our nation was neither smooth nor pretty.  Native Americans were not the only people exploited, impinged upon, and regulated in the Ages of Discovery, Colonialism, and Expansion.  Yet, many of the ugliest truths of the indigenous experience have been short changed if not altogether omitted from our learning.  To be socially aware of the additional sides of the story is not to cancel what we have learned, but to broaden that lens that widens our perspective.  If such learning impels one to act or even want to learn more, we see Goal III in action.”

What do you think everyone can do to become more informed and develop broader perspectives?

“Questioning what one knows can often lead to discovery of that which one does not know.  Perhaps keeping the ‘why’ question at the center of our pursuits for knowledge is a tool to broaden perspective.  Living in the ‘why’ are also the dynamics of cause and effect or impact.  Along my personal road to learning, sometimes the ‘why’ leapt off my ragged notes, pages and screens like a magnificent, modern day cyber graphic puzzle coming together.  Sometimes this evoked an aha moment.  Sometimes there was anger.  Many times there were tears.  Mostly there was fresh understanding that propelled me forward.”