By THERESA HOGUE | Posted: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 12:00 am
Gazette-Times reporter
When Allison Davis-White Eyes, coordinator of the Indian Education Office at Oregon State University, was keynote speaker at a student diversity symposium in Berlin last year, she decided that she would return in 2007 with OSU students.
"It was such a fantastic experience I thought it would be nice to do an exchange and bring students of color to Europe," and then bring German students to OSU.
Originally, Davis-White Eyes wanted to bring five OSU students, but she wasn't able to secure the funds, and instead, was able to invite only two students, Clarissa Bertha and Renee Roman Nose, both Native American graduate students.
In March, the trio packed their bags and flew to Berlin, where they joined students from Berlin's Humboldt University and American students from Georgetown University on a trip through Germany, Bosnia and Croatia.
The students were most interested in what role race played in Europe, but they quickly discovered that ethnicity, religion and class were more frequently topics of concern and conflict, and that race issues more frequently came up between them and their white American counterparts in Europe.
"It was a sociological exercise in human race relations in the United States," Roman Nose said.
Bertha said in Germany, students and residents spoke more about ethnic minorities than they did racial groups. As people of color, they were warned not to venture into certain Berlin neighborhoods where Neo-Nazi groups lived, and were kept away from rallies downtown, but issues of prejudice were more prevalent when talking about religious minorities, including their time spent talking to the Jewish Council in Berlin.
Roman Nose found the Jewish Council to be especially straightforward and easy to identify with, especially given that the Nazis patterned their concentration camps on the American reservation system, she said.
"One of the things the Jewish Council said was 'You don't know what it's like, living in the House of the Butcher.'" Davis-White Eyes said, referring to being a Jew living in Germany.
When interacting with Europeans, many of whom had never met a Native American before, the trio found that they were viewed first as Americans, and then were respectfully asked about their heritage. Roman Nose, who is fairly light-skinned, was surprised to be asked once if she was black.
"Their concept of racial coloration is fairly different," Bertha said.
They had many discussions about the idea of cultural oppression with former East Germans, still digging out from under decades of control by the former Soviet Union. Davis-White Eyes said they termed it "post-colonial depression," and that former East Germans had a much higher unemployment rate and tendency toward alcoholism and other social disorders.
Although as Native Americans, the OSU group definitely found themselves turning heads, so much so that at one point Roman Nose waved to a café full of staring people as if she were in a parade, they did not receive any negative comments from Europeans.
They did find some discord with the other American students in their group, however. Davis-White Eyes and the two graduate students all reported being marginalized, ignored and disrespected by some of the other Americans, and were even told that racism in the United States didn't exist.
Their exposure, both to the reaction of other Americans abroad, and to the ethnic and religious divisions in Europe, helped them when they presented papers on diversity during the symposium in Berlin. They also hope to make presentations on their experiences to OSU students, and would like to host German students at OSU.
While Davis-White Eyes would like to repeat the trip next year, she's not sure the funds will be available.
"I'd love to do something like this again, but you really need to have institutional support," she said. Without help from the OSU Office of Community and Diversity and the Native American Collaborative Institute, as well as the department of ethnic studies, this year's trip wouldn't have been possible.
However, Davis-White Eyes, Roman Nose and Bertha agree that the trip helped increase OSU's presence overseas.
"This put us on the map internationally," Roman Nose said.