Multicultural Programming

For more information on the co-curricular programs, please email lbissoondial@worcester.edu

Worcester State University Indigenous Peoples Heritage Month

Worcester State University celebrates Indigenous Peoples Heritage Month by creating awareness around Native culture, heritage and enhancing the visibility of our native community on campus and within the Worcester community. It is important that we understand the longstanding history that has brought us to reside on native land. It is our responsibility to seek to understand our place in history with it. The acknowledgement of whose land we stand on. Land Acknowledgements do not exists in the past tense or only in historical context. It needs to be a mindful, operational standpoint of our present participation. Let us acknowledge that we are all immigrants with exception noted on Indigenous Land.

One small step toward a more just society is acknowledging and naming the wrongs that have been done in the past and woven into our life together today, but are too often erased from our view. Therefore, with deep respect, we acknowledge that we are here today on the ancestral land of the Indigenous people of the Nipmuc and Wampanoag nations. We acknowledge the painful history of genocide, slavery, and forcible relocation onto reservations. We are an agent and ally to assist in the awareness and reclamation efforts.

History & Establishment of Indigenous Peoples Heritage

“One of the very [first] proponents of an American Indian Day was Dr. Arthur C. Parker, a Seneca Indian, who was the director of the Museum of Arts and Science in Rochester, N.Y. He persuaded the Boy Scouts of America to set aside a day for the “First Americans” and for three years they adopted such a day. In 1915, the annual Congress of the American Indian Association…directed its president, Rev. Sherman Coolidge, an Arapahoe, to …[declare] the second Saturday of each May as an American Indian Day and contained the first formal appeal for recognition of Indians as citizens. The first American Indian Day in a state was declared on the second Saturday in May 1916 by the governor of New York. Several states celebrate the fourth Friday in September. In 1990 President George H. W. Bush approved a joint resolution designating November 1990 “National American Indian Heritage Month.” Similar proclamations, under variants on the name (including “Native American Heritage Month” and “National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month”) have been issued each year since 1994.”
Library of Congress