I think Professor Cheyfitz’s talk on the state of indigenous people today was a great one for myself and my fellow students to hear. In my FWS first semester last year, we talked a lot about genocide in the context of indigenous people. This meant that I had a much more solid background in the information Professor Cheyfitz was giving than most people in the room, but he offered new insights and approached the problems from perspectives I hadn’t considered before. The legal aspect was entirely new to me, so the  process by which the cultures of indigenous people were threatened filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. One thing I had never considered before (but that has stuck with me since the event) is how in the United States there is always discussion about black versus white, but that this binary isn’t always where the biggest issues lie.

One other topic Professor Cheyfitz touched upon was the Cornell administration’s refusal to acknowledge that our university is located on Cayuga land. I thought this refusal was really interesting, because objectively it isn’t a question that we’re currently on land that Europeans stole from a group of indigenous people. After considering what would be implied if Cornell made that statement, however, I realized it is actually way more politically charged than perhaps it should be.

It’s hard to know how to help these marginalized indigenous people, as the brutal process by which we obtained the land we’re on can’t really be reversed. I think that the first step towards some kind of solution is to stop ignoring the issues indigenous people face and to actually learn about those who were here before us. As Professor Cheyfitz said, at the very least, we should all know where we are.