Photo courtesy of Jane McComber

My journey to Oakland has been long and tiring. I am a Mohawk woman and this is my story of becoming a student on the land.

For the longest time, I never knew what it meant to be Native American, I’ve always heard about free college, reservations and tribal cards. But as a little kid, all of those things meant nothing without context and or background. What does being Native American really mean? This has been a question I have been trying to answer for a while now.

It’s quite sad that I have this beautiful ancestry that was never talked about when I was growing up. This is one of the effects of a K-12 education in the U.S. and the legacy of boarding schools. These “educations” taught us to be ashamed of our culture.

Nevertheless, I graduated as a first-generation Indigenous woman from EMU in December of 2022. While this was an important moment for myself, it opened up a future where I was still finding my place. I wanted to leave Michigan and never come back, but luckily I was accepted into the MPA program at OU.

When I was transitioning to Oakland, a colleague introduced me to the Native American Advisory Committee and the Heritage Site, and it was just what I needed at that moment.

What Oakland has done by designating this Site has opened up opportunities for Indigenous people to reclaim their heritage and culture that doesn’t exist in higher education. The thing about this land is that it won’t get up, grow legs and walk out of your life. What you give the land it gives back to you.

When you nurture it and cherish it, you can see the fruit of your labor in the cedar trees coming back to life and the berries that are growing on the black current bushes. This land has become a place for me to just be. There are no expectations of who I am and what I need to be.

Whether I am good enough or not, this land represents healing. It’s healing me. I never thought I could be so connected to something before in my head. My cousin used to tell me stories when I spent summers on the reservations about how the Earth, Wind and Spirits give back to you – that it’s my ancestors speaking to me.

A few weeks after moving to Oakland I felt so lost and nothing felt right. So I went to the land. I sat there under the sun thinking about everything. Why am I here? Was Oakland the right decision? Am I even cut out for grad school?

Every day I get up whether I’m excited or not because I get the opportunity to heal not only myself but the land. We’re healing together.

I think this land is so important to me because for once in my life I want something to be permanent. Because I am able to connect to my culture on this land, my hope is that future generations of Indigenous students will also have the opportunity to do the same.

I want to see the pawpaw trees come back to their native state – Michigan. I want someone else to be able to have the opportunity to heal, just like I am.