Every year the Multicultural Center hosts an Alternative Thanksgiving in honor of Native American History Month. The event offers Native American/Indigenous students to celebrate with the Ohio State community as they would within their communities. The event had a few speakers and announcements followed by performances by Wolfgrass Irwin of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara nation in Northern Dakota and Lydia Green of the Ojibwe tribe in Northern Michigan.
They both danced several pieces some together and some individually. The solo pieces highlighted their different styles of dance in addition to the different styles of dress. Wolfgrass Irwin is a grass-dancer and he explained that the duty of a grass dancer is to go out into fields of tall grass and dance before a pow wow to push the grass down in order to allow for the ceremony to commence. His clothing has many strings hanging off it meant to look like grass blowing in the wind as he dances. He performed a grass dance along with what is called a Sneak Up. He explained that the Sneak Up is a depiction of a battle, war, or some other type of physical conflict. Lydia had two outfits. The first being a jingle dress. Her dress had several tubes with prayers and tobacco, one of the sacred plants, contained within. Her second dress was very colorful and she explained that it is made to look bright and like a butterfly as she dances.
After Green and Irwin finished dancing they invited the attendees to join hands for a round dance. Melissa Beard Jacob, the Intercultural Specialist and liaison to Native American and Indigenous students in the Multicultural center, explained that the round dance is a dance of friendship and unity.
After the performances Deandre Smiles, president of the Ohio State Indigenous Community of Graduate and Professional Students and a doctoral student in geography, and Nicole Doran, president of the Native American and Indigenous Peoples Cohort and a forth-year in biology gave speeches. Smiles spoke about how their community at Ohio State may be small, but it is close knit and ever-growing. Doran spoke of how their community suffers from a lack of exposure. She said that her speech is set up to give advice to future students so as to continue on the legacy.
The evening ended with a meal that consisted of traditional indigenous foods: fry bread with wojapi, a blueberry jam, sassafras tea, venison stew, and salmon with wild rice. Everything was delicious.
To round out the night, Jacob spoke briefly mentioning that the Multicultural Center has many more events to be put on for Native American History Month in the coming weeks.
Events like Alternative Thanksgiving hosted by the Multicultural Center can help educate the Ohio State community on the different perspectives around Thanksgiving. They can help others learn more about the history and traditions of Native American/Indigenous peoples. Events like these can help others better understand the hurt around Thanksgiving and can help bring the Ohio State community together to learn and celebrate together.