Ball State University students have an opportunity to travel to the American Southwest this summer, where they will hike 11 miles into the Grand Canyon, participate in an American Indian sweat ceremony and meet five different American Indian tribes.
Jim Coffin, Rinker Center for International Programs director, said he will be taking up to 20 students on the trip as part of a field study offered by the Department of Anthropology, but there are only five spaces remaining.
Senior Stephen Polivka, who went on the Southwest field study last year, said he would encourage students who are interested to go on the trip because the experience is something they will remember forever.
"I loved it," he said. "It was one of the greatest experiences that I've ever had."
It was an eye-opening experience that changed many of his perceptions of American Indian, Polivka said.
"We all have our stereotypes of what different cultures are like, but [it's not] until you actually go out and get immersed in that culture and talk with the people there do you really find out what the people are all about," he said.
Coffin said it is important for students to learn about American Indian because of the different kinds of challenges they face compared to most other Americans.
"I wanted to take students out to see Native American cultures at work and to discuss with the Native Americans the problems that they face in terms of employment and environmental issues and those kinds of things," he said.
The travelers will visit the reservations of the Navajo, Hopi, Havasupai, Zuni and Acoma tribes in New Mexico and Arizona, he said. The trip involves a lot of hiking, and students will be sleeping outside in tents or in sleeping bags under the stars most nights, although some nights will be spent in motels, he said.
Students will have the chance to visit museums and prehistoric ruins as well as take part in many special American Indianceremonies, Coffin said.
"We'll be doing a sweat ceremony at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with the Havasupai people," Coffin said. "A sweat ceremony is a ceremony in which you literally purge your emotions at various levels of relationships."
Students are able to talk, laugh, pray and listen to ritual drums while they sit in a sauna-like room, sweating to purify their relationships with the universe, earthlings, close relatives and themselves, he said.
Polivka said his favorite experience in the Southwest was the Kachina dance of the Hopi tribe.
The Hopi perform the Kachina ceremonies to reincarnate the spirits of their ancestors, Coffin said. They believe these costumed dances bring back their ancestors every summer to help the tribe, he said.
Polivka said one of his biggest regrets is that he never studied abroad, so he went on the Southwest field study because he wanted to immerse himself in another culture.
"I decided that [the trip] isn't going outside the U.S., but you're still going to be looking at a different culture within the United States, and I really thought it sounded interesting."
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