BGSU’s In The Round speaker event series is highlighting Native American and Indigenous people in honor of Native American Heritage Month celebrated during the month of November.
In preparation for the speaker of this series, Jenn Stucker, co-founder of In The Round and associate professor in graphic design, shared that there are over 16 events happening in preparation for the speaker series.
This year’s speaker, Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants,” was the subject in which In the Round built the events around and ultimately started the In the Roots exhibit.
“This exhibition is a part of that, giving people an introduction to the book “Braiding Sweet Grass.” So we focus specifically on just Ohio native plants and using her book as a springboard,” Stucker said.
In The Round began following the Land Acknowledgement statement as Heidi Nesser, who served as the chair of the committee and Stucker, who served as a member, implemented the statement into BGSU. However, the co-founders didn’t stop there.
“Words are great, they’re very helpful, but we need to put those words into action,” Stucker said.
The series happened to fall perfectly in the month to celebrate Native American and Indigenous heritage. Stucker and her co-collaborators have been looking to expand the history of indigenous people beyond one month.
“A lot of times, our events are often all around the year, so they’re not all in November. The exhibition being in November this month was a benefit that it could be during this time, but it wasn’t intentional to that reasoning. I needed enough time and my colleague in history needed enough time for our students to create the work and do the work,” she said.
Dr. Amílcar Challú, an associate professor in the History Department, found a new role this year in assisting with planning the speaker series as part of In the Round’s organizing team and has brought both his history background and interests to the table.
“I work on environmental, economic topics; I tend to cross national boundaries and I am more interested in the story of people and individuals – sometimes plants and animals too. So, that naturally brought me more in touch with In the Round,” Challú said.
From being a participant to being a facilitator, he has noticed the “community buy-in” and how people keep coming back to learn more.
“Part of the impact would be numerically tested, how many people come to events and things like that, but also there is a qualitative impact and sometimes it’s not about the numbers but about how deeply people think,” he said.
Though there have been some concerns about land acknowledgement in other institutions, Professor Stucker believes there is nothing to worry about in this case.
“One of the statements it says in there is about intellectual diversity and so we just see this as a part of the intellectual diversity of the campus, bringing indigenous knowledge and indigenous ways of knowing forward.”
As all of the events hosted for In the Round are free and open to anyone, there is plenty of room for people to have the opportunity to be educated.
“We’re in an intellectual academic community that are curious about all kinds of things and so it seems to be well situated,” she said.
For more information: https://www.bgsu.edu/the-arts/in-the-round.html
