Akwe:kon Full Circle Healing & Honoring Garden
For years Indigenous students at Cornell have expressed their interest and desire to grow a garden at Akwe:kon. It was the loss of a Mohawk/Tarahumara student, Daniela Lee, a member of the Indigenous student community who served as the impetus for making the garden come alive. The medicinal plants garden was installed in Spring of 2023 and dedicated to honor Daniela and all Native students who have sat on the slope, walked the bridges, wooded paths, and stairs around gorges, creeks, and lakes on campus, studied in Cornell libraries, spent late nights writing papers and preparing for exams, and worked hard through the academic rigors. Your support of the Akwe:kon Garden will provide Indigenous students a place of remembrance and to celebrate Native students who have come before, those who will come after, and supports students with a space that provides healing. Your contribution will ensure that the garden lives on to celebrate the spirit of Indigenous students past, present, and future.
This crowdfunding effort ends on December 11, 2023, at 11:55PM EST.
Indigenous Student Spotlight
“I feel so fortunate to have come to a school with a vibrant Native American Community. In Undergrad, I went to a school with little to no student engagement for Native Students. At Cornell the community is diverse and multifaceted, and I think it holds something for everyone. AISES, NAIMP, and so many more programs foster community through career building connections. AIISP has done so much to foster Native student engagement on multiple fronts. For myself, I do beadwork, ribbonwork, and dance powwow, and through IGSA I have found friends that enjoy those same things. AIISP helps foster trips to powwows and social dances, and those are the sort of things I grew up doing and love to do. It’s an experience that’s hard to find at many other schools.”
“With the support of AIISP, and Professor Troy Richardson, I have been able to explore entirely new realms within my major that have helped connect my studies to my passions and Indigenous communities. I have been given the opportunity to view computer science through a lens that is more familiar to me, and I have found work that I am genuinely excited to pursue for the rest of my career—critical work that will contribute to language preservation.”
“I credit AIISP as my greatest support system while at Cornell. The significant relationships I’ve made at Cornell are those that AIISP helped facilitate; they help make connections through programming, events, and activities that are central to growing the Indigenous community. AIISP’s student support efforts extend beyond academics creating comfort and familiarity; a home away from home that’s important for Native students like me.”
"It can be difficult to adjust to the academic rigors at a prestigious university like Cornell. However, AIISP has offered me the necessary support and sense of community that have helped me to thrive and excel. Specifically, the Akwe:kon Program House has provided an Indigenous space on campus where I feel most comfortable.”
AIISP Events
Lecture
Join special guest speaker Amanda Tachine ( Diné), professor in Educational Leadership & Innovation at Arizona State University and author of Native Presence and Sovereignty in College on Friday, December 1 at 12PM in Warren Hall 151 or via Zoom...
Lecture
Indigenous Resilience, Reclamation & Recognition v. Removal, Dispossession & Erasure Archived Event: Saturday, November 4, 2023 | 12PM – 4PM | Goldwin Smith Hall 132/Zoom Watch the full recording here . Panels feature local and national...
Seminar
Distinguished Speaker in Global Development and American Indian & Indigenous Studies Program Seminar Recording Thank you to all of those who joined us at the recent seminars with Robin Wall Kimmerer at Cornell University. Recordings of two of Dr...
AIISP News
News
Twenty-five faculty and academic staff from nine Cornell colleges and units are Engaged Faculty Fellows for the 2023-24 academic year, with projects dedicated to advancing community-engaged learning at Cornell and within their respective fields.
News
Ecologist, MacArthur “genius grant” winner and bestselling author Robin Wall Kimmerer, who has written about Indigenous people’s relationship with the land, will visit campus on Nov. 1
Cornell University & Indigenous Dispossession Project
AIISP launched the Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Project in June 2020 to research Cornell's ties to the violent displacement of Indigenous peoples and advocate for redress. The project was prompted by a March 2020 study published in High Country News that exposed the ties between Indigenous dispossession and the United States Land-Grant College system, and Cornell's prominent role in that process. AIISP has produced a blog that contains informative articles, videos, and audio podcasts about these issues. AIISP plans diplomatic outreach to the 251 Indigenous Nations affected by Cornell's actions to discuss this history and possible remedies.
