Seminole State College will host “Native American Language in the Workplace: A Roundtable Discussion” on March 26 from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. in the Jeff Johnston Fine Arts Auditorium. The event is sponsored by SSC’s Native American Serving Non-Tribal Institutions (NASNTI) federal grant program. The event is free and open to the public.
With federal funding allocated to help sustain Native American languages, the roundtable discussion will center around the sustainability of various languages will look like in the future workplace environment. The discussion will feature a moderator and four panelists.
The moderator will be Katie Thompson, Director of the Sac & Fox Language Department. Thompson is a member of the Sac and Fox Nation. Her Sauk name is Chakîhkwe, meaning “Little Woman.” She is from the Peace Clan. She is also a descendant of Pawnee, Iowa, Otoe, and Kiowa. Thompson currently lives in Sapulpa. She began working with fluent speakers of the Sauk language when she was 18 years old. She worked for the Sauk Language Department as a language instructor for six years and is currently in her seventh year, serving as the director.
Panelists who will speak at the event include Faithlyn Seawright, Sarah Adams, Jennifer Barnes-Kerns and Della Warrior.
Seawright is the 2024 Miss Indian Oklahoma and a tribal member of the Chickasaw Nation with Oklahoma Choctaw, Cherokee, and Mississippi Choctaw ancestry. Her Chickasaw and Choctaw name, Taloa, means “To Sing.” She is a participant of the Chickasha Academy Adult Immersion Program, where she has the opportunity to learn her language. Upon graduation, she wants to teach the Chickasaw language. In 2021, she received her bachelor’s degree in museum studies from the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Adams is an advocate for Native American culture, education and rights. She is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. She co-created an intertribal, empowerment organization called Matriarch that serves Indigenous women, Two Spirit and non-binary people in central and NE Oklahoma. She worked alongside other Native advocates to see Indigenous Peoples’ Day recognized in OKC. Adams is a board member of the ACLU of Oklahoma, The Auntie Project, Nappy Roots Books, the Third Space Foundation, Respect Diversity Foundation and Central Oklahoma Two Spirit Society.
Barnes-Kerns has been a foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State since 2009. She grew up on her family’s allotment land in Ada. Though she has spent most of the past 14 years overseas, this year she was awarded a highly competitive sabbatical fellowship in Oklahoma through the Una Chapman Cox Foundation to study historical and modern tribal government relations with federal, state and local governments as well as inter-tribal government relations; to study the Chickasaw language; and to raise awareness of foreign service career opportunities in Native American communities.
Warrior is President and CEO of MICA Group. She co-founded MICA Group in 2006 with Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller and has served on MICA’s board of directors since its inception. Warrior was the first (and to-date, only) woman to serve as Chairperson and CEO of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe. She is the former Director of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture
in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For twelve years before that, she was president of the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she raised over $100 million and established the first permanent campus for the institution.
Since the beginning of the academic year, the NASNTI program has sponsored multiple events spotlighting Native American culture, including the Osage Ballet, a presentation by “Killers of the Flower Moon” author David Grann, a discussion on Native language and culture by photographer Matika Wilbur a screening of the documentary “Searching for Sequoyah” and a performance by the Cherokee National Youth Choir.
SSC’s NASNTI grant program is 100% federally funded in the amount of $450,000 annually. In addition to hosting cultural experiences on campus, the grant also provides support for students with disabilities by training faculty and staff in best practices, implementing assistive devices and technology and redesigning foundational courses to ensure they best support online students with disabilities.
For more information or questions, contact SSC NASNTI Director Kay Wallace at 405-382-9646 or k.wallace@sscok.edu.