Native students want John Evans’s name off Northwestern’s alumni center
Evans has ties to a 19th-century massacre of Indigenous Americans, but trustees argue he wasn’t “directly culpable”
Native students want John Evans’s name off Northwestern’s alumni center
Evans has ties to a 19th-century massacre of Indigenous Americans, but trustees argue he wasn’t “directly culpable”
By Lisa Kurian PhilipNative students at Northwestern University are renewing the call to remove school founder John Evans’s name from the alumni center because of his ties to a 19th-century massacre of Indigenous Americans.
The students say the continued refusal by trustees to do so undermines recent efforts by the university to make Northwestern more welcoming to Native students and faculty and is symbolic of the administration’s lack of respect for them.
“The institution seems more concerned with their reputation, and the name of John Evans, rather than … making sure that the Native community and other communities here can feel safe and respected,” said Olivia Bailey, a sophomore at Northwestern affiliated with the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.
Evans, who served as a Northwestern trustee for more than 40 years, was Colorado’s territorial governor and superintendent of Indian Affairs during the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, when soldiers killed more than 150 members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. Most of those killed were women and children. In the aftermath of the violence, a Congressional committee demanded Evans’s ouster and he stepped down in 1865.
A committee of historians, political scientists and ethicists directed by the university in 2014 to examine Evans’s legacy found no evidence to suggest he participated in or planned the massacre.
But, as members of the committee wrote recently in The Daily Northwestern, “[Evans] unquestionably contributed to the conditions that made it possible, squandered opportunities to prevent it, and afterward defended it with incorrect, misleading, evasive and self-serving statements…”
Committee members were told earlier this month that Northwestern’s trustees would not reconsider a 2017 decision to remove John Evans’s name from the alumni center.
In a letter to committee members, Peter Barris, chairman of the Board of Trustees, cited Evans’s lack of “direct culpability” in the massacre. He also pointed to efforts over the past decade to make the campus more inclusive for Native students and faculty, including the establishment of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research in 2016.
But Athena GoingSnake, a junior at Northwestern, said being a Native student on campus is still difficult, and made even harder by what she sees as a denial of Native history.
“It’s so impactful on our community and so hurtful is because this history happens to pretty much all Native nations here in the U.S. because of settler colonialism, genocide and violence,” said GoingSnake, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation who is also Muscogee Creek.
GoingSnake and Bailey, co-chairs of the Native American and Indigenous Student Alliance at Northwestern, said they are grateful to have connected with other Native students and faculty who welcomed them and made them feel at home at the university. But they both feel the Native community on campus is not well-supported by Northwestern’s upper administration. They said the continued refusal to remove John Evans’s name from the alumni center is a symptom of that.
“Our voices on campus and our presence here isn’t fully valued and respected,” Bailey said.
Lisa Kurian Philip covers higher education for WBEZ, in partnership with Open Campus. Follow her on Twitter @LAPhilip.