Carrie Dann, elder and founder of the Western Shoshone Defense Project, doesn't look like a poster child for civil disobedience. With her salt-and-pepper hair and thick glasses she hardly fits the role of a hard-nosed human rights advocate.

But, she told a strategic planning workshop hosted by the third annual Ivy Native Conference (INC) on April 8 in Kennedy Hall on campus, nonviolent civil demonstration and "getting the word out" are her favorite methods for protecting sacred land and raising consciousness.

Presenting part American history lesson and part narrative, Dann spoke to a group of about 40 students and faculty before addressing a larger audience as keynote speaker. She has been at the forefront of the Western Shoshone Nation's struggle for land rights and sovereignty for over 40 years, leading the political and legal battle to retain ancestral lands in Nevada, California, Idaho and Utah.

She emphasized the spiritual importance of the environment as a source of life and encouraged young American Indians to go back to their nations, learn traditional ways and discover who they are.

"I wanted to go to this workshop because it's about organizing," said Nanobah Becker, a graduate student at Columbia University. "And it's so important, especially for people who get educated at an Ivy League school, because we aren't necessarily taught our history, how our history affects our situation now, and how we can go home and be a benefit to our community."

The weekend-long forum started at Dartmouth College in 2004 and was held at Brown University last year.

"Initially the conference began as a way to bring different communities in each of the Ivy League schools together because the Native American population on campus is comparatively very small," said Matthew Ricchiazzi '08, conference co-chair of the INC. "And it has evolved from a networking organization to also being an academic forum, which conceptualizes each academic discipline as represented on the American reservation.

"There are just about a hundred members from each Ivy League school, and each sent a delegation for the conference," he said. They ranged from Yale University's three students to Dartmouth's 40.

The conference provided a broad mixture of cultural, intellectual and political exchange, featuring strategy sessions on such topics as alcoholism among native Americans, how to prepare for graduate and professional school and indigenous leadership in the human rights struggles.

"I think the significance of the conference is that it gets native people and their students together to think about particular kinds of issues," said Eric Cheyfitz, Cornell's Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and an English and Law School professor, who led a workshop on federal Indian law.

"The biggest issue in Indian country is always the land base and protecting the land within a classic colonial system. It still directs the legal agenda that has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with power. So workshops like this are important. People should be aware of these things," added Cheyfitz. "All across the country these are major issues, and conferences like these appreciate that."

Graduate student Jackie Reitzes is a writer intern at the Cornell News Service.