Statement on Hate incident on campus
November 8, 2021
11/8/21 9:05 AM
Dear colleagues,
I am writing to inform you of the latest incident of racially motivated hate speech on our campus. A cheerful message painted on The Rock by Indigenous students, wishing everyone a happy Native American Heritage Month, and acknowledging that we are on Ojibwe/Anishinabe land, was vandalized and replaced with a new message, “Ojibwe? No way!! You are on China’s land”. Indigenous students, their allies and some faculty responded to this anti-Native, anti-Asian act with a protest at the Rock last night. We in the Department of Anthropology stand with those protestors in denouncing this hostile and destructive act. The Rock is the symbol of free speech on this campus. To see it defaced in this way is shameful, and counter to the shared values of our university community.
Mary Weismantel
Chair and Professor of Anthropology
Northwestern University