Hesci, Arvcúken Noquisi cvhocefkv tos. My name is Arvcúken Noquisi. I grew up in The Ozarks of Arkansas & Oklahoma, and I am a Mvskoke Creek and Tsalagi 3rd year Indigenous student and part of leadership for NAIPC, OSU’s Native American and Indigenous Peoples Cohort.
My experiences as an Indigenous student at Ohio State have often been internally conflicting. I am a Morrill Scholar; I am active in leadership roles for both Indigenous and queer student organizations. I am an artist studying music and filmmaking. And I was commissioned to create the mural on the corner of 10th and High Street, that states “This is Native Land”. A lot of my personal work is about the invisibility of Indigenous people in public and institutional spaces.
I have found community and connection through the Multicultural Center and among my fellow Indigenous students. But, while I have found spaces of support, there are still issues facing Indigenous students here at OSU that must be addressed through advocacy and social change.
I am a Distinction Morrill Scholar. I don’t know if there are any other Indigenous Morrill Scholars in my class of 2023. Without the Morrill Scholars Program, I would not have been able to choose to come to Ohio State. I am thankful for this opportunity, but I want to push for more representation and financial support for Indigenous students to come to Ohio State.
One of the most effective ways to support Indigenous students, to increase Indigenous enrollment and retention, is to address the financial, geographical, and educational barriers that make it difficult for Indigenous students to even envision coming to higher education. And once we get to university, we struggle with visibility and cultural misconceptions.
This invisibility of Indigenous students is a systemic issue at OSU. Every single experience within The Ohio State University is marred by the University’s settler-colonial past, settler-colonial present, and settler-colonial future. Being an Indigenous student in a land-grant University, built from the Morrill Land Act’s millions of acres of stolen Indigenous land, means that my education here is in constant direct conflict with my Indigenous values. I am here because of a scholarship named after my ancestors’ forced removal.
Indigenous students are invisible in classrooms – when we assert ourselves as Native American, we are met with doubt and suspicion about our cultural identities; we are asked how much Native blood we have, what our blood quantum is. We are told that we aren’t supposed to exist anymore, we are told that we “don’t look Native”. We are told that we aren’t Native enough. Our existence in classrooms becomes a burden, especially when we are the topic of discussion. We have to inevitably teach the teacher and correct centuries-old misinformation about Native Americans.
It is therefore very difficult for Indigenous students to escape the exhaustion of existing in a colonial institution like OSU. Our small numbers in our community just remind us of the neglect we face daily. I invite you all to talk to the other Indigenous students present here today about their personal experiences with class environments and access to resources here at The Ohio State University.
Mvto, thank you.