By Alecx Abbott
This coming spring, Peninsula College is planning another presentation of “House of Learning: The Spirit of the Peninsula College Longhouse,” to college administrators. “All of our state level trustees come together for a couple of meetings here, and they want us to show the documentary again,” said PC President Luke Robins. “So, we’re excited about that.”
The premier showing of the film in October captured the importance of the native structure built on campus. The documentary described the relationship PC has with the native tribes in the area. A few weeks before its premier, Robins presented it in Chicago.
“It was a national meeting for community college trustees.” Robins said. “It was important partly because we were the flagship, so to speak. We were the first community college campus in the United States to have a longhouse.”
Colleges in areas with tribes and reservations attended the Chicago presentation as well. “The idea behind sharing it is so that it can maybe be a model for other community colleges,” PC’s Multicultural and Inclusion Services Coordinator Kristi Gansworth said. “Integrating all aspects of community was a focus of that presentation.”
Many who attended the presentation were curious how they might build relationships with local tribes and eventually have their own longhouse. “We had 18 or 20 people attending. There were a lot of folks that were from our sister institutions in Washington and Oregon and in the particular region, but there were some other folks from other parts of the United States that were from colleges that serve Native American populations.” Robins said.
“House of Learning: The Spirit of the Peninsula College Longhouse” describes the creation of the longhouse, beginning with S’klallam Elder Tom Allen sharing his ideas with previous PC President Tom Keegan. “I was going to be learning about the political and social relationships between the different tribes on the Peninsula,” Keegan said. The Longhouse, opened in 2007, has been a symbol of the bond PC has with local tribes. “Having a relationship with the native nations here is such an important part of our bigger college and it’s about and how we tried to use the longhouse as a vehicle for helping the native students feel welcome here, and also for non-native students to understand the cultures around them that they probably know very little about,” Robins said. “So we felt it was important to have that conversation and open that up.”
The film will be screened at 12:35 p.m. Dec 4 in the Little Theater followed by a question-and-answer session.
