AIISP Outstanding Alumni Award
Awardee: Janine Jamieson-Huff (Tonawanda Seneca, Hawk Clan)
AIISP recognizes an Indigenous alumnus or alumna of Cornell University for their remarkable contribution and demonstrated commitment to supporting and expanding the mission of the American Indian and Indigenous Program (AIISP). With this award, AIISP also celebrates significant professional achievement and the modeling of leadership and excellence in Indigenous communities locally, continentally, or globally.
AIISP is honored to recognize Janine Jamieson-Huff (Tonawanda Seneca, Hawk Clan) posthumously as the first recipient of this special alumni award for her immense contributions and extraordinary commitment to the building of an Indigenous community at Cornell. Ms. Jamieson-Huff is in many senses the founder of what became AIISP: she took the initiative as an undergraduate to find the only other Indigenous student (!) on campus (Roger Dube), and started the Native American Student Association (precursor to today’s NAISAC) in 1971. She advocated tirelessly for expanded recruitment of Indigenous students, provision of retention services, development of an Indigenous studies curriculum, and enhancement of the Indigenous community on campus. Ms. Jamieson-Huff played a key role in setting up a series of events that publicized Indigenous issues to the Cornell and wider community, which culminated in an important 1972 conference and presentation of a list of demands to the Cornell administration. The demands – generated by Indigenous students – framed the construction of the American Indian Program, and many of them eventually were realized. Ms. Jamieson-Huff was a clan mother as well as a member of The Six Nations Iroquois Agriculture Society. She received a bachelor’s degree from Cornell and a Master’s Degree from the University of Buffalo. She taught Native American Studies at Akron Central Elementary School prior to her passing in 2015. In 2021, the undergraduate organization Native American and Indigenous Students at Cornell (NAISAC) renamed their award for exemplary service and dedication in Ms. Jamieson-Huff’s honor. It is fair to say that AIISP would not exist today without her efforts.
