Nkéke Harris: Looking to ‘generations that are beyond our vision’

Long before stepping onto College Hill, Nkéke Harris carried with them the stories, language and legacy of the people of the Narragansett Indian Tribe — a heritage that would not only shape their time at Brown, but deepen the meaning of every step they took on campus.

In less than one month, Harris will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in critical Native American and Indigenous studies. Even though the concentration hadn’t yet launched when they arrived at Brown, it was the University’s Open Curriculum that allowed Harris to pursue relevant studies and design their own academic track within Brown’s Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative.

“The ability to create a path that is central to my passion and to the advancement of my community was very important to me,” said Harris, who grew up in Charlestown, Rhode Island.

Harris is a passionate storyteller and explores the arts through Indigenous traditions, particularly dance, and through contemporary theater  — as a junior, they played the role of the plant Audrey II in a production of “Little Shop of Horrors” organized by the student-led Musical Forum. In addition to leading greetings from the Narragansett People at University ceremonies like the Baccalaureate, Harris regularly performs at local powwows and was selected as head dancer at this year’s annual Spring Thaw Powwow at Brown.

“In using performance arts, we can really tap into parts of the mind that we can’t through traditional, Western forms of teaching,” Harris said.

Teaching is another passion of theirs. For years, Harris has contributed to exhibits and programming at the Tomaquag Museum, an Indigenous museum in Exeter, Rhode Island, where Harris’ godmother, Lóren M. Spears, is the executive director and has instilled in Harris the importance of retaining and sharing ancestral knowledge, Harris said.

“Indigenous knowledge is the knowledge of this place,” Harris said. “If you are to live in this place, you will not reap the benefits of the earth if you don’t know it, and in turn take care of it.”

Through their academic and extracurricular work, Harris has centered Indigenous knowledge as both history and inheritance. Thankfully, Harris said, they didn’t have to do it alone; their time at Brown has been punctuated by talks, performances and classes that directly involved Harris’ family.

At this spring’s Ivy Native Conference, hosted at Brown, Harris participated in a panel with their father, keynote speaker Thawn Harris, about the Narragansett’s successful fight to gain federal recognition. And Harris spent the first two years of their undergraduate career sharing Brown’s campus with their older sibling Sherente, a Class of 2023 Brown-RISD dual-degree graduate who is now in their second year of doctoral study at Brown.

In 2021, the siblings worked on a Departmental Independent Study Project in which 20 students committed to learning one of 10 global Indigenous languages. Their grandmother, Dawn Dove, was one of the instructors. Meeting weekly in a library on campus, Dove helped guide students as they expanded their understanding of the Narragansett language.

To Harris, it was more than just a class — it was a reclamation of knowledge that represented a full-circle moment for their family.

“My grandmother always loved being able to see the library, because so much knowledge and history has been kept away from [Indigenous people],” Harris said. “I think about how my great-grandfather wanted my grandmother to go to Pembroke College, but life had different plans for her. Allowing my grandmother to see that not one, but two of her grandchildren are at Brown was very special.”

It’s no surprise that Harris’ time at Brown has been shaped by a profound sense of community. The connections Harris made with peers in the Natives@Brown student organization and the Brown Center for Students of Color have been particularly inspiring, and Harris said they hope to see students in those spaces continue to take advantage of the resources offered to them.

“Young students of color really owe it to themselves to allow themselves to receive opportunity,” Harris said. “Oftentimes, we see opportunity and privilege as something that can only be stolen, but I think we need to start seeing it as something that can be reclaimed.”

When Harris delivers their oration on Sunday, May 25, they will channel not only their own experiences, but the collective strength and stories that shaped the Class of 2025.

“As a class, we have a very loud voice, and we use it a lot,” Harris said, “A lot of great minds, organizers and speakers have come out of this class … It’s our duty and our charge, being part of this world, to pass what we have onto the next generations.”

Harris hopes that members of the graduating class will feel immense pride in their accomplishments and plans to invite them to reflect on the centuries and experiences that led to this very moment.

“The real heart of everything I do is this idea that our ancestors have dreamed of where we are now, and all of the opportunities that await us,” Harris said. “Commencement is serving as this passage point between accepting those gifts from our ancestors, then implementing it for the generations that are beyond our vision.”

Aliza Kopans: From the College Green to the common good 

Aliza Kopans gave a lot of thought to where to attend college. She had narrowed down her choices and faced the daunting task of choosing between two universities that offered very different experiences.

“Everyone was asking me, ‘Where do you think you’ll be happier?’” Kopans recalled. “I hated that question. I was 17; I had little idea what was going to make me happy one week down the line, much less four years in the future.”

 It wasn’t until her aunt reframed the decision — “Where do you think you’ll grow more?” — that Kopans found clarity. Growth, she realized, lay in the unknown. And Brown, with its urban openness and unfamiliarity, was the place that invited it.

 Four years later, as she readies to graduate in May, Kopans said she’s certain she made the right choice. 

Kopans will earn a bachelor’s degree in public health and a certificate in intercultural competence focused on Spanish. In her first year, Kopans said she took thorough advantage of the Open Curriculum, taking her time to explore disciplines she felt would have the most impact. 

Her path to public health was shaped by fellow students, faculty and key mentors who helped Kopans identify her values and goals. The guidance she received was so transformative that she became determined to pay it forward. 

She became a Meiklejohn Peer Advisor and partnered with first-year students, offering them a student perspective on the University experience, while supporting informal, open dialogue. She found the work so rewarding that she continued with it, eventually becoming a member of the Meiklejohn Leadership Committee. She also serves as a peer career advisor through Brown’s Center for Career Exploration, where Kopans often found herself in the office of Jim Amspacher, assistant dean of the College for careers in the common good.

“I would go in there share my worries of making a livable income while doing value-aligned work, and he would calm me down, connect me with people and give me the motivation I needed to go downstairs and do the same thing for another student,” Kopans said. “Having someone believe so strongly in you, such that you believe in yourself a little bit more, is pretty exceptional.” 

Many of Kopans’ most formative connections developed not in the classroom or workspace, but in the heart of campus: the College Green, lovingly referred to by many students as the Main Green. She found it so vibrant and full of life that she began keeping a blanket in her bag at all times, just in case she needed some “Main Green time.” And as she sat, she watched. As she watched, she documented. 

Since her first year at Brown, Kopans has kept a running list of notable things she’s seen on the College Green: a gumball machine, a couch crafted entirely from snow, a game of golf, five bands playing at once, a pumpkin placed in the paw of Bronze Bruno, an aerial acrobatics show, a massively oversized soccer ball bopping around the grass and countless other scenes.

“What a source of vitality,” she said. “It’s such a core piece of Brown and something that connects the generations of students that have stepped foot on and studied and loved this campus.”  

Those shared experiences on the green will serve as the cornerstone of the address Kopans will deliver on Sunday, May 25.

“I hope that every student can hear themselves in my speech, and that their loved ones can look at the green that they’re sitting on and feel that same magic as well,” she said. 

Kopans especially hopes that her message will resonate with fellow members of the Class of 2025, which she said comprises a resilient, deeply caring cohort. The graduating class arrived on campus during a time when masks and COVID-19 testing were ubiquitous, but the College Green offered an inviting, natural spot for socializing. 

“We were all in cocoons for a while during COVID,” Kopans said. “In coming to college, there was this metamorphosis that allowed us to unravel our wings and flourish. Some of us did it on different timelines and in different ways, but we did it together.” 

As she prepares for life beyond the Van Wickle Gates, Kopans said she feels a pang of reluctance. Part of her wishes she could linger just a little longer to take in the sights, sounds and steady thrum of campus. 

“We can always come back, which is a nice thing to just be able to tell myself,” Kopans said. “But knowing that so many other people are going to get to experience this feels really, really beautiful. It’s forever ours, but it’s not only ours.”