Behind the law library and the Global Scholars Hall at the southeast corner of campus, surrounded by standard university buildings, is a wooden sanctuary of culture. The wooden structure with a grassy rooftop looks out of place amidst the modern buildings. Inside, the architectural magnificence rivals the most beautiful buildings on campus.
The Many Nations Longhouse may not mean much to most who walk by every day, but for many Native American students and faculty, it means everything.
The University of Oregon is a leader in Native American representation on campus, according to Jason Younker. The longhouse and tribal flags in the EMU amphitheater are a major part of that.
Younker works in administration at the UO as an assistant vice president and advisor to the president. Unofficially, he’s known as the campus tribal liaison.
“Having a longhouse on campus is extremely important, that’s like the embassy for all the tribal governments,” said Younker.
The longhouse has traditionally been an important structure for Native Americans; often it is the center of community within a tribe.
In the late 1960s, the Native American community in Eugene requested a space from the university to gather and practice their traditions. UO gave them a “temporary” space — a decrepit World War II barracks that remained their only community center for nearly 40 years. The current longhouse was built in 2005.
The longhouse is home to the Native American Student Union.
NASU is an organization of Native American students from a number of tribes. About 30 Native American students attend the meetings regularly. UO reports 162 American Indian and Alaska Native students enrolled in Fall 2014.
The longhouse is more than a meeting place. It represents the idea that Native Americans have a place in higher education.
“When I went to undergraduate school I didn’t know any Native Americans. I didn’t see anybody that looked like me. And that’s a very lonely feeling.” Younker said.
It wasn’t until he went to graduate school at Oklahoma City that he found a Native American community, and his grade-point average jumped by two points.
“I didn’t feel lonely anymore. I wasn’t studying in isolation,” he said.
CC Wright is one of the co-directors of NASU. She’s a member of the Klamath Tribe and grew up in Chiloquin, a small town in southern Oregon that resides on the land that belonged to her tribe before their reservation was taken from them.
Many of the Native American youths in Chiloquin didn’t think education was important, and many dropped out before graduating high school.
But Wright fought against this mentality.
“I can remember from a very young age wanting to go to college and believing I was going to college,” Wright said.
For Wright, finding NASU at the UO was a way to make that transition easier.
Wright also realizes the opportunity that she has to take her newfound knowledge and education back to Chiloquin.
“Not sharing that with my community would be a huge disservice to them. Even if they don’t accept it, I’m going to try. Because that’s important to me,” Wright said.
Wright is not the only Native American student at the UO who plans to return home. They all have different motivations, but the underlying idea is the same for many: they have a responsibility.
“In an ideal world I’d go back and live in the village and catch fish all day,” said Meghan Siġvanna Topkok, a Native Alaskan and a law student at the UO. “But that’s just not possible.”
Topkok has a desire to take her knowledge of the law back north in order to better her community. Alaska may need it — only one reservation remains in the massive northern state.
But Topkok struggled when she first came to the UO. In law school, she’s expected to put herself in the spotlight and argue for the sake of arguing. Ideas that directly oppose the ones she was raised with.
“We have to walk in two worlds,” she said “Be that person that can navigate between our traditional community values and upbringings and also the Western World.”
Younker is adamant: Native Americans coming to higher education is a good thing. Even if they don’t directly take that knowledge back to the reservation, just taking that learning out into the world is important, too.
“One thing people don’t realize about culture is that it is ever-adapting to the environment in which you live.” Younker said. “It’s not a step back if you change to adapt to the environment — it’s a step back if you don’t.”
Besides the practical benefits of university, educated Native Americans are also crucial role models for Native youths.
“It really meant that I had a responsibility. And that responsibility meant at times that I had to do things I didn’t want to do,” said Muriel Miguel.
Miguel and her sisters founded Spiderwoman Theater, a New York-based Native American theater company, maybe the most prominent in the nation. In mid-May she spent a week at the UO, teaching workshops and visiting the longhouse. Her years in theater taught her how important representation was for Native Americans.
“Three little girls came up to us. Three really little girls … and the mother said ‘You know, this is the first time they’ve ever seen brown women on stage acting,’” Miguel reminisced fondly on this moment. “At that point it clicked in my mind that we were role models.”
Representation, or its absence, can have a huge impact on the lives of young Native students.
Lorraine Goggles, another co-director at NASU, described her struggle with coming to Oregon from high school – a distinct shift in faculty demographics from the reservation schools.
“I went and I was the only person of color at all,” Goggles said. “It was a fish out of water type situation.”
Finding NASU provided a community as well as a way to stay connected with her cultural traditions.
“To have that representation is really crucial so ideas don’t get forgotten, things don’t get lost,” she said.
One thing is certain – Native ties are strong. Without them, Native students suffer.
“This longhouse is a big step in the right direction,” said Chance White Eyes, a fourth year doctoral student researching why few Native American students make it to higher education.
“NASU as a group, in my opinion, really serves two major purposes. One, is so that Native American students who come here from a tribe that may not be heavily represented, which happens a lot, know that they’re not alone in this space,” White-Eyes said. “Two, so that this institution knows that we’re not gone.”
It may not be apparent what the longhouse represents from the outside. But inside, with the towering ceiling and massive wooden rafters, there’s an inherent sense of something larger. A sense of progress.
But there’s always work to be done. Younker has high hopes.
“I dream that someday the UO will have Native American alum in every single one of the 566 tribes,” Younker said. “I dream of that day.”