This week, UND will be the scene of a celebration-and exploration-of contemporary Native American life, including conversation about last year's Standing Rock pipeline protests.
The annual Time-Out Week starts 6 p.m. Tuesday with a family-friendly science event before winding toward the weekend with daily educational events, most of which set in the Memorial Union Ballroom. The Time-Out culminates in the two-day campus wacipi, or powwow, an occasion billed by the university as one of the leading cultural events of the Grand Forks area.
This year's keynote speaker is Steve Martin, a noted international businessman and member of the Chippewa nation. Martin, a UND alumnus who grew up in Devils Lake, is the son of parents who were deeply involved with the UND INMED program, which seeks to bring Native American students into medical fields.
As a young man, Martin accepted a position with Energizer batteries, a job that eventually sent him abroad. He ended up working with a textile producer in Turkey before transferring to General Electric. Now, he's the co-founder of his own company, KS Energy, which builds power stations throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
He'll be on campus telling his story at 10 a.m. Friday. What's more, Martin is also offering three internship opportunities for Native American students looking to get their own experience working far from home. Students can get more details from American Indian Services.
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This year's Time-Out week will also feature a day-long program covering the Dakota Access Pipeline protests that caught international headlines into early 2017.
That Thursday program comes with some forward hype.
Visiting UND professor Mark Trahant made headlines of his own last fall when announcing that he intended to walk away from the university when his contract ended with this academic year due to administrative resistance he'd encountered while trying to arrange earlier versions of the panel now planned for this week.
Trahant is a working journalist currently serving at UND as the Chuck Johnson Endowed Professor of Journalism in the UND Department of Communication. His Thursday programming is mainly about media coverage of the Standing Rock protests, as told by some of the journalists who were there. The day's events will start at 9 a.m. and last into early evening.
For those looking to the swirling colors and rhythms of powwow, the campus wacipi starts with a grand entry at 7 p.m. Friday night in the UND Hyslop Sports Center. Festivities continue Saturday with another grand entry set for 1 p.m. in the Hyslop.
A full schedule of events can be found at: " target="_blank">blogs.und.edu/und-today/2018/04/time-out-for-a-tradition-of-grandeur/
