“We started these teach-ins in 2019 during Native American History Month as a way of centering and celebrating indigenous knowledge, indigenous history and the indigenous experience here on the campus that’s named for an indigenous people – the Quinnipiac people,” said Sean Duffy, executive director of the Albert Schweitzer Institute and professor of political science.

“As we grapple with what it means to be responsible stewards of the name Quinnipiac, we thought we could start with a teach-in of sharing knowledge and understandings from various different perspectives,” Duffy said.

The November 4 drop-in event in the Piazza on the Mount Carmel Campus opened with a meaningful welcome from President Marie Hardin. Later in the day, Hardin’s husband, Jerry Kammer, engaged the audience with his fascinating talk, “Making ‘Broken Rainbow’ & the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute.”

A retired Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and noted author, Kammer’s book, “The Second Long Walk - The Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute” (1980, University of Mexico Press), presents a deep dive into the history and conflicts involved in the Navajo-Hopi land dispute in northeastern Arizona.

“I’m here to talk about an issue that I encountered 50 years ago, when I was working on the Navajo reservation,” said Kammer. “A remarkable issue, and I doubt any of you have heard of it. But it still reverberates in the lives of the two peoples.”

Kammer went out to the reservation to work as a volunteer teacher at a Catholic mission school for one year, then took a job with the Navajo Times, a newspaper owned by the Navajo nation.

“It was there that I was assigned to write about this land dispute with the nearby Hopi tribe,” Kammer said. “I did that in 1974, following it through passage of legislation in Congress that was very controversial legislation, and it provoked lots of demonstrations and many protests.”

The Hopi settled in the area first in approximately 1100. Several hundred years later, Navajos began migrating to the land. The Hopi lived in pueblo villages in a culture centered on agriculture and farming on arid land below the mesas. The Navajos, who relied on raising sheep, lived in scattered family groups, taking advantage of the area’s sparse vegetation. 
In 1863, the Navajos were driven off their land by the U.S. government troops; causing their first “long walk” – forced relocation into captivity in New Mexico, said Kammer.“Five years later, in 1868, the government recognized that experiment in relocation failed,” said Kammer. “They negotiated a treaty with the Navajo leaders for the people to return to their homeland along the Arizona-New Mexico border.”

In 1882 US President Chester A. Arthur established the Hopi reservation on the land. The 2.5-million-acre Hopi reservation was two-thirds the size of Connecticut.

“The presidential order declared this land was for ‘the Hopis and such other Indians as the Secretary of the Interior may see fit to settle thereon.’” Kammer explained. “In the ensuing years, Navajos with their flocks of sheep and their growing numbers spread across this area, and at least some Hopis became resentful of it and it took it to Congress.”

Ultimately, in 1974, Congress passed a law to provide partitioning of the land and the relocation, by 1986, of upwards of 10,000 Navajos from land partitioned to the Hopis. The decision fueled protests and demonstrations, with some of the most visible activists being “Big Mountain” Navajo women, said Kammer.

“It’s the women in whom the land is vested and who feel a special duty and responsibility to protect it for future generations,” said Kammer. “The men were active, but in supportive roles.”

The story of the land dispute was crafted into the 1985 documentary film “Broken Rainbow,” which includes Kammer among those interviewed in the film. It won an Oscar for Best Feature Documentary in 1986.

“I think that the publicity [the film] brought, and perhaps even the book that I wrote and other books that have been written about this dispute may have helped communicate the trauma of relocation, because many of the Navajos received life estates,” Kammer said.“They were allowed to live out their lives on this land, and once they had passed, the Hopis would get full control of the land.”

Remarkably, a Quinnipiac School of Nursing student trip to the same Navajo homelands is set to take place in January 2026. At the teach-in, Clinical Associate Professor of Nursing Erica Mumm and 10 of her students discussed their goals for the experience.

Recognizing the importance for nursing students to have the opportunity to experience a first-person account of indigenous ways of life, Mumm said she put together the course and its January trip.

“I primarily teach community and population-based health, and over the years I’ve found that the nursing literature did not really do justice to the indigenous peoples’ story,” said Mumm. “I think in nursing education, it’s really important to give our students the opportunities to be able to provide holistic care to all populations, and this is one way we can begin to do that.”

Mumm said the trip will take students to the same lands Kammer had discussed earlier at the teach-in.

“We’ll be going right in that same location, where the Hopi literally live on one side of the road, and the Navajo live on the other,” Mumm said.

Abigail Pousland, BSN ’26, said she was intrigued by the opportunity to participate in the course and the trip.

“I really don’t have a lot of background knowledge on indigenous groups in the United States, besides the single story that we’re told in our textbooks,” said Pousland. “In classes, we only really mention Native Americans when we’re talking about risk factors for certain diseases; but we never really explored why that is until this course.”

Pousland said she will leverage the experience to help others in the future.

“I hope to use the knowledge I learn about the Navajo people to understand the patients I care for and to realize that everyone has a unique story. I also hope to use my experience to help make change for those impacted by all health disparities,” said Pousland.

Brian Crowley, BSN ’26, said he was looking forward engaging with, and learning from, the Navajo people in their homeland.

“I’m really interested in connecting with sacred land. To me, nature is super important. It’s a big part of my life,” Crowley said. “When I learned about this opportunity, I thought about how Navajo connect to their land and how that can promote healing; and as a healthcare worker just to be able to see how they use the land to heal their mind and spirit.”

As a guest of the Indigeneity Initiative, Akomawt Educational Initiative co-founder Chris Newell (Passamaquoddy) spoke at the teach-in on “Indigenizing Education.”

At Quinnipiac, Newell often helps to provide knowledge and support for Indigeneity Initiative and Schweitzer Institute programs, together with Akomawt Educational Initiative co-founder endawnis Spears (Dine/Ojibwe/ Choctaw/ Chickasaw).

Newell shared that the Akomawt Educational Initiative was created by those who had helped to inform the creation of Connecticut’s Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center, the world’s largest tribally owned museum and research center.

“One of the things that we noticed was the students that were coming through there were coming in with basically no knowledge of history of tribes…they might have heard about the Pequot Massacre. It was not uncommon to be on a tour and for a child or possibly even a parent to raise their hand and innocently ask, ‘Are the Pequots still alive?’” Newell said. “So we really saw the need to expand what we’re teaching at the museum to the greater public, for the benefit of the tribe and also for the people who were raised without this information.”

Quinnipiac University was one of the first clients of the Akomawt Educational Initiative.

“Years ago, there was something here called, ‘The Legend of the Bobcat,’ and that was something we helped the university work through,” said Newell. “One of the things Quinnipiac doesn’t want to do is appropriate Native cultures. There was some appropriation of some of the indigenous legends here put into a fictional story about the mascot, which is problematic because it leads you to think that the story is true.”

The legend was taken down for a more accurate recalling of the history of the mascot.   The Akomawt Educational Initiative has also often been invited to campus to assist with offering the university community programs such as the Blanket Exercise, Newell said.

“Quinnipiac has been making a lot of steps,” said Newell.

A version of the KAIROS Blanket Exercise program, the interactive and participatory history lesson covers more than 500 years in a 90-minute experiential workshop that aims to foster understanding about shared history as Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

Teach-in speaker, Mohegan tribe member, and Quinnipiac alumna Aiyana Baker, BSN ’25, collaborated with Akomawt Educational Initiative members to bring the Blanket Exercise to Quinnipiac last year, when Baker served as president of the Indigenous Student Union. Today, Baker is an RN in the emergency department at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, Vermont.

On Nov. 4, Baker returned to campus to present, “Warrior Spirits, Wounded Minds: Indigenous Mental Health Matters.” She discussed reasons leading to significant mental health and substance abuse disparities faced by Native Americans compared to the general population, and systemic barriers to care. Baker also outlined some solutions which could begin to help close the gap.

“My heritage and my work in the medical field have always meant a lot to me,” Baker said “It’s so important to me that we place an emphasis on mental health and the healthcare of indigenous people in general, as there’s not a lot of focus on that. I hope to continue to incorporate my heritage into my healthcare practices throughout the years.”

As a teach-in speaker, Assistant Professor of Education Jennifer Dauphinais, a member of the Quinnipiac Indigeneity Initiative, outlined her blended genealogical history to help illustrate her discussion, “The Metis & the Mayflower: the erasure of women in the process of colonization.”

Dauphinais is of European, Canadian Métis and Cree descent. Dauphinais said she was grateful to those who came to learn at the teach-in, and for the opportunity it presented to share a story from her family tree that helps to inform her commitment to reparations work within curriculum in education.

“My goal is to center the purpose of today’s gathering, to teach-in, to contextualize indigeneity within the Quinnipiac community, and explore who we are and what we can learn together through that process,” Dauphinais said.

In all, presentations on a dozen different topics helped to inform the university community during the Indigeneity Initiative Teach-In. The morning opened with presentations by Quinnipiac associate professors of history Christina Dickerson and Nita Prasad. Dickerson spoke on “The Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Revolutionary War.”

Prasad delved into “Indigeneity in the Israel-Palestine Conflict.” Shawna Reed, professor of biomedical science, discussed incorporating Indigenous knowledge in science and ecology classes. Quinnipiac First-Year Seminar instructor Paul Pasquaretta spoke on “Indian Gaming.”

Christine Kinealy, founding director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University, opened the afternoon session with an exploration of the lasting bonds forged by the Cherokee and Choctaw Nations’ financial aid to Ireland during the Great Famine.

Jennifer Rawlings, JD ’15, co-director of the Center for Indigenous Peoples Rights, discussed “Practicing Indian Law.”

The teach-in closed with a powerful story shared by Quinnipiac Indigenous Student Union founder Kiara Tanta-Quidgeon, ’22: "Nana’s Blueberry Slump: A story of love, the intergenerational transmission of knowledge, and the taste of home."

In Focus