A panel of Indigenous leaders and academics gathered on Friday to discuss the value of Native-led education, as well as the need for greater Lawrence and Douglas County community participation in Haskell culture.
The event, “Honoring Truth,” convened Indigenous experts to discuss the need for honest Native representation in media and, in turn, a more accurate understanding of American history. The conversation was part of programming around “Americans,” a traveling Smithsonian exhibit currently open at the Watkins, which provides a looking glass for issues of Native representation.
The question, “What is accurate Indigenous representation?” yields no easy answer, as panelists demonstrated.
There are currently 574 federally recognized Native American tribes and Alaska Native Villages, in addition to unrecognized tribes. Any one group hosts a spectrum of differing opinions and cultural practices, leading to a practically infinite kaleidoscope of Indigenous wisdoms. No book, TV show, movie, podcast, panel or even article can singlehandedly capture such diversity of thought, experience and culture. Even Haskell’s iconic imagery of the Native person’s head represents only Plains tribes, as Rhonda LeValdo, member of Acoma Pueblo from Acoma, New Mexico, pointed out.
“I think accurate representation is a refusal to generalize, period, and to just understand that literally every community is coming from a different place-based understanding of the world,” said Alex Red Corn, professor and citizen of the Osage Nation.
Daniel Wildcat, professor and Tsoyaha Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, noted that people often imagine his ancestors from 150 years ago as “the real Indians.”
“I wish we had as many people here tonight from the Lawrence community as that are going to turn out for our powwow,” Wildcat said.
“But they want to come to the powwow because they want to see the beads and the feathers and, you know, ‘real Indian culture.’ But we got real Indian culture right on this stage. This is what we do. This is our work.”
‘We need young people to get educated’
“One of the biggest things is recognizing that our educational systems were built around the priorities of settler-colonialism, and while places like Haskell were intended to assimilate … over time, they’ve been kind of reclaimed and repurposed, in a way,” Red Corn said.
“And what has happened is you start getting Indians making decisions, for Indians, about Indians, in those systems.”
Haskell was founded in 1884 as the United States Indian Industrial Training School during the assimilation era of federal Indian policy. The Native American children forced to attend the institution were managed militaristically with the explicit goal of eradicating their tribal identities, family bonds and cultures to assimilate them into the dominant society.
It wasn’t until 1933 that Haskell gained its first Indigenous superintendent, who shifted the institution’s focus to fostering Native culture.
The Haskell Cemetery is a resting place for 103 children who died over the course of six decades of the boarding school’s operation. Many suspect that more children are buried throughout the campus in unmarked graves.
Allison Levering, Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, is a Haskell student and the lead anchor for “Good Morning Indian Country.” She knew she was a product of four or five generations of boarding school survivors, a lineage she has been able to unearth and process through her attendance at Haskell. She said she appreciated the quality education Haskell has offered her.
“Especially coming here to Haskell, it being a past boarding school, a past institution, you feel those relatives,” Levering said. “… It’s really fulfilling to be able to get a really quality education and learn things that I’m really, actually interested in here, and things that benefit me, and that I’ll teach to my children for generations and generations.”
Haskell has long fought to decolonize its classrooms and its very land, but the same cannot always be said of American public schools. Panelists discussed textbooks that perpetuate the myth of vanishing Native culture and people, and elementary school projects where Thanksgiving was “celebrated” by making inaccurate and stereotypical Native headdresses out of construction paper.
The university’s resistance is, in many ways, the cultivation of a flourishing, multi-tribal community. Instructors aim to empower students of all tribal backgrounds to confront inaccurate and monolithic representations of Native people by putting their own stories and knowledge into every possible media outlet.
“We can’t stand on our hands and wait for other people to tell our stories and make it accurate and do it,” said Mackie Moore, member of Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and interim president at Haskell. “We have to do it. And I think that’s one of the reasons why this institution is so important, is because we need young people to get educated, to go out and to help us to represent who we are and defend who we are.”
Wildcat celebrated Haskell’s initiatives such as a growing media studies program and the school’s $20 million National Science Foundation grant, which is funding a vast earth sciences hub led by Indigenous thinkers.
‘We’re trying to Indigenize things’
“Not a lot of people in town — and this is really surprising to me — not a lot of people that live in the city of Lawrence even know that Haskell exists here right on 23rd,” Levering said.
LeValdo sought to increased city buy-in to Haskell and its deep roots. She suggested that the city could do more to acknowledge the local legacy of a boarding school and “try and get more people to educate themselves about the history of the school.”
She also mentioned the South Lawrence Trafficway expansion project, which encroaches on precious wetlands. The project is currently underway despite extensive pushback from Indigenous organizers.
However, one of LeValdo’s primary focuses is a nearly all-consuming entertainment platform that engages audiences across cities and the nation: the Kansas City football team.
LeValdo is the co-founder of Not in Our Honor, which has long launched protests against sports teams that misrepresent Native culture for marketing, such as the Kansas City “Chiefs.”
The team name and its visual marketing tactics have long sparked debate about cultural appropriation versus appreciation. Acts of systemic racism still mar game day rituals, as attendees perform the so-called “tomahawk chop” while wearing Native-themed costumes and face paint.
“I did not realize that I would be impacted by the football team, and having to deal with a chop that is played on numerous commercials, on television, on the radio,” LeValdo said of her experience moving to the area. She encouraged listeners to attend upcoming protests on Oct. 19 and Nov. 23.
Much of LeValdo’s work with Not in Our Honor encourages non-Native communities to consider what honoring a culture entails. For many panelists, the answer is to give Indigenous thinkers a seat at the table, where they can make that decision for themselves.
Melissa Peterson, Diné, is a lecturer at Haskell. She noted how many local Native youths can be engaged in critical city and county conversations as they graduate from Haskell and stay in town. She said she would like to see more local collaborators “hiring Native people and getting them in the room, instead of asking for that free labor.”
Many panelists felt that it is essential to build relationships between KU and Haskell, the city’s two largest educational institutions, with the benefit of all students in mind.
“We’re literally at KU, that is funded by tax dollars, from land that was taken from the Osage Nation, and we’re trying to Indigenize things,” said Red Corn.
Moore gave the example of the Indigenous fashion show organized by students at Haskell, which made its way to the Spencer Museum. Video of the show played on a continuous loop at the “Native Fashion” exhibit that closed early this year. Now, a one-off show is set to be an annual festivity, creating modeling opportunities for Haskell students.
Resources to build relationships
For many speakers on Friday, education, media and community events can all serve as seedlings to nurture connections across Indigenous and non-Native communities.
Here are some jumping-off points, most recommended by those on the panel.
Media
• “Good Morning Indian Country,” a locally-run Native news platform
• “Reservation Dogs,” a TV show
• “Colonial Entanglement: Constituting a Twenty-First-Century Osage Nation,” a book by Jean Dennison
• “Native Spirit” radio show on 90.1 FM KKFI Kansas City, hosted by LeValdo
• Writings from Vine Deloria Jr., Standing Rock Lakota citizen
Events
• Fall 2025 HINU Welcome Back Pow-wow, Friday, Sept. 26
• HINU Bison Harvest and Cookout, Saturday, Sept. 27 and Sunday, Sept. 28
• Haskell Indian Art Market, Saturday, Oct. 4 and Sunday, Oct. 5
People and groups to follow and know about
• First Nations Student Association at KU
• TikTok of former State Rep. Christina Haswood, Diné
The “Americans” Smithsonian exhibit is on display at the Watkins Museum of History, 1047 Massachusetts St., through Sunday, Oct. 5. The museum’s hours for the exhibit are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Saturdays. Admission is free.
The Watkins will also be open from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 5, to give folks one more chance to see “Americans” before it closes.
Note: A date in this post has been corrected from a previous version.
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Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at wulfe@lawrencekstimes.com.
Read their complete bio here. Read their work for the Times here.
Molly Adams (she/her), photo editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2022. She can be reached at molly@lawrencekstimes.com.
Check out more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
More coverage — Haskell Indian Nations University:
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