From
Diverse Online
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American Indians Get
Apology from
By Associated Press
Nov 30, 2006, 05:33
The president of
In an e-mail sent to students, President James Wright urged students
to do more to make the university a welcoming and respectful place.
“They are members of this community ... they are your
classmates and your friends,” Wright wrote of the American Indian
students. “And they deserve more and better than to be abstracted as
symbols and playthings.”
The American Indian Council, a group made up of faculty, staff and
a few students, took out an advertisement in the student newspaper describing a
troubling series of events.
According to the ad, fraternity pledges disrupted an American
Indian drumming circle on Columbus Day, and earlier this month, the crew team
held a “Cowboys and Indians” theme party. Team captains later
apologized.
Though the school discontinued its unofficial American Indian
mascot in the 1970s, some students and alumni have continued to use it. The Dartmouth Review, a conservative,
independent student newspaper, gave incoming freshmen T-shirts featuring the
symbol. And at Homecoming, at least one
The ad also expressed concern about a dining hall mural painted in
the 1930s depicting the school’s founding. It shows one American Indian
holding a book upside down and another lapping rum from the ground. The mural,
which has been covered for years and is to be removed during renovations, will
be preserved at the school’s art museum.
“I really feel like the college does not care enough about
Native students,” says Samuel Kohn, a sophomore who is from
In 1970,
The school has an office dedicated to working with American Indian
students, and offers an American Indian studies program. Wright says he is
considering other ways to address the problems, such as speaking in greater
depth at freshman orientation about the school’s history with American
Indians.
— Associated Press
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