Indigenous Peoples Day Symposium Summary

The Indigenous Peoples Day Symposium was a panel presentation by four main speakers who identify as Indigenous Peoples. The presentation began with singing and honoring them. After this concluded, the first speaker, Chebon Kernell, gave his speech about Indigenous Peoples. Kernell’s was the most engaging in my opinion because he talked about how “a long time ago they were here” and their footprints were made right here on the TCU campus. He shared his own personal experience, beginning with when he witnessed that he was being taught, “this is how it was supposed to be, God’s will.” He concluded his portion of his speech by saying how He says he shouldn 't have to go into detail regarding this and convince us to change our opinions on Columbus

One of the main ones is how we have discussed the stereotypes that come from race these past few class periods, and at the presentation one of the panel members discussed how there is a stereotype about Christopher Columbus, that has been proven to be not true. Another connection is how the Indigenous Peoples have been presented in advertising and other mass media forms. Following the presentation, I searched for images of Indigenous Peoples on Google, and immediately what was shown was the common image of Native American Indians. To me, this seems like a false presentation because the four members at the symposium looked just like us, therefore I think the portrayals of them on Google images are inaccurate. Lastly, someone asked during the Q&A session about the views that non-Indigenous Peoples have in regards to Indigenous Peoples being of Christian faith. It was interesting to me to hear their response to this question because he talked about although Christian is a primarily European faith, that does not stop him from following his faith. So I saw this as somewhat of a stereotype based off of the Christian