Opinion: ASUO’s flagrant disregard of the UO Indigenous community needs to stop
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On March 5, the Native American Student Union released a statement on its social media condemning the fact that the Associated Students of the University of Oregon has scheduled a concert on the same day as the Mother’s Day Powwow for the second year in a row.
“I think my first reaction and reaction still is I was disappointed, but not surprised,” Tiera Garrety, a co-director of NASU, said. “ASUO’s actions time and time again show that they don’t give much thought to the other organizations around them.”
NASU describes the Powwow as “the most important indigenous cultural event of the year.” This year will mark its 56th anniversary, making it the single longest-running event on campus and longest student-run powwow in the country.
The powwow is a several-day celebration honoring mothers, native educators and graduating seniors with traditional ceremonies, dances and a salmon bake. It draws in attendees from around Eugene and the region as a whole, providing a gathering space for many different Pacific Northwest Indigenous communities. By scheduling another large event at the same time, Garrety said ASUO is causing them “direct harm.”
“I’ve gone to other powwows in the middle of Montana where I say I’m a UO student and they say ‘Oh I’ve heard about your powwow,’” Garrety said. “This isn’t just something that impacts the community here, but Indigenous communities all across North America.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time ASUO has mistreated NASU. Last year, it planned to slash NASU’s budget in half due to NASU missing certain budget deadlines the year before.
“The budgeting process has everything to do with what’s going on with the concert,” Garrety said.
It was a thoughtless and cruel decision that ignored the struggles NASU and its members had during the COVID-19 pandemic. Indigenous communities were some of the most impacted by COVID-19 in the entire country. A Princeton study found that Native Americans had a COVID-19 mortality rate that was 2.8 times higher than white Americans. This is due to the long-standing structural racism and adverse socioeconomic factors in the U.S. that Indigenous people face. With its carelessness, ASUO dismissed all of this, holding a minority student group to unreasonable standards.
At the Jan. 17, 2023 financial council meeting that decided NASU’s budgeting fate, the community packed the room. ASUO then blamed the budgeting decision on its leadership from the year before, who have since graduated. This time, ASUO members don’t have that excuse.
“In terms of the broader scope, this powwow isn’t just an event where we come together and have fun and celebrate who we are,” Garrety said. ”It’s an event to show the kids that come that despite all the narratives they may hear from oppressive forces they don’t belong in education, they do belong in education.”
There’s also an event at the powwow to honor missing and murdered Indigenous women. Indigenous women face incredibly high rates of violence and murder. Due to deliberate incompetence from the government and law enforcement agencies, few of them receive justice. Per the CDC, murder is the third leading cause of death for Indigenous women and most of these are committed by non-Native people on Native-owned land. This is yet another reason why the powwow is so significant. It gives space to mourn those lost and raise awareness about the issue as a whole.
“They need to ensure that the weekend of Mother’s Day is a protected date where no ASUO function can occur,” Garrety said.
The ASUO concert is being paid for with money from the surplus fund, which is made up of all the unused money under ASUO’s control from the I-fee all students pay in their tuition. The fund is larger than it’s been in the past due to student organizations having lower attendance rates during the pandemic and not being able to hold in-person events.
It was money originally meant for student organizations and instead of giving it back to them, ASUO feels the need to organize a $350,000 concert. While surplus money is available for student groups to request, ASUO holds the final say on its uses. While ASUO can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars whenever it would like, NASU has to fundraise to hold the powwow, causing the group further financial stress.
Indigenous students make up just 0.6% of UO’s student body, and they have to fight for every resource they have. ASUO clearly puts its own interests and vanity ahead of the well-being of organizations run by students of color, and it needs to do a lot better.
“What we appreciate as support is not perpetuating extractive relationships and being in community with us the whole year, not just November,” Garrety said. “We pride and honor ourselves in building relationships with people.”