(Voiced by: Rachel Carroll)

Story: The History of the Tawanka Commons

 

A greenhouse used to stand on the northwest corner of what I am now. Constructed in the fall of 1940, this greenhouse would later be torn down so I, Tawanka, could take its place. In May 1962, the contract was awarded to make a central dining facility on campus and on March 30th, 1964 the Tawanka Commons opened for the very first time. I have served as the main dining hall from its opening until May 12th, 1995 when the food service closed for a few years and I was primarily used as office space. After that, I resumed as the primary dining hall on EWU’s campus until its current schedule of being open only for Sunday brunch with rumors of closing its dining options all together.

​

Question: Where did the Name “Tawanka” Come From?

 

I love my name. Most people who first encounter me are taken aback by me name: the Tawanka Commons. Most of the buildings on campus are named after different people who have been important in the history of the university, but Tawanka is not the last name of one of those people. So where does my name come from?

In 1926, a women’s organization dedicated to service was founded at EWU. This organization was called the Tawanka Women’s Honorary Service Organization. The plaque, pictured below, is a remnant of that organization, which disbanded in the fall of 1960. This organization said that the word “Tawanka” came from an Indian phrase meaning “to help.” I’m not exactly sure that I believe that though. In January of 2005 people started to question the origin of my name and found that it’s a Lakota word meaning “willing to do.” With this new evidence of my name’s origins, you would think that something would be done to acknowledge it, but no action has been taken. Why? Why hasn’t there some plan to address the appropriation of a Native American word? And how can we address this in a way that is respectful? This leads us to my dream: to give credit where credit is due. 

 

Dream: To Give Credit Where Credit is Due

 

My name isn’t the first time when EWU has appropriated Native American culture. Just look at the newspaper clippings from an Easterner article written in 2004. The mascot for the university was playing right into racist stereotypes of Native Americans. In her article, “Invisibility in the Color-Blind Era,” Dwanna L. Robertson claims “Natives still routinely experience overt racism in the form of racial epithets like ‘redskin,’ ‘injun,’ and ‘squaw’ and horribly distorted depictions of Natives as mascots, reminiscent of the propaganda used against black, Irish, and Jewish people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries” (Robertson 114). This is an issue across the entire country, but it is time for there to be change at EWU. Just as the racist jerseys were retired, I believe it is time to retire my name. However, I do not want this to be an erasure of Native American influence in this area. Currently, my name, Tawanka, is a Lakota word, but what if my name belonged to the language of one of the tribes from this area? This might be a respectful way to acknowledge tribal cultures because they are, in the words of, Angela R. Riley and Kristen A. Carpenter, “inextricably linked to lands and other natural features, virtually all components of cultural life— material and intangible—link back to place” (865). Maybe a way to honor different tribal cultures’ link to the land would be to ask to use a name from the culture lived here before I did. Or at least, what if every student knew where my name originates from? And I don’t mean the service organization. To be honest, I don’t know what the best way to address this issue would be. I’m only a building, after all. But I know that there should be a change.