At the main entrance of UC Santa Cruz, a banner created by the American Indian Resource Center (AIRC) hangs along the barn. It reads:
“You are on Native land. We are still here.”
The banner is just one way that the AIRC uplifts Native American Heritage Month at UC Santa Cruz.
“The intention of the banner is to recognize all the tribal identities on our campus, and as a reminder to us all that Native and Indigenous People are thriving and excelling here at UCSC,” said AIRC Director Angel Riotutar. “This is a recognition that we are [on] Native Land, no matter where you go on Turtle Island, this is Native Land.”
The banner only stays up during the month of November as a reflection of Native American Heritage Month.. As of Dec. 3, it was switched to a general UCSC banner.
“I would like to see this displayed all year long and in all the colleges on our campus,” Riotutar said. “We honor the ancestors and the land by stating the land acknowledgement, and an image or statement would be a reminder of our history and where we are today.”
Each November, the AIRC hosts Indigethanx, in collaboration with the People of Color Sustainability Collective (POCSC), Student Alliance of Native American and Indigenous Peoples (SANAI) and Cowell Coffee Shop.
Riotutar calls the event “an opportunity for all students, staff, faculty and our community members to come together and to be thankful for the abundance that we have. To also understand history, in a sense that it’s not just a one-sided history. That there’s another side to history, that it’s spoken out loud, and in a way that it’s more true than what it’s been presented as.”
The event is for Native and Indigenous students to find community and mentorship and to connect over what brings them together.
“Less than one percent of the population at UCSC is Native. We’re here, we’ve been upholding these traditions, we are connected through resilience,” said Monet Pedrazzini, a fifth-year Earth Science major of Yaqui heritage.
The event featured traditional Indigenous food, music, community speakers and an inviting environment at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn. Over 140 UCSC students, faculty, staff and community members partook in the festivities, serving as what organizers called an “alterNative” celebration to the Thanksgiving holiday on Nov. 20. 
Participants gather at Cowell Ranch Hay Barn, lights strung and tables decorated, welcoming all members and non-members of Native community.
This year’s theme was “honoring the elders.” The event was grounded in gratitude for the elders and ancestors of Native communities. The same ancestors who, despite suffering at the hands of white colonists, fought to pass down practices and traditions to loved ones who came after them.
“They [elders] carry so much wisdom with them and knowledge to the next generations,” Riotutar said. “Having the opportunity to be in community with our elders and learn from them is really important even if we’re not sharing stories or tradition, we’re still in the same space with them. For our younger generations here on campus to see that they have support out there in the community and on campus is really important.” 
Shannon Rivers speaks to the audience gathered at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn with various blankets hanging on the stage.
Shannon Rivers, Akimel O’otham of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, spoke at
the event and shared the importance of lessons Rivers learned from Native elders.
“Even if we didn’t have water, even if we had the smallest table of food, it was always about giving thanks,” Rivers said.
Attendees indulged in the evening’s menu of bison chili, wild rice salad, balsamic brussel sprouts, miso honey squash and blue cornbread. Cowell Coffee Shop thoughtfully prepared the recipes directly from UCSC alumna Sara Calvosa Olson’s best-selling cookbook, “Chími Nu’am: Native California Foodways for the Contemporary Kitchen.” Olson is of Karuk heritage and highlighted Cowell Coffee Shop’s significant effort of sourcing traditional ingredients for the event.
“After the meal last year, we’re getting into this idea of sourcing traditional food and using them in these menus,” Olson said. This year, we were able to source several Indigenous foods from Indigenous agricultural producers, like the wild rice from Red Lake Nation.”
Riotutar, an enrolled member of the Rocky Boy Reservation of the Chippewa Cree tribe, explained how these recipes were crafted with care and each regional ingredient was picked with specific intentions.
“We have been cooking with these foods since the beginning of time. The importance of having
Indigenous foods, foods that are from this area, from this region,” Riotutar said. “This is what our people ate. It’s evolving into a better way of eating, living and acknowledging the land that we’re living on.”
Rivers spoke to the white settler-colonialist narrative that Thanksgiving is told from, and how it continues to detract from accurate retellings of Native history on a national level.
“It is important for us to be aware that we have survived through the 424th year of what they call ‘Thanksgiving Day,’ which was a myth, so we want to always dispel that myth, but we also want to tell the truth and celebrate our resilience,” Rivers said. “Not only the myth of Thanksgiving Day, but why we as Native people give thanks every day, to this earth, to our relationship, to our elders and to our traditions and cultures.”
The speakers presented a call to action of remembering the past to learn from our mistakes. In reflection of the current federal administration’s efforts to target marginalized communities, revoke vital basic needs resources and more, Rivers reminded attendees of the one thing politics can never take away from Indigenous communities — connection.
“If you have fear because of what [the Trump] administration is doing, we’ve had 500 years of Trump. We survive, we have resilience,” Rivers said. “We are connected to this land.”
Community member Jaime Marquez walks down the aisle playing his wooden flute, filling the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn with light music.
Community member Jaime Marquez closed out the night by playing the flute, followed by a performance of an adapted Chumash grandmother song by Kanyon Sayers-Roods, a community member of Mutsun-Ohlone and Chumash heritage.
“What a place to find hope, connection and a little bit of joy in what feels like a really dark time,” Monet Pedrazzini said. “We’re going to get through this together.”
