Dinner on Us is administered by the Native American House (NAH) and is part of the Lunch on Us Series within Student Success, Inclusion & Belonging.
Dinner on Us is a biweekly, one-hour program featuring scholar- and practitioner-led workshops alongside a shared meal. DOU workshops explore a range of subjects and provide participants with opportunities to connect with peers and experts in a casual setting.
This program is open to all eligible persons regardless of race, color or national origin. Reasonable accommodations are available upon request, please contact the Native American House at nah@illinois.edu.
DOU Learning Outcomes
- Participants will develop an increased awareness of a specific campus or community resource and/or services.
- Participants will build an understanding of accurate and respectful representations of Native and Indigenous peoples and communities.
- Participants will develop an appreciation for cultural and human differences across social and global contexts.
Community Agreements for Attendees
To create a learning atmosphere in which presenters and attendees feel respected by and connected to one another, we ask everyone to:
- Show up with good intentions.
- Be a good relative by demonstrating behaviors of reciprocity, responsibility, and relationality.
- Respect everyone’s identity, ability, background, voice, experience, and boundaries.
Spring 2026
Tuesday, February 3, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
Location: Asian American Cultural Center (1210 W. Nevada St., Urbana)
Partnering for Success: Library Support for American Indian Studies
Description: As the Library Subject Liaison to the American Indian Studies (AIS) program, Cindy Ingold provides research support, instructional guidance, and resource development that align with AIS curricular and community goals. This presentation will introduce students to key library services and tools (e.g., print, digital, and multimedia) that can support their academic journey and strengthen their work in AIS-related courses.
Presenter: Cindy Ingold, Library Subject Liaison to American Indian Studies, University Library
About the Presenter: Cindy Ingold is the Gender Studies, Multicultural Services, and Political Science Librarian in the Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library, one of several departmental libraries on this campus. She is the library liaison or subject specialist for the departments of American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, Political Science, and the Center for the Study of Global Gender Equity. Within the library, Cindy serves on many committees, including the Collections Development Committee and the DEIA Advisory Committee. Professionally, Cindy is active in national library associations related to gender studies and political science.
Tuesday, February 17, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
Location: Asian American Cultural Center (1210 W. Nevada St., Urbana)
Sharing History with the Horse Nation
Description: Historical narratives are often said to have been “written from the back of a horse,” yet scholarship rarely considers horses as meaningful historical actors. This presentation examines how centering Indigenous horse knowledge offers a powerful framework for understanding our shared past with greater clarity, depth, and cultural accuracy.
Presenter: Lindsay Stallones Marshall, Ph.D.
About the Presenter: Dr. Lindsay Stallones Marshall is an Assistant Professor of History and affiliated faculty in Native American Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of Oklahoma and her M.A. in Liberal Arts from Stanford University. Prior to entering higher education, she spent eleven years teaching high school history and social science in California.
Dr. Marshall’s research centers on settler colonial memory construction within U.S. history education. Her book manuscript, Teaching Us to Forget: The Wars of Westward Expansion, U.S. History Education, & Public Memory, 1870–1995, examines how narratives taught in schools have shaped public memory of the U.S. wars against Native Nations and the enduring impact of anti-Indigenous textbook frameworks.
She also conducts interdisciplinary research on historical horse–human relationships, drawing from archival materials, environmental history, ethology, Indigenous knowledge, and practical equitation. Through this work, she analyzes events in the history of the U.S. West using a horse-centered, decolonial lens.
Tuesday, March 3, 5:30-6:30pm
Location: Asian American Cultural Center (1210 W. Nevada St., Urbana)
U.S. Obliteration of Indigenous Lands During the Cold War
Description: As the Cold War began, the United States expanded its empire in the Pacific. The U.S. took islands for strategic purposes and literally evaporated some of them with nuclear testing. On the continent the U.S. built dams submerging Indigenous lands under water. This talk explores the impacts of those events.
Presenter: Dave Beck, Affiliate Faculty, Program in American Indian Studies
About the Presenter: David R. M. Beck is the author and co-author of several award-winning books on the history of federal American Indian policy and urban American Indian history, including The Struggle for Self-Determination and City Indian. His book, Unfair Labor?, which Curtis Hinsley called “a master class in historical research and interpretation,” analyzes the labor and economic history of American Indian and Indigenous people who worked at and for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His most recent book, Bribed with Our Own Money, examines federal use of coercion and bribery in an effort to eliminate the U.S. relationship with American Indian nations in the 1950s and 1960s. Dr. Beck taught in the Native American Studies Department at the University of Montana for more than two decades, and prior to that at NAES (Native American Educational Services) College and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Tuesday, March 24, 5:30-6:30 p.m.
Location: TBD
Treaties for Treatment: How Urban American Indians Navigate the Federal Healthcare Promise
Description: Research regarding Urban Indian (American Indians living in cities or major metropolitan areas) healthcare access and experiences remains largely unexplored. This project takes an examines healthcare experiences such as accessing care (IHS and non-HIS care alike) to experiences with delivery of care itself in a sample with 38 Urban Indians.
Presenter: Kiana Wilkins (Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs), Ph.D.
About the Presenter: Dr. Kiana Wilkins (Wasco, of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research areas examine medical sociology, Indigenous Peoples and Native Nations, and intersectionality. Dr. Wilkins utilizes both quantitative and qualitative methods in her projects, ranging from large population level analyses to interview data. Drawing on interviews with Urban Indians (UI) in two research sites (Houston, Texas and Portland, Oregon), Dr. Wilkins examines treaty established healthcare (i.e. care through Indian Health Services) for American Indians in the United States and UIs healthcare access and utilization experiences.
Tuesday, April 14, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
Location: TBD
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW): Integrating structural analysis and lived experience to address risk and protective factors.
Description: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR) has become a critical public health issue that brings together the intersection of structural inequities, historical and ongoing trauma and systemic failures in prevention and response. This presentation will focus on key risk and protective factors at the individual, community, and structural levels, while emphasizing the need to invest in culturally centered prevention frameworks. This discussion will bridge quantitative data with a narrative of familial loss, and address the ethical responsibilities of indigenous communities, government, academia, and other institutions in prevention, intervention, and accountability to protect Indigenous women.
Presenter: Oliviah Walker, M.Ed (she/her), Meskwaki Nation
About the Presenter: Oliviah Walker (she/her) is a citizen of the Meskwaki Nation and is currently serving as the Strategic Administrative Manager for the Minnesota Department of Health, overseeing the health equity strategy for the agency. Oliviah’s experience includes roles in tribal, local, and state government addressing social and political determinants of health. She also served as Iowa HHS’ inaugural Health Equity Officer. She has a Master of Education from the University of Minnesota and is completing her Executive MBA in Sustainability from the Yale School of Management in May 2026. Her interests span the intersections of institutional change management, policy and advocacy, and community development, with a dedicated interest in Indigenous governance and capacity building. She lives in Iowa and became an advocate for MMIW after her family member’s disappearance in 2015.
Tuesday, April 28, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
Location: Asian American Cultural Center (1210 W. Nevada St., Urbana)
Cultural Centers as Home-Places: Indigenous Student Affairs Standpoints
Description: In many Indigenous worldviews, home is not defined by a single structure or fixed location. Rather, home-places emerge from a constellation of relationships (land-based, kin-based, ancestral, and cosmological) that both ground one’s identity and shape one’s responsibilities. Within this framework, the Native American House (NAH) becomes more than a physical space: it is animated through the cultural understandings and daily practices of its professional and student staff, who collectively expand what it means for NAH to serve as a “home away from home.”
Presenters: Native American House Staff
About the Presenters: Learn more about Dr. Charlotte Davidson (Diné/Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation), Native American House (NAH) Director and Morgan Bear (Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi Tribe in Iowa), NAH Assistant Director.
Get more information about the NAH Ambassadors — Justin Bean (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), Mia Davlantis (Menominee), and Ingrid Gonzalez (Yaqui).