The UNLV American Indian Alliance held its fourth annual Sunrise Ceremony on Aug. 23. Right before sunrise, more than 30 people gathered at the UNLV amphitheater to celebrate the beginning of the new school year. Each year, UNLV’s American Indian Community organizes a Sunrise Ceremony for their Indigenous students and staff. They gather before classes begin to pray for a successful school year.
Currently, there are more than 1,000 self-identified Indigenous students at the university. This year alone, 238 new Indigenous students enrolled, according to UNLV officials. During the ceremony, Chris Spotted Eagle, vice chairman of the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, took to the stage. He refers to a conversation about Native American representation on campus that he’d previously had with a colleague.
“Speaking with Kyle this morning," Spotted Eagle said. "I asked him, I says, ‘Do you know what the Native student count is for this year?,’ And he said it’s around somewhere 200. Which was a mind blowing number for me because I remember when, let’s just say, it wasn't that.”
Spotted Eagle later takes out his eagle wing fan wrapped in a blue bandana, raises it above his head and begins his prayer.
Traditionally, within American Indian communities, when the sun rises over the horizon, a new day starts.
Kyle Ethelbah, director of UNLV’s center for academic enrichment and outreach and a White Mountain Apache, said, "“We honor the sun because it leads us. We have a saying in our Apache culture, [which] is, don’t let the sun step over you. And so, that means to get up with the sun, acknowledge the sun, thank the sun for guiding you and keeping you safe and lighting your path. And so, that’s what we want for our students as well, is to light the path so that they don’t get lost in the dark. They don’t get lost in the areas that we could find ourselves and might take us on paths we don't want to go.”
Ethelbah knows the importance of setting Indigenous students up for success. Native American student enrollment has dropped by 40% nationally from 2010 to 2021.
“Being in school is a huge leap for most students in general. And then with our American Indian students having the things that they’re carrying through generations is a bit heavier," Ethelbah said. "And so we want to make sure they’re set up in a good way that lightens that load and really creates that sense of connection to themselves.” (19 seconds)
Cloey Griffiths, a senior at UNLV, feels she’s a part of the local Indigenous community, even though she moved to Nevada from California to attend the university.
“Growing up, I never really was involved too much with my Native heritage," Griffiths said. "So, coming to a school that really tries to celebrate it is really amazing and it makes me feel full and feel like I do have community here. And being able to celebrate my heritage is really amazing, and support the other students that are Native American here is really cool to me.”
In the end, Spotted Eagle reminds attendees, they cannot forget their origins.
“We’ve got a lot of sites here that we hold very sacred," Spotted Eagle said. "And these are just sites, they’re just rock, they’re just trees, they’re just dirt, until it takes us as Natives to plug into them. That’s what gives them life. That’s what gives them the energy, and that’s what’s missing from our mother Earth.”
