In honor of Black History Month, Hamline’s Indigenous People’s Society (HIPS) approached Hamline’s PRIDE Black Student Alliance with an idea to collaborate on a “documentary and discussion.” Nyjeé Palmer, president of PRIDE, and Riley Davis, president of HIPS, held the documentary viewing in the Anderson Center room 304 at 6:30 p.m. last Monday. 

“I approached Pride with the idea of collaborating because of the shared history that indigenous people and black people share and if history has taught us anything it’s that we are stronger together,” Davis said.

The event was held so students could learn about some of the problems that afro-indigenous people face, and for people to share their questions. The documentary that was shown was “American Red and Black: Stories of Afro-Native Identity,” a film that focuses on addressing the problems people face when they come from black and native backgrounds.

The video featured many people who come from families of both black and native heritages. The people in the film often struggled with others’ questions or confusions about their identity. Another problem that the people featured faced was fitting in with both communities despite theretheir being a large population of people who also identify as black and native.

Directly after the video ended Davis and Palmer began to facilitate the discussion. This time created an opportunity for people to share similar experiences they face with their identities, questions they had about the video, or even just their thoughts about the video.

Davis also explained his experience identifying as an afro-indigenous person.

“Being Afro-indigenous myself I have struggled with balancing the two identities,” Davis said. “It’s different than just a black or just a native identity because of the experience of knowing your ancestors were stolen, had their land stolen, were enslaved, killed and experienced cultural genocide.” Although there was good discussion, that section was kept fairly short with the entire event only lasting about an hour and a half. Pizza and drinks were provided throughout the night, and 12 people turned out to participate in the event.