Cameron University Hosts Indigenous Peoples' Day Event Monday, Featuring Keynote on DNA and Native Identity

Cameron University is the place to be Monday for Indigenous Peoples’Day in Lawton. The Native American Intertribal Association and the Lawton Indigenous People’s Day Committee have put together an afternoon and evening of events that starts with a cedar ceremony at 1 p.m. on campus.

The centerpiece is a 2:45 p.m. keynote from Kim TallBear, a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Her talk,“Claiming Our Land, Claiming Our Dead: Ancestry, DNA and Settler Self-Indigenization,”digs into one of the more charged conversations in Indian Country right now: what happens when genetic testing and family lore get used to claim an identity that a tribal nation doesn’t recognize. The afternoon continues with a roundtable of Native educators and a talking circle on Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, featuring Jodi Voice Yellowfish of MMIW Texas Rematriate and Cindy Famero of the Oklahoma MMIWP chapter.

The evening is built for community. A Native food sovereignty dinner starts at 5:30, exhibition dancing at 6, and awards at 7. Everything is free and open to the public, so whether you’re a Cameron student, a Fort Sill family, or have lived in Comanche County your whole life, there’s a seat for you Monday. What does Indigenous Peoples’Day mean to you and your family?