Native American Alumni of Harvard University

​2017 Annual meeting debrief

The few, the proud, the undaunted met together in Cambridge for a NAAHU summit...

A small group of Harvard Native alumni met in Cambridge on the last weekend of April for our 2017 NAAHU Annual Meeting. We made progress on several fronts, and we are genuinely interested in actively partnering with alumni who would like to participate in our incipient mentorship program and who wish to re-engage with NAAHU and the collective action that we could undertake together. Pictured left, you will see that we honored Dennis Norman (front, second from right) with the 2017 Fire Keeper Award for his many years of service and dedication to HUNAP and for his ongoing efforts as HUNAP Faculty Chair on behalf of indigenous students and faculty development at Harvard. We also honored student Native Americans at Harvard College leaders Damon Clark '17 and Kaipo Matsumoto '17 at our Awards Banquet. We'll be cheering you on in your future endeavors, NAHC graduates!

During our annual meeting, we discussed the perennial issue of how we can improve Indigenous student experiences at Harvard. Emily R. Van Dyke (Siksika), NAAHU President, had an encouraging meeting with Philip Lovejoy, Executive Director of Harvard Alumni Association, who stated that he would advocate for Harvard Native alumni membership on several relevant active committees at Harvard, including the Provost's Advisory Council, and that he would investigate any pending Harvard University response to the 12/21/16 Wampanoag Joint Resolution. We also got closer to establishing our 501c3 status with the goal of soliciting targeted donations for our inaugural Summer Community Service Fellowship in honor of Duane Clarence Meat '05-'07, who was fatally shot in Minneapolis at the age of 24 while on leave from an insufficiently indigenized and therefore not sufficiently hospitable Harvard. Our Harvard Native alumni and students have infinite potential; we will continue to use our resilience, professionalism, brilliance, and persistence (to borrow from the 2017 Harvard Powwow theme) to continue to encourage Harvard to show true leadership with respect to the support and retention of Native students and the active recruitment of Native faculty. We would also like to honor and acknowledge all the hard work  from NAHC and HUNAP staff that went into making the 2017 Harvard Powwow such a success!