The "Indigenous Peoples' Day Convergence" is a celebration of Indigenous cultures, histories, and contributions. This event is a vibrant gathering that features speakers, artists, dancers, and a feast!
On May 13, Urban Native Collective, in collaboration with 21c Museum Hotel, hosted Native Indigenous artist Leonard Harmon, presenting a "Live Painting," along side Pow Wow Dancers in Gano Alley, adjacent to 21C Museum Hotel.
Solidarity action with the movement to stop line 3 & the Dakota Access Pipeline. The action will “tour” through the bank’s financing Enbridge, including Bank of America & Chase. The march will close at the Federal Building where the Army Corp of Engineers offie is located. Cincinnati joins dozens of cities across the US taking action to Stop Line 3 through March and April. There will be short stops at each location where speakers & activities will occur. The event will have visual art work. Water Protectors can expect to hold artwork & sign cards.
When: Friday April 2 at 11:30 AM
Where: Downtown Cincinnati, Corner of 3rd & Walnut
THROUGH ITS NEW OHIO NATIVE LAND INITIATIVE, UNC seeks to establish a broader platform to promote Indigenous perspectives on sacred sites, encourage land rematriation efforts, and assert Native sovereignty as foundational to some of the region’s most important natural resources and public spaces.
The Ohio Native Land Initiative is an effort intended to (1) promote greater involvement with and protection for sacred Indigenous sites in Ohio; (2) broaden alliance-building efforts leading to deeper engagement with movements that support the protection of Indigenous sovereignty and cultural rights; (3) encourage serious efforts toward the re-indigenizing of public and private spaces in order to create opportunities that honor Indigenous lifeways and promote spiritual freedom; and (4) broadening education and public outreach around Indigenous culture, lifeways, and Native habitats. The overarching purpose of the initiative is to protect Indigenous lands, sacred sites and natural resources, while advancing awareness of the critical connection between Native sovereignty and environmental preservation.
For centuries after that first Contact, US government and military policy worked to separate indigenous peoples from traditional lands and as a result from thousands of years of cultural and spiritual relationships with that land. A significant aspect of these relationships was incredibly deep ecological knowledge of local food systems. Gather is an intimate portrait of the growing movement amongst Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political and cultural identities through food sovereignty, while battling the trauma of centuries of genocide.
Gather is available for virtual community screenings starting Fall of 2020. You can screen via an online platform to classes, colleagues, constituents and other types of audiences and conduct post-screening Zoom chats. A DVD option for organizations in Indian Country that prefer to give DVDs to their members. You can access that information here.
Thank you very much to Green Umbrella and to Campsite Sculpture Park for hosting the screening of www.gather.film last night in Cincinnati. Dawn Knickerbocker (Anishinaabe) introduced the film with their own personal reflections on food sovereignty and the strength of the Indigenous communities. Thank you also for everyone's adherence to social distance and mask requirements.
THREE DAYS OF AND UNITY, CELEBRATION, & SOLIDARITY
This year’s Convergence offers workshops on Indigenous sovereignty, land and water rights, education, economic development, cultural and language maintenance and promotion, religious freedom, and resistance movements.
During a time when we all have to stay so far apart, this is our chance to come together and feel our strength. This year’s Convergence brings together global Indigenous leaders, change makers, artists and wisdom keepers to offer healing through music, dancing, and story sharing. Access the whole event here.
Green Umbrella’s 2020 Midwest Regional Sustainability Summit explored the theme “Cities of the Future: Becoming a Regenerative Region,” and imagined how cities could become regenerative hubs that enhance rather than deplete our natural resources, promote a vibrant, resilient built environment and support healthy, equitable communities. By examining innovative strategies to link rural, urban and suburban communities, we sough to identify new opportunities to build regions that are both socially and environmentally resilient.
Officially we were set to discuss:
“Indigenizing Colonized Spaces: Building Health and Wealth with Food Sovereignty” Native chefs, farmers and educators are cultivating solutions to food access and diet-based health problems by reclaiming ancestral traditions. Can movements to decolonize diet and food systems apply to diverse cities? Can Native culinary and agricultural education help reaffirm relationship to land and place, health and humanity?
Panelists: J. Dawn Knickerbocker, and Shane Creepingbear
Three panelists discuss George Floyd, colonial trauma, violence and property destruction. Mona Jenkins is the steering committee leader for Mass Action for Black Liberation director of development for The Homeless Coalition. Jennifer Knickerbocker is the Grants Coordinator and Board President of the Urban Native Collective.
This conversation was recorded May 30th 2020 at 3pm, prior to reports of white supremacist groups infiltrating protests and enacting their own agendas to undermine legitimate Black Liberation movements. While the views expressed here by individuals do not necessarily represent the views of UNC, UNC defends and supports the right of oppressed and marginalized people to protest, march, and engage in civil disobedience in pursuit of justice and freedom.
During the International Women’s March, UNC’s Dawn Knickerbocker presented on the realities of Indigenous women. Dawn speaks to her audience in Cincinnati, Ohio, a place where removal happened not once, but twice. In Ohio there are no reservations, reserves or boundaries. Ohio is a land where the council fires have been smothered.
Dawn discusses what allows Native women to be targeted and treated as disposable without consequence in the United States. She addresses underlying dynamic promoted by Colonization. Colonization is an ideology that supports the dehumanization of those living on the land and their dispossession, murder, and forced assimilation. And this is ongoing - not something for the history books.
Daily, cis and transgender women, femme-identified, and non-binary people encounter violence at the hands of institutions and workplaces that continue to perpetuate inequities and injustice. While we claim to be progressing forward, thousands of Indigenous, Black, and trans women are missing or have been murdered. The number of women and children who are evicted from their housing is soaring while at the same time, they are plummeting further into poverty. Women are dying from being denied reproductive rights and from receiving culturally incompetent health care. Women with disabilities are twice as likely to be poor as compared to women without disabilities. Working class women continue to suffer from sexual harassment, gaps in pay, and inadequate health insurance. The number of Black and Latinx women who are being incarcerated is growing faster than any other population. Women are being denied access to clean and unleaded water due to environmental racism.
CINCINNATI IS HOME TO THOUSANDS OF NATIVE AMERICANS
THIS LAND ALONG WITH PLANT RELATIVES HAD BEEN CULTIVATED FOR MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS.
And yet today, the Indigenous people who live here lack access to fresh foods, sacred seeds, and land to plant those seeds. Over the past year, the coalition has been working with donors in the Cincinnati area to reclaim urban spaces to grow and distribute foods and medicines for locals by building garden beds. Our goal in creating these spaces is to increase access for all, reduce dependence on chemicals and commercial growing that does not honor the land, and to expand knowledge of traditional food ways.
In August of 2020, the UNC presented to the Ohio Sustainability Conference in building a regenerative region through the use of our urban gardening methods. Ecological gardeners like us at UNC, those who garden with Indigenous plants including perennials, gardens for birds, pollinators and other wildlife, and regenerative food gardeners who grow organically and consider the needs of pollinators and beneficial insects are already practicing natural climate solutions. Their land is probably already functioning as a carbon sink, rather than being a carbon source, as so many conventionally managed, chemically dependent landscapes are. Our program can shift the city of Cincinnati to Native American wisdom for all.
As a part of our presentation to the Ohio Conference, presenter, Shane Creeping bear said, “Working in a garden develops your relationship to the land. Our ancestors understood that gardening can transform our sense of scarcity and insecurity into feelings of abundance and control – something we all need these days.” Native Americans have some of the highest rates of food insecurity, health problems, poverty, and more. With more than 70% of all Native Americans living off the reservations, we are in need of solutions- especially for urban Natives.
The UNC urban gardening project restores the multi-tribal / inter-tribal urban-Indian community of Cincinnati to physical well-being and a spiritual relationship to the Earth. "food sovereignty is the right of Native Indigenous Peoples to reclaim our own food and agricultural systems, as well as our right to access nutritious traditional foods that are produced using sustainable practices rooted in Indigenous values,'‘ says Ami Lane, Program Director for UNC. An urban upbringing can mean our youth and community lose track of our old way of walking on this Earth. Our goal is to relearn this knowledge. In the process, the UNC activities help the community reclaim food sovereignty – ready access to healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate food – and we meet this need by distributing crops. Our longer-term goal is to participate in farmers markets, deliver household shares of produce to locations in Native neighborhoods, and partner with other community organizations, such as the Black Liberation Movement of Cincinnati. If you would like to get involved with the project, please let us know.
This is a collection of all Urban Native Collective’s solidarity actions for Wet’suwet’en. This section includes a solidarity statement, a film screening event, a fundraiser, and information about solidarity actions on Haudenosaunee land.
The Red Dress installation brings attention to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. These dresses represent thousands of Native American women who go missing every year. Murder rates for Indigenous women in the United States are 10 times the rate of the national average in some areas. According to the National Crime Information Centre database there were 5,712 Native American women reported missing in 2016 and of those only 116 were entered into the Department of Justice’s missing person database. Many cases go unreported so the statistics are likely higher. The insufficient data, shortage of police follow through, and the lack of media attention all add to this national epidemic.
To understand the context of the overwhelming number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the United States, it is necessary to understand the historical trauma of Native people. Native Americans continue to deal with the repercussions of colonialism, including removal from Native lands, forced assimilation, and Indian boarding schools. A tragic result of historical trauma is continued misunderstanding and prejudice toward Indigenous people, which is often a basis for the violence faced by Native women and girls.
Indigenous women deserve better. They deserve to be protected but it is not just Native women who go missing. In Ohio, the stealing and trafficking of women is a serious issue. No one should go missing.
Every person should have access to housing. We need 28,000 more affordable houses in Cincinnati. Cincinnati shelters are over capacity. People should be able to without fear of losing housing. Families with children, single adults, couples & youth living in shelter, doubled-up & bouncing, in unsafe situation or outside all deserve safe, secure affordable housing.
At 3PM on October 2, 2019 UNC gathered in solidarity with other organizations to support the movement for affordable housing. At Laurel Park park we joined a Community Cookout with nonprofit service organizations like Caracole, Tender Mercies, Lighthouse Youth and Family Services, Bethany House Services, Shelterhouse, Over-the-Rhine Community Housing, Interfaith Hospitality Network of Greater Cincinnati, advocacy groups like the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition and Affordable Housing Advocates, religious organizations like the Metropolitan Area Religious Coalition of Cincinnati, New Prospect Baptist Church, First United Church of Christ, Christ Church Cathedral and a number of other organizations.
"Too often homeless families are invisible," says Susan Schiller of a family shelter Bethany House. "But the numbers are real and the needs are great." The shelter serves more than 300 families a year, including 800 children. Schiller says 57 percent of families who call shelters in Cincinnati are turned away due to lack of capacity.
Cincinnati's fund currently has roughly $611,000 in it. Enough for possibly seven units of housing— or less. A citywide ballot initiative would direct Cincinnati to put $50 million to $100 million in its affordable housing trust fund every year. This fund could help prevent homelessness."It took the city of Cincinnati nearly 30 years to establish the housing trust fund," Over-the-Rhine Community Housing Executive Director Mary Burke Rivers said. "We're grateful for that, but we're not going to wait another 30 years to have it funded properly." There is an estimated 28,000-unit gap in housing affordable to low-income people in Cincinnati and a 40,000-unit deficit across Hamilton County.
After eating, singing, and making signs people gathered together to walk and sing towards City Hall. Nonprofits and housing advocates planned to urge city elected officials to set aside more funds for affordable housing, but the city council meeting was moved, last minute, to a different time. So when we arrived at city hall, people took turns sharing their perspective on affordable housing.
Teaching Native History and Culture in the Classrooms
Educators will be on hand to conduct a session for Ohio teachers on the museum’s education initiative, Native Knowledge 360°, and the American Indian Removal: What Does It Mean to Remove a People? Lesson for Grades 7-12. The online lesson provides perspectives from Native American community members, documents, maps, images, and activities to help students and teachers understand an important and difficult chapter in United States history. This four-hour workshop will give educators an overview of the free online resources available to them that can help elevate the educational experience on these subjects in ways that provide context, are relevant, and build academic skills for their students.
Native Knowledge 360° (NK360°) provides educators and students with new perspectives on Native American history and cultures. Most Americans have only been exposed to part of the story, as told from a single perspective through the lenses of popular media and textbooks. NK360° provides educational materials and teacher training that incorporate Native narratives, more comprehensive histories, and accurate information to enlighten and inform teaching and learning about Native America.