This Saturday, the Indigenous Peoples’ Day Committee of Oberlin will hold a celebration for Indigenous Peoples’ Day at the Oberlin Enrichment and Activity Center. The event will take place from 2–4 p.m., and the celebration will include storytelling, music, dancing, and community. The event will be followed by a vigil in Tappan Square Monday, Oct. 14, from 12–1 p.m. The IPDCO invites the community to celebrate the culture, histories, and contributions of Indigenous peoples in our own community and around the world. The celebration serves to amplify Indigenous voices and give the Oberlin community a space to come together, learn, and reflect, as well as stand in solidarity for justice, sovereignty, and preservation of sacred traditions.
In 2017, Oberlin became the first city in Ohio to replace the federal holiday of Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The holiday is representative of the national movement to recognize the contributions of Indigenous people. Cindi Byron-Dixon, one of the founders of the Indigenous Peoples’ Day Committee of Oberlin, spoke about this.
“One of the things that makes starting in Oberlin so powerful is the history of Oberlin and how many times Oberlin has been at the [forefront] of breaking down barriers,” Byron-Dixon said. “Now we just have to wait for the rest of the state to catch up. I feel like we do a lot of things in Oberlin first with the hope that it is a seed that is planted and will eventually grow and spread to other areas.”
The IPDCO, established in 2017, is a multi-generational, women-led organization. The group has been working to educate the community and research its cause ever since, planning events and workshops to celebrate Indigenous peoples. Its most recent research centered the modern Native crisis and some of the consequences of colonization on Indigenous people in the U.S.
With events like the vigil and the Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration, the group hopes to raise awareness on a local, even national, level.
“Working with other Indigenous groups to ban Native mascots in the state [is another cause of the committee],” Byron-Dixon said. “There are 200 mascots in the state of Ohio that use imagery of Natives as their school mascot.”
In Ohio, there are no federally recognized tribes. However, the state is home to the most Native mascots. Native mascots are prohibited in the NCAA and looked poorly upon at the professional level, but they are still present in K–12 schools. The committee hopes to make clear that teaching kids that harmful imagery of Natives is acceptable sets harmful precedents, especially for Native youth.
Saturday will mark the date of IPDCO’s eighth annual celebration. The family-friendly event will include drumming, dancing, music, as well as educational materials. Through this event, the committee wants to highlight the many different practices of Native peoples from all over.
Alongside the community celebration and the vigil, the Oberlin community is making efforts to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Indigenous history in a variety of ways. The Firelands Associations for Visual Arts will host a Native American Pottery Workshop for community youth aged 8–12 Saturday, Oct. 12 and Saturday, Oct.19 from 9 a.m.–1 p.m.. The workshop will give children the opportunity to engage with Native American Pueblo Pottery in a hands-on environment. The workshop will also provide an overview of the diverse Native American tribes, their traditions, and the significance of poetry in their cultures.
“It’s important to highlight Indigenous people not just once a year, but all the time,” Byron-Dixon said. “They protect the lands we live on, and we destroy them and give no second to sacred spots.”
