Beginning Monday, representatives from Texas Tech and a group of volunteers will give students a cultural experience during the third-annual American Indian Week to celebrate American Indian Heritage Month.
Marissa Gonzalez, who works at the Cross-Cultural Academic Advancement Center, said the center is involved with all of week's the preparation.
"We are expecting a lot of Tech students to get involved," she said. "Some faculty has been getting involved too. We just want to make ourselves known."
Although the week will focus on all the American Indian tribes, it primarily is centered on the Comanche tribe.
Gonzalez said Tech has an agreement with the Comanche Nation College to help Comanche Nation students transfer to Tech.
She said the Comanches were once located in the Lubbock area.
"We're focusing on the Comanches just because of the pathway we have to the Comanche College," she said.
Jim Goss, a retired professor of anthropology from Tech who has 50 years of experience working with many different American Indian tribes, said he started working on the reservations after the Korean War when a lot of tribes were in bad shape.
Goss said he wants people to become aware of the immense progress that has been made during the last few decades.
"There have been tremendous changes in the last 50 years," he said.
Rosa Gallegos, coordinator for American Indian Event Week, said only 1 percent of students at Tech are American Indians. She hopes the event will spark everyone's interest in a new minority group.
Gallegos said the event used to be called "Native American Week," but coordinators discovered the Comanches preferred the term "American Indian," so the name was changed.
"This is a way to celebrate who (American Indian) individuals are, how wonderful their culture is and look at all the things they have contributed," she said.
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