This past Wednesday, the First- Year Leadership in Health and Medicine
Leader Scholar Community hosted an event called “Eliminating
Stereotypes: Native American Culture and Medicine Through a New Lens.”
It examined Native American history, contributions and myths through a
presentation by Claudia A. Fox Tree, a speaker and workshop presenter
for the Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness. The event
was co-sponsored by the International Center for Ethics, Justice and
Public Life, the Brandeis Pluralism Alliance and Brandeis AHORA!
“We are an oral tradition culture,” she said, explaining why singing is
so important to Native American culture. “We pass on things by talking
about it, pass along the stories.”
She then began by clarifying exactly who Native Americans are as
“indigenous people of the Western hemisphere before 1492.” She said that
providing this definition was important because defining who the people
are makes them more than simply stereotypes in people’s minds.
Read more at http://www.thejustice.org/news/speaker-confronts-traditional-biases-1.3155699#.UztLyMfwumG
Fox Tree ended by presenting ways to help rectify these problems,
primarily by becoming an ally and standing up against pejorative
representations of Native Americans.
Organizer Irene Wong ’17, a member of the Leadership in Health and
Medicine Leader Scholar Community, said that the community chose to
bring Fox Tree to campus because she said that there is such a low
representation of Native Americans among the student body. “We want
people to be more aware of the culture and… many stereotypes that we
don’t normally think of,” Wong said in an interview with the Justice.
