Co-chair of Lawrence University Native Alliance (LUNA) and descendant of the Menominee Nation senior Libby Lang-Smith revealed that her organization, which has proudly supported and uplifted Native culture, voices and people for 15 years at Lawrence, will not be going for re-recognition next year. The decision, she said, was a difficult one between her, her co-chair, and their faculty advisor, LUNA alumna and Associate Professor of Music Brigetta Miller.
“This is not us saying that Native voices are not [going to be] heard,” Lang-Smith explained. “We’ve just seen that if we push it for too long it could be not resulting in what LUNA was, which was this idea of community. We just want to see if taking a break might help it [re-align] back to what it used to be.”
However, Lang-Smith told me that she intends for this hiatus to be a “nap” for LUNA rather than a complete dissolution. To celebrate the hibernating organization, she shared their many triumphs over the last decade and a half.
LUNA was one of the aspects of Lawrence that called out to Lang-Smith during her mid-pandemic college search. She thought the organization would give her the chance to both learn more about Native culture and connect with others who similarly identified as Indigenous. To her, that opportunity put Lawrence a cut above the other schools she was considering.
Lang-Smith did not formally join LUNA until her sophomore year, since she wanted to plant her feet in her new college environment before branching out. The small size of the group, filled with both Native-identifying students and allies of the community, resonated with Lang-Smith the first time she attended a meeting. She remembered becoming close with then-chair Mahina Olores ‘23, who at the end of the year asked her to join the board. This was the first time Lang-Smith had held a board position in a student organization, having not engaged with extracurriculars in high school. Still, she was ready to accept. She called it a decision that was “congruent” with the empowerment she had come to feel in her Indigenous identity thanks to the organization.
LUNA meets biweekly in the Spirit Space, where they plan for upcoming events, educate one another about Indigenous history and engage with current Native issues and events. Though the organization hosts smaller events during the school year, their two biggest involvements are with Indigenous Peoples’ Day (IPD) in Fall Term and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Day (MMIW) in May.
Each year, IPD is a little different for LUNA; for example, Lang-Smith remembers Olores, a Native Hawai’ian, bringing Native Hawai’ian dancers to campus to extend recognition of Indigenous culture beyond the US mainland. This last year, Lang-Smith and LUNA brought in a keynote speaker who discussed living as a white-passing Indigenous person. It was important to Lang-Smith to bring awareness to the current trends of more full-blooded Native people being born with white-adjacent identities and towards increasing Indigenous biraciality. Lang-Smith also connected with alumna Shelby Siebers ‘20, a member of the Oneida Nation who works with the Appleton Area School District in Indigenous advocacy and Lang’s “favorite person,” who at the IPD celebration demonstrated how to make a corn husk doll and corn husk flower bouquet. Lang-Smith also brought vendors — two of which were her own parents — to sell their beadwork to eventgoers.
Observance and celebration are two sides of the same coin, and both are vital to recognition of Indigenous culture. In Spring Term, LUNA leads Lawrence in its observation of MMIW Day. MMIW is a phenomenon underrepresented in mainstream media where, in recent years, an increasing number of Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people have gone missing or been found murdered.In years past, LUNA has cut out red paper dresses, a symbol of the MMIW awareness movement. On them, they put pictures of those who have went missing or been murdered, along with their dates of birth and date of death if applicable, a passage about their story and contact information if Lawrentians have any information.
The organization also once hosted a photo gallery walk, displaying LUNA members with the red handprint, the symbol which represents resistance to the silencing of Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people about the issue, on their mouths. Though MMIW Day is only officially one day, LUNA hosts their observance over the days leading up to it and through the days after. Though Lang-Smith considers this a more passive event than IPD, she believes that this helps get people thinking about the underrecognized but important issue.
Lang-Smith spoke with great gratitude for the long-standing relationship between LUNA and the Student Alliance Against Sexual Harassment and Assault (SAASHA). SAASHA is a large collaborator in the MMIW event, since many MMIW experience sexual assault and other gender-based violences. She extended her thanks to them for their help and spoke of LUNA’s solidarity with them in MMIW or otherwise.
Other LUNA events include corn husk doll making sessions, where Lawrentians learn how to make a doll as well as become familiar with their cultural value. Lang-Smith remembers the club once hosted a storytelling event where a member of the Cherokee Nation read ancestral stories from different Indigenous peoples. These stories often teach lessons such as humbleness and love of community, so they are typically told to children, but Lang-Smith remembers them being no less engaging for a group of adults. She said this is especially true for those who are less familiar with Indigenous culture in the organization, since she has noticed an influx in non-Indigenous ally students to LUNA in recent years eager to learn.
“Indigenous history and heritage should always be talked about no matter if you are in the Native community or not,” Lang-Smith asserted.
Coming up, Lang-Smith revealed that LUNA will host a fry bread event where people can learn the history of the Indigenous food. Though it was created originally out of necessity as a reaction to colonialism, according to Lang-Smith, fry bread has stuck around in Native culture for its versatility; from tacos to donuts, she said that fry bread can be fashioned into nearly anything.
Lang-Smith spoke about Lawrence recognizing the presence of Indigenous people through the land acknowledgement that the university is built on the ancestral homeland of the Menominee and Ho-Chunk people, as well as through physical reminders such as the Otāēciah (oh-tetch-ee-yah) crane statue and the Kaeyes Mamaceqtawuk Plaza. As for her organization, she considered LUNA to be a “living” representation of the persisting Indigenous presence at Lawrence and beyond.
“In comparison to [other diversity-related organizations like the Black Student Union] or Alianza, [LUNA is] a bit smaller, but we hold a strong presence on campus by saying that we are Native people and…we’re still here!” Lang-Smith said. “There is this idea that over time with the genocides and colonialism and everything that Native populations have decreased and that some [Native people] are not going to college, so LUNA’s this standing point that there are Native people who have gone to college and that we are here.”
With LUNA going into hibernation for now, Lang-Smith emphasized that she sees this break as being temporary. She encouraged students, Indigenous-identifying or otherwise, to reach out to her even after she has graduated on Instagram (@libs.lang) or through email (langsml03@gmail.com).
“We’re thinking that at this time LUNA does deserve a break after a while, but things like Otāēciah will still be here, same thing with the land acknowledgement, and LUNA’s presence for what it was after the last 15 years or so will always still be around,” Lang-Smith said. “I do hope that sometime in the future that LUNA might have this way of reinventing itself and becoming a stabilizing force once again in Lawrence culture.”
In the meantime, Lang-Smith encourages Lawrentians to educate themselves on Indigenous-related topics. One way she imagines Lawrentians can do this is to take a course focusing on Native people, history or culture. Miller, a Native person herself who also teaches in the Ethnic Studies department, teaches courses on Indigenous history and culture, namely “Decolonization, Activism, and Hope.” Lang-Smith also recommended Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Gregory Hitch’s “Indigenous Ecology” as one of the courses that stood out to her in her time at Lawrence.
“You don’t have to be Native to be part of [these classes], you don’t have to know everything…it just gets you started thinking [about these issues],” Lang-Smith said. “It really makes you feel like you understand more about the community from within it rather than from outside of it.”
Reflecting on everything the organization has accomplished in its active years, Lang-Smith has nothing but confidence in a bright future for LUNA that will continue long after she has graduated.
“Even though it sounds really sad that LUNA’s taking a break, it’s not really!” Lang-Smith reassured. “Indigenous issues, heritage and histories will always be talked about and always be important to […] Lawrence and […] on a larger scale […] in the country and all around the world…We’re looking forward to what the next chapter of LUNA and Native students on campus means in that aspect for next year and all the years forward.”