Indigenous Peoples' Day

• Event Date: Monday, October 13, 2025
• Time: 10:30 am–2:05 pm (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL

• Special Event

Indigenous Peoplesʼ Day Schedule of Events

Welcome and Indigenous Peoples’ Day Proclamation

• 10:30 am

• The Native American House and Gender and Sexuality Resource Center invites DeShawn William, Mayor of Urbana, and Debra Frank Feinen, Mayor of Champaign, to deliver a joint reading of the Indigenous Peoples’ Day proclamation. Following the proclamation, university leaders will offer a welcome to attendees.

Anti-trans Policies Jeopardize Indigenous Peoples’ Rights & Religious Expression

• 11:00 am–11:50 am
• Dr. Rosalyn LaPier
• Blackfeet Tribe of Montana/Métis
• She/They
• Professor, Department of History, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• LGBTQ+ people,” today, “and in particular transgender people, have been the target" of President Trump’s anti-transgender agenda, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Rosalyn will discuss how Indigenous people are threatened by anti-trans policies, which will result in individual suffering and the diminishing of Indigenous peoples’ rights to practice their own religions.

About the speaker

Rosalyn is an award-winning Indigenous writer, environmental historian, and ethnobotanist. They work within Indigenous communities to revitalize traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and to strengthen public policy for Indigenous languages. They are the author of two books including Invisible Reality: Storytellers, Storytakers and the Supernatural World of the Blackfeet, produced two Blackfeet language lexicons, and written dozens of articles and commentaries. Rosalyn is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis.

Community Feed

• 12:00 pm–1:00 pm
• Hundley Central Core Gallery

• For many Indigenous Peoples, feeding the community, fosters connections and serves as acts of reciprocity and well-being. We invite you to share a meal with Native American House and Gender & Sexuality Resource Center relatives. Food is first come, first served!

IndigeQueerness: A Navajo Lens on LGBTQ2S+ Kinship

• 1:15 pm–2:05 pm
• Byron Tsabetsaye
• Diné (Navajo)/Shiwi (Zuni)
• He/Him
• Tribal Liaison, University of Arizona

• In Navajo culture, queer kin have been respected members of our society and have played key roles in our cultural ways. While these cultural teachings have sometimes been complicated by Western thought and the adoption of LGBTQ2S+ terms in the English language, there remains a rooted relationship to understanding queer inclusion in our Indigeneity. While some structures in Navajo culture perpetuate a gender binary in a Western sense, much can be learned from Navajo epistemologies and being a good relative to our LGBTQ2S+ kin.

About the speaker

Byron Tsabetsaye belongs to the Diné (Navajo) and Shiwi (Zuni) people. He identifies as IndigeQueer (Indigenous + Queer) which he describes as a state of being that blends cultural and queer identity. Byron serves as the Tribal Engagement Liaison with the office of Native American Advancement & Tribal Engagement at the University of Arizona. He is also a PhD student studying higher education with a focus on American Indian higher education at the U of A.

Additional Information

More information about this event, including afternoon and evening programming at Native American House and Pennsylvania Avenue Dining Hall can be found at the Indigenous Peoples' Day event profile (Native American House) (external link)

Co-sponsored by the Native American House, Gender & Resource Center, American Indian Studies, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion.