The University’s recent 150th anniversary inspired a look at many aspects of TCU’s history, from its visionary leaders to the beauty of its physical campus. Underneath it all is the land on which it sits. The Sesquicentennial prompted coeditors Theresa Gaul, Scott Langston and Annette Anderson to dig a little deeper.
The compilation of the book Being in Relation: Indigenous Peoples, the Land, and Texas Christian University, 1873-2023 includes first-person interviews and essays by Indigenous members of the TCU community recounting their TCU experiences. Contributors included students, alumni, staff, faculty and community partners.
“One of the things we felt was most important and that we are most proud of is that the book offers an Indigenous perspective on TCU, one never told in print before,” said Gaul, professor of English in AddRan College of Liberal Arts and director of the TCU Core Curriculum.
The book includes essays on DFW and TCU’s Indigenous history, information on land acknowledgements and how Indigenous community organizers and university professors can work together productively to educate students.
TCU Native and Indigenous People’s Initiative, which began in 2015, helps develop programming around TCU’s relationship with Native peoples and the land on which it stands.
“TCU is interconnected with and interdependent on the land, all living beings, all Native Americans and the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, and is healthiest and strongest when it nurtures balanced, respectful relationships with them,” said Scott Langston, retired religion instructor and the inaugural Native American nations and communities liaison at TCU.
The book helps document and explain some of those benefits, responsibilities and relationships,
he explained.
Langston also said that a beginning step to creating healthier relationships with
NAIP is acknowledging how they currently stand and how the past has contributed to
that.
“Acknowledgement can be so powerful. Acknowledging what has happened in the past can help start healing the land, Native peoples and TCU,” Langston said. “Acknowledging the presence and value of the land and Native peoples can be enlivening — just think of how you feel when someone notices you.”
Gaul said that she, Langston and Anderson, an Indigenous community member and TCU partner, hope that, through reading the book, people will be moved to use their power — however great or small it may be — to help build respectful relationships between TCU, the land and Indigenous peoples.
Being in Relation is published by TCU Press. Its release will be celebrated Nov. 13 in the Fort Worth Contemporary Art Gallery. Additionally, TCU will host Healing with the Land, a conversation with Lucille Contreras, Oct. 6, as the keynote for its annual Native American and Indigenous Peoples Day Symposium.