By Megan Michler
Walking into Native Night at the Plaza Room in Hofstra’s Student Center, you could easily be lost. With no prior knowledge of Native American culture, aside from what they teach in elementary school, anticipating anything in particular would be difficult.
The campus club IMPACT (Integrating Multicultural People And Coming Together) organized the event held on Nov. 14.
Their mission: “We want to establish connections and enrich understanding of all cultures around the world while celebrating diversity in order to create unity amongst everyone,” says sophomore and founder of IMPACT, Lisa Young. “We focus our energies on exposing people to different cultures and encouraging others to step out of their own comfort zones to experience something new.”
Some students, that originally sat down awkwardly in the folding chairs, unsure about the night’s festivities and their origins, left enlightened. The performers were authentic natives, all of whom are members of Native Horizon, a traveling group who perform native tribal songs. Their program included dances such as the Iroquois’ Smoke Dance, the Snake Dance, the Mexican Hat Dance, and the Shawl Dance-students were pulled up to join in the celebration of dance and song. But besides these activities, the club hoped to educate.
Both U.S. and Latin American natives, as one of the performers said, were written out of history, and therefore, much of their culture and contributions were lost in time. By commemorating their history and informing others about native past, present, and prospective future, we preserve a legacy that will hopefully endure generations to come.
IMPACT was created in Spring 2007, spawned from Young’s impression of diversity at Hofstra.
“My first year at Hofstra, I loved the diversity that I saw in the student body. Coming from a small place in Delaware with very little diversity, I saw many positives in the opportunity to interact with so many varied types of people and learn of perspectives and experiences very different from my own,” she said. “When I arrived, however; I noticed that many people seemed to the group of people they were stereotyped as being a part of. As an effort to encourage more integration and understanding amongst a variety of ‘groups’ of people, IMPACT was created.”
This fall was IMPACT’s first active semester. Spreading the word about their club and networking have been the members’ primary focuses, and they are well on their way to getting their feet off the ground. Spring semester holds new and more exciting possibilities for IMPACT, including many more activities as well as trips and conferences later on in the year.
For now, IMPACT is content in shedding light upon diversity and creating a better, more culturally aware environment for us all. “My hope,” concludes Young, “is that people come to recognize and respect others’ differences, but understand that we all have so many similarities-after all, we are all human!”
Visit the club on Facebook by simply searching “IMPACT,” or attend one of their meetings on Wednesday nights in Davidson, Room 101.