Sweetgrass Society plans outreach

A month after racial tensions at Montana State University-Northern gained  statewide media attention, Northern’s Sweetgrass Society is looking for input and ideas about what can be done to bring about healing on campus and in the broader community.

“Right now we are just looking for input, what we can do in the future,” Mia  Lamebull, a Northern student and member of the Sweetgrass society, said at a meeting last week.

Lamebull said the  meeting was also meant  to generate ideas for what suggestions they could put forth to Northern’s chancellor when they hope to meet him. No such meeting has yet been scheduled.

Lamebull said the group wants “to be treated like the Americans we are.”

The effort comes after students became upset about students making racial comments on campus and how the administration handled the comments and their concerns.

Members of the Sweetgrass Society some campus faculty and people within nearby communities say they think the administration handled the situation poorly, and  is part of  a culture of institutional racism at Northern.

“If a kid said, ‘Let’s kill all the people at Tillemans’, how is that any different and would the response be any different?” Kristiny Lorett, a school counselor at  the schools at Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation school system  asked at the meeting. “And that is where I think it would be concerning, when you have different responses for different groups of people.”

Lorett said she finds it troublesome a student could be excluded from classes but still be allowed to remain on a sports team.

Lorett said Northern needs to put in place policies that address cultural awareness on campus and have procedures in place to deal with situations that arise such as the one that happened in April. She said an example is if students are verbally assaulted, they and faculty should know what the procedure is to deal with it. Right now, there are no explicit and policies that deal with that at Northern unlike Montana State University in Bozeman, she said.

“Bozeman has all these built-in policies and procedures, it would be easy for Northern to adopt these things that are already occurring,” Lorett said.

Since they are successful at Bozeman and Northern is a part of the Montana University system, adopting them would be easy to do, she said.

She said that right now, Northern is making up procedures arbitrarily, whereas if there was a clear policy in place, the administration would have to follow it, and if they don’t they can be called out on it.

Mia Lamebull’s father, Mike Lamebull, said he has watched the situation at Northern as it relates to Native Americans since he was a student about 25 years ago. He said that despite Northern’s large Native American student population, they are not well-represented on campus.

“There are 14 percent Native American students here, what is the percentage of native faculty?  Do they actually seek out native people to fill some of these positions?” he asked.

He said there is a similar problem with the student senate. Lamebull said there should be at least two seats on the student senate set aside for Native Americans.

Lorett said Northern, Aaniiih Nakoda College on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation and Stone Child College at the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation should consider a faculty exchange program. Under such a program, a Northern faculty member could teach at either of the two tribal colleges for a semester, while a faculty member from the tribal colleges could teach at one of the tribal colleges.

How the Sweetgrass Society and the Little River Institute can reach out to the broader community was also discussed.

Lorett said she has talked to many non-native students who would like to support their Native classmates but don’t know how to go about doing so.

Alyssa Horn, who lives on Fort Belknap, suggested the Sweetgrass Society and the Little River Institute should maybe think about hosting an open house or some kind of event where they can interact with the broader community.

Brandy King, a military veteran who lives on Fort Belknap, said she takes part in the One Heart, One Spirit Healing Ride, an annual horseback ride  from Fort Belknap to Fort Peck. The ride is meant as therapy for veterans with PTSD or people who battle addiction. She said last year the Montana Highway Patrol in Glasgow were their escort on the ride. King said some law enforcement officers who had their day off or finished their shift, rode alongside them.

“To me, that was a good first step in recovering that relationship, building that trust again between law enforcement and native communities,” she said.

King added that people who are not Natives often have misconceptions about how Natives  live. King said military personnel stationed overseas are sometimes invited into the homes of people within that country. She said it helps break down cultural barriers.

“Just bring them to your house, say ‘come over,’” King said.