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BY ASHIA TROIANO

In print | Published March 26, 2009

Today marks the first day of a three-day symposium entitled Pa Kusra Tu Pit’Athuun: The Sun is Shining Back at Us, Reflecting a Better Tomorrow, which will explore the culture of Californian Native Americans. The Symposium focuses specifically on the roles of race, place, culture and continuity in the lives of California natives. A panel discussion featuring several major activist natives will be held in the Scheuer Room tonight.

The conference is an opportunity for the panelists to learn from each other, particularly for the older women to teach the younger women. “The panelists are mixed up generationally so that younger ones are exposed — that was an important part in making the conference,” said Crystal Richardson ’09, member of the Karuk Tribe and creator of the Symposium.

Richardson designed and planned the Symposium in an attempt to open dialogue about issues in Native American culture. “I applied for Cooper [funds] for an indigenous women’s symposium to create a forum through which native issues can be spoken to,” Richardson said.

Susan Burdick, one of Richardson’s teachers from the native community, has been helping Richardson to organize the Symposium for the past year and a half. “I thought it would be good as a women’s conference because we do a lot for the culture. This is a time to share that with the students,” Burdick said. Burdick, who is Richardson’s basket teacher, will also be a speaker at a Symposium panel event entitled “Keeping the Home Fires Burning.”

Her talk will focus on maintaining a cultural identity. “All my life, that’s what I’ve done — shared my culture. I’m teaching the young and old how to preserve our culture,” Burdick said. 

Besides Burdick, the other panelists include L. Frank, Lyn Risling, Teresa Wright, Verna Reece, Holly Hensher, Lena Bommelyn and Nancy Steele. These women represent a host of California natives, including the Yurak, Hupa, Shasta, Tongva and Ajachmem.

“It’s a women’s conference, but it is for everyone. It’s important to acknowledge the people who are coming from this section of Earth,” Richardson said. “All of the ladies are activists working in culture through culture. They represent different elements of tradition, what is important in their lives.”

On Friday, there will be a Sunrise Service beginning at 6:52 a.m. The focus of the service will be on prayer and preparing for the day in a culturally fitting manner.

“We have a custom of prayer so that it’s the first thing you do when you get up before you eat and it’s the last thing you do at night. We learn from our brothers and sisters, like the birds — in the morning, they sing, then they find worms,” Richardson said. “It’s appropriate and necessary to have time for all of us to reflect. There will be singing, people speaking in language, getting into the frame of thought for the day.”

The Symposium will end on Saturday night with a reception featuring traditional native foods. Burdick will be bringing huckleberry, swamp tea, mussels from the coast, and frozen acorns that she plans to cook upon her arrival. “[My basket teacher, my aunt, and myself] have been gathering traditional foods for the last year and a half, and we’ve canned it and shipped it. It’s specifically for the enjoyment of the Swarthmore community to end [the symposium] in a good way,” Richardson said. 

Both the Native American population and native languages are dwindling, but one of Richardson’s hopes for the weekend is for people to recognize that native culture is not dead. “We’re still here; we still exist. This is a celebration as much as [an event for] genocide awareness,” she said.

Richardson’s vision for the Symposium has been in the works since her visit to the college for the annual Ride the Tide event for accepted first-years. Richardson recalls attending a panel discussion on genocide, but being disappointed when the speaker only addressed modern genocide and then went on to make an inappropriate joke about other cultures that had been victims of genocide. “I was shocked and appalled. This is Swarthmore, somebody should have something to say. I found myself waiting and waiting and waiting,” Richardson said. “That was not out of the norm for my Swarthmore experience; we needed an indigenous activist.” 

Richardson became that activist for Native American issues herself, speaking at classes, serving as a panelist, and co-teaching a course with Professor of Anthropology Steven Piker. She is currently teaching a course on Native California in the Anthropology Department.

Richardson has also taken it upon herself to learn the Karuk language of her people. Like Burdick, she is preserving her culture in a time when many languages are becoming extinct. “There are 7,000 spoken languages, the vast majority of which are disappearing … [we are] losing language, losing culture,” Theodore Fernald, Associate Professor of Linguistics, said. “In many ways, we don‘t even know what we’re losing.”

“I hope my being here was not in vain, that all of our histories count. We’re bombarded with English even though we’re on native soil, and little of our languages are out there,” Richardson said. 

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