Native American Association celebrates heritage on American Indian Night

On Monday, American Indian Night was hosted in the CSU Ballroom by the Native American Student Association for MSU students and staff to attend and celebrate native heritage. 

Like the Latino Heritage Celebration organized by the Latinx Affairs and Culture Day celebrated by the Hmong Student Association, NASA has now presented their own heritage celebration for Native Americans to get together and connect as a community. 

Megan Heutmaker, director of American Indian Affairs, got together with NASA and helped organize the event. Heutmaker shares the process when it comes to organizing a cultural event like this and how long it can take to plan. 

“This is an annual event we do every year. Our first step is always to look at speakers and people who want to kind of be our showcase for the event. And one of the companies that we looked at this year was Native Pride Productions and they have a variety of performers all throughout the United States.” Heutmaker said. “The founder of the program is Larry Yazzie. He’s been featured in a couple of big billboards throughout the US and his company is really there to promote educational topics around the indigenous community. And so the performer from that group is Sean and his son, Jason, who came to be our keynote speaker and performers for American Indian Night. So when we do a lot of prep, we start planning this in the summer.”

Heutmaker shared how impactful it is to bring this event back to campus annually and how important it is to her to organize a celebration for Native American and indigenous students to enjoy. 

“Similar to other cultural nights, it’s to really celebrate and showcase American Indian culture here on our MSU campus and it’s about our students,” Heutmaker said. “We see that a lot of other different communities have different nights throughout the year. Eleven or 12 years ago we started hosting annual events that celebrate our culture, our community and students are involved in the planning process and just again, a way to showcase and celebrate American Indian culture.”

Heutmaker reveals that the showcase for this year’s American Indian Night was provided by Sean Soukkala and his son Jason, who are a part of Native Pride Productions, an organization teaching its native history nationwide throughout learning institutions. They strive to break down cultural barriers and inspire, educate and motivate through native tribal song and dance. 

Soukkala shares the grand impact that native culture can have and how its recent effect has been able to let indigenous be heard after so many years. 

“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” Soukkala said. “It’s all prepared from teachings that I’ve received from my elders and from our tribal community. Powerful fates have taken years to come together to what they are today. It wasn’t very long ago where we weren’t allowed to teach in schools about our history and our culture. And something that was kind of written off in a lot of the history books. And it’s only now starting to come out and it’s a long time coming. So to be able to be a part of that and to be able to teach straight from my voice within the community is super impactful and it’s our hope that those teachings are spread from conferences like these and word gets out that yeah, we’re still here and our culture is still very strong.”

President of NASA Winona Williams has worked alongside Heutmaker in the planning of this celebration and expresses the meaningful significance that the event holds for her and for many other indigenous students that are attending MSU, a new yet known diverse environment where many students are able to recognize and celebrate their cultures. 

“The event is important to me because I as well as other indigenous students are able to showcase our culture, and especially celebrate it during native heritage month as well which is meant to showcase our culture and history. It’s a way for me to connect with my community and I like knowing that this event is also educational for those that

Header photo: American Indian Night was hosted in the CSU Ballroom by the Native American Student Association for MSU students and staff to attend and celebrate native heritage. (Dylan Long/The Reporter)

Write to Anahi Zuniga at Anahi.zuniga@mnsu.edu