By Cynthia Monroy–Bryce Winters, a student majoring in Nursing at Morningside, made an exhibit on Indians of the Amazon and the genocide the group encountered up until 1998.
“Every group has their own issues that need to be resolved,” Winters said.
Winters was one of more than 20 students from Morningside College who were informing the public about genocide with their interactive projects based on the Holocaust and genocide events that other ethnic groups such as African Americans, Cambodians, and Armenians experienced.
“The importance of genocide itself and how recent it was kind of shows how susceptible we are to such things in today’s world only 20-25 years later,” he added.
Students most likely know about the most publicized genocide, the Holocaust, where nearly 6 million European Jews were murdered between 1941 and 1945.
But genocide spreads much farther than the Holocaust. It’s had a long-lasting impact for many people worldwide and here in Sioux City.
On Sunday, members of the Congregation Beth Shalom, a Jewish community in Sioux City, displayed exhibits for Genocide Awareness Day to remember the impact genocide had on different ethnic, racial, and religious groups.
Keynote speaker and Director of the Native American Student Services at the University of South Dakota, Marisa Cummings, spoke about historical genocides in Native American populations and the impact it may have on future generations.
She says, “Genocide is a practice to eliminate a group of people, any population can be targeted to genocide.”
Cummings shared her own experiences and how she is passing down her heritage and cultural norms to her own daughter and family.
“I think it’s important to talk about genocide and how it relates to our climate today, how we interact with one another, how we target certain populations of people and dehumanize them,” explained Cummings. “It can be very dangerous and it can result in very dangerous things happening like genocide.”
The exhibit also displayed organizations that promote world peace, economic and social stability.
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