Harvard Affiliates Celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day with Dances, Raffle, and Speeches

Roughly two dozen Harvard students and faculty gathered at Harvard Hall on Monday to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day, participating in traditional dances and listening to speeches about fostering Indigenous culture.

The event, hosted by Natives at Harvard College and the Harvard University Native American Program, featured fry bread for attendees, a raffle with prizes like hand-crafted Native American jewelry, and a range of performances, including a performance of the hula, a traditional Hawaiian dance.

“These are cultural practices which have survived through legal prohibition, active government persecutions and all manners of attempted eradication, and so they are embodied symbols of Indigenous resilience against those practices,” said Gavin G. Zempel, a student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and member of the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Minnesota.

Indigenous Peoples Day has been celebrated at Harvard since the early 2000s. Harvard first recognized Indigenous Peoples Day in 2017, after the City of Cambridge decided to rename the holiday from Columbus Day a year before.

The annual celebration typically takes place in Harvard Yard, just outside the freshman dorm Matthews Hall. But given the rain on Monday, this year’s celebration was moved indoors into Harvard Hall.

All the proceeds from the event went towards “supporting Indigenous undergraduates,” according to an Instagram post by Natives at Harvard College.

At the event, Kaeo P. Yuen ’28, the co-president of the Hawaii Club who is native Hawaiian, performed the traditional Hawaiian dance alongside several fellow student members of the organization. Students from Brown University and Cornell University also joined the performance.

Toward the end of the celebration, attendees were invited to join a women’s jingle dress dance or round dance, both traditional Native American dances performed by tribes across the country.

The celebration also featured addresses by guest speakers, including George E. “Tink” Tinker, a renowned American Indian scholar of the Osage Nation, and Jean-Luc Pierite of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, the president of the North American Indian Center of Boston.

Therese Lautua, a College Fellow in the Committee on the Study of Religion who has Samoan heritage, discussed the importance of preserving the environment and fostering connections between Indigenous peoples — especially around the issue of climate change.

“Solidarity with Indigenous peoples around the world for protection of our land and our oceanscapes is one of our most important points of spiritual connection,” said Lautua, who is of Samoan descent.

Several attendees also brought signs to the celebration proclaiming support for Indigenous peoples, with messages including “Celebrate Indigenous Resilience!” and “Abolish Columbus Day.”

In an interview after the event, Yuen said that it was important to celebrate the holiday as Indigenous Peoples Day, not Columbus Day, because of Christopher Columbus’ role in colonizing the Americas and displacing and harming Native American peoples.

“The people who celebrate Columbus, who celebrate colonialism, they’re just contributing to the harm that hurt our people, our ancestors, our traditional works, and all the blood and work that we’ve put into the land that we’ve put into community,” Yuen said.

—Staff writer Alexander W. Anoma can be reached at alexander.anoma@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @AnomaAlexander.

—Staff writer Chantel A. De Jesus can be reached at chantel.dejesus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @c_a_dejesus.