“You can’t just make our trauma your porn,” Tiera Garrety, co-director of the Native American Student Union, said. “We are so much more than just the grief that you assign us. We are joy, we are love, we are happiness.”
On May 10, that joy and happiness was on full display at McArthur Court, as dancers filled the floor to celebrate NASU’s 56th Annual Mother’s Day Powwow at the University of Oregon.
It was a markedly different scene two months earlier, when NASU members packed an ASUO Senate meeting to denounce the student government for scheduling its Spring concert on the same day as NASU’s Powwow.
ASUO found itself in the same situation a year prior, and in the months that followed, its top leaders had vowed not to do so again.
Daily Emerald interviews with ASUO and NASU show the misstep was the result of miscommunication, a lack of oversight by ASUO’s top leaders and problems during last year’s transition between student government administrations.
Ultimately, out of the controversy came something of a happy ending, with ASUO unanimously passing a formal resolution on May 16, ensuring ASUO will not schedule an event during Mother’s Day weekend, the traditional date of NASU’s annual powwow and signaling its respect for Native traditions.
“Powwow is where we’re allowed to be who we are and express our feelings and how we are doing through dance,” Keyen Singer, another co-director of NASU said. “I’d call Powwow home for me, because when I’m stressed from school, or I’m stressed about anything, I can turn to Powwow.”
ASUO’s new resolution states that “there is not a moment of rest for Indigenous leaders, organizers, and people while at the University of Oregon because of the actions of ASUO and administration.”
It also attempts to mend the historically oppressive relationship the student government had with NASU.
Since 1969, NASU has been experiencing budget cuts from ASUO and has not gone a single year since then where they did not experience a decrease in funding from ASUO, according to the resolution. In February of 2023, NASU’s budget was cut by 50% by ASUO.
The resolution wasn’t drawn up overnight, and it only came after members of NASU and supporters packed a March 13 senate meeting, demanding for change.
A year of neglect in the making
“I could not believe that the concert was scheduled on the same day as the Powwow again,” former ASUO President Chloé Webster said.
But the members of NASU weren’t as surprised.
Garrety said she and other NASU members became aware of the concert date in January of 2024.
“We were all slightly disappointed, but not surprised,” Garrety said. “That’s how ASUO worked . . . there was never going to be a point in time where ASUO seriously worked with us.”
Both Webster and Finn Jacobson, Webster’s vice president, said that as ASUO leaders, they weren’t very interested in continuing the spring concert tradition.
“We wanted to prioritize basic needs and try to make the college experience more equitable,” Webster said. “So we, pretty early on, delegated the concert out to the communications team.”
According to both Garrety and ASUO’s resolution, there was a verbal agreement made on May 21, 2023, between Webster, Jacobson, NASU leadership and members of student organizations stating that the conflict of schedule would not occur in 2024.
“Everybody at that meeting agreed that there wouldn’t be a concert this year at all,” Garrety said.
But on October 4, 2023, the ASUO Communications Director at the time, Meghan Turley, and Concert Chair at the time, Spencer So, presented the concert plans to the ASUO Senate.
In the meeting minutes, Turley explained that the date of the concert was planned for May 10.
“. . . do you know of any other events happening May 10?”, one of the senators, Fisher Isenberg, asked in the meeting.
Turley responded that there were no other events at the intended venue, which ended up being scheduled at The Cuthbert Amphitheater.
For five months, there was no further mention of the concert in the minutes until the day NASU and its supporters packed the Senate meeting on March 13.
“All that was probably going through my head at that meeting was I knew that we had the concert surplus requests coming in,” Jacobson, who was present at the Oct. 4 meeting, said. “Not really on the content of the concert, but whether the [concert budget] request would pass or not”
Webster was not in attendance at the meeting.
“We took a bit of a hands off approach there,” Jacobson said, “and that was our fatal flaw. We delegated the planning of the concert into other hands.”
According to So, by the time he was appointed in May of 2023 by Turley to Concert Chair, there was already a concert date in mind.
“When I was brought on to do the project there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room in planning when [the concert was] specifically,” So said.
He explained that he found out in late January that the concert date was the same as the Mother’s Day Powwow from Turley in a meeting, after he had started his job.
“. . . knowing that the person who was making a lot of the decisions had been on ASUO the previous year, I think Finn [Jacobson] and I basically assumed that there was no way the concert would be scheduled on Mother’s Day Weekend,” Webster said.
Webster clarified that she was speaking about Megan Turley, the ASUO Communications Director at the time.
“I wish I had made it more crystal clear that the concert couldn’t be scheduled on that date,” Webster said.
Turley declined to comment to the Emerald, and ultimately resigned from ASUO in March due to unknown reasons.
So then took over as Communications Director for the rest of the term.
According to Garrety, she and ASUO Secretary of Engagement Cash Kowalski had a work dinner in January to discuss the relationship between ASUO and NASU.
This is when she was first told that the concert was once again going to be the weekend of the Powwow.
In February, Turley approached Garrety in the NASU office to let her know of the conflict of schedule telling Garrety it was “unfortunate.”
“To use the word unfortunate it’s just like, degrading at the least because it’s not unfortunate. It’s deliberate at this point,” Garrety said.
Turley apologized for her wording and eventually offered to help advertise the Powwow at the concert. According to Garrety, she told Turley that NASU did not want to have any further communication with ASUO executives about the concert.
“It’s another piece of evidence that at that time, ASUO just didn’t really care about the indigenous community on campus,” Garrety said.
After that, NASU decided it was time for action. But this was not Garrety’s first time taking action against ASUO.
NASU’s continuous calls for support
In her first year at UO in the winter term of 2023, when ASUO slashed the NASU budget by 50%, Garrety and her now fellow NASU co-director Marisol Peters, worked together to make a social media post calling for support at the next senate meeting and to demand better funding for the organization.
After this demonstration of leadership from Garrety and Peters, the co-directors at the time started to train the two on how to become future co-directors of NASU. After about two terms of training, they were voted in as NASU co-directors.
“We had done it once. It was nothing to do it again,” Garrety said.
Garrety also said that NASU and other supporters were able to dedicate around two hours to sharing their concerns and addressing the ASUO Senate on March 13.
“I’ll be candid, I mean, it was hard. It was hard to sit up there and hear the things that those students were saying,” Jacobson said. “But it was harder to know that . . . I, as a leader in my position with my ability to influence decision making, did not do what I should have and needed to have done to prevent the irreparable harm that was placed upon these students.”
Singer, who also attended the Senate sit-in, said it was an important moment for the native community.
“It felt very empowering that we weren’t alone. Not just as students and faculty members and community members, but our ancestors were with us, because we’re really doing it for them,” Singer said.
As a result of this Senate meeting, ASUO decided to cancel the spring concert and start the process for the “Protect the Powwow” resolution.
ASUO’s transitional troubles
“We can’t disregard history,” So said. “We need to make sure we’re more aware of all students and all the people we go to school with.”
So and the other ASUO executives said they worked on detailed transitional documents for the next ASUO cabinet. So explained that he received little to no training on his position before starting it.
“If things don’t get carried forward, it’s like starting from scratch every year,” he said.
Both Webster and Jacobson said that when they started their term as President and Vice president, they had no resources written down from their predecessors.
According to Webster, she and Jacobson had a few four hour meetings with their predecessors and an ASUO advising staff member. But once they came into the position, the communication with the past officials pretty much came to a halt, Webster said.
“You need resources for leaders, because if you don’t, they’re just running around like chickens with their head cut off every year,” Jacobson said.
This is why Webster and Jacobson have worked to make sure there are lengthy transitional documents for the ASUO cabinet that was elected at the end of May including the Protect the Powwow Resolution.
“Good intentions are never enough,” Webster said, “nothing matters if action doesn’t follow through.”
Looking ahead
The resolution was created after multiple collaborative meetings between NASU and ASUO members, and it bans any event to happen on Mother’s Day weekend.
It also states that ASUO will utilize “resources to promote and support the Powwow” and “the annual ASUO Spring Street Faire . . . [will be a] prelude event to the NASU Powwow, respecting NASU’s discretion.”
“If there wasn’t any action taken,” Garrety said, “what’s going to be there to protect our future . . . who’s going to be there to protect the people who came before us, the people who built NASU, the people who made NASU what it is today? Nothing.”
Both Singer and Garrety encourage not only members of ASUO but all students at the UO to join them at native community and culture nights and NASU meetings in order to better understand the native community on campus.
“We’re not here for your cultural porn. We’re here to exist as people,” Garrety said.
“It’s a word that I’m using a lot, but I think it’s a word that encapsulates this idea, because settler imagination is so so inherently focused on this idea that all of us are just sad or stoic and we’re filled with grief.”
Editor’s Note: Spencer So, a named source in this article, is a Daily Emerald photographer. So was not involved in the production of this article.
