The Longhouse at Lane Community College is a home for Native American students – a place to share their values and cultures. It provides an educational resource for the curriculum as well as the physical campus.

This is Frank Merrill, he first had the idea for a longhouse on this campus in 1994. He was at that time the Native Advisor here at Lane. He is the reason we now have a longhouse on this campus. It was his will to fight for this goal for all Native students to have a college that recognizes their culture and community, as well as for us as Native people to have the opportunity to share our culture with others. He worked hard to get donations traveling all over to different tribes in hopes that they would share in this dream.

This is my son Cody. He has been dancing his whole life at powwows school presentations, and many times out on lanes court in front of the cafeteriato raise money to help build the longhouse. he is now 16 and wants to come to lane after high school. He will then be able to use the longhouse and know that he helped make it possible, and Lane will gain from what he has to offer our community.

This is my son Sikye, he was very tiredbut he still put on his regalia and danced in honor of the graduating NASA Students, the native student group here at Lane, for several years we had to do ourgrad ceremonies in the cafeteria, as well as for many years Frank Merrill taught a non-credit class to the community about our culture.

Our family drum and our family dancers came out to Lane every Monday night for 14 years to help Frank (our father and grandfather) share our culture. Its nice to have a longhouse and not have to drum and dance in the cafeteria anymore.

This is my daughter Sequoia, she has been dancing her whole life too. All of my children have been involved with their culture their whole livesand I wanted to share them with you, so you could see why Frank worked so hard to make this dream of the longhouse come true. My children are just a few of his grandchildren, all together he has 8 grandchildren and nine great grandchildren. He made a huge difference in their lives by showing them that If they work hard and never give up they can achieve anything and that an education is the only way we as Indigenous people have to fight for our ways of existence. The longhouse gives them a since of comfort and belonging.

This is the center room of the longhouse. The class I spent doing my service hours in was held here. James Florendo teaches by greeting hisstudents by shaking hands and welcoming them. He teaches them that it is important to care about how they dress and present themselves because people will give them recognition with a certain amount of respect. The group talks about values and what it means to be a native person or anyperson with an ethnic background, and to always value yourself. The class focuses on teaching the skills for students to be successful in their lives.

This is one of the nine displaycases in the hall of honor inside theLonghouse. There is a case for each one of the nine recognized tribes in Oregon. This Case is made up of different artifacts from The Coos & Lower Umpqua Siuslaw Tribes

This is the talking circle. To Native people this Is where we share all of our burdens or thoughts and everyone gets a chance to speak without anyone giving feedback. It is important to just listen. There arebricks with many names on it. These names are those who have helped tomake this longhouse possible and those who are no longer with us that were of great importance to our community.

I hope you got something from thisPresentation. I really just wanted to help other students to understandwhat it means to the Native American community for what students have done by helping us achieve somethingso great and important to us. I thank you for taking the time to view this and for your donation of three dollars that all students have taken out of their tuition to this causethe automatic donation was voted on by students who came before us.

Thanks!!!!!!