Mission | Rationale for the program | A Note on the Name | About the CPNAIS logo

About the CPNAIS Logo

Ron Welburn, the original CPNAIS Director, designed the logo for the UMass Certificate Program in Native American Indian Studies. The Program's Advisory Board approved this design and Kitty Wagner (White Mountain Apache/UMass alumna 1989), applied the artistic design and receives our heartiest thanks for her artwork. The graphic design work was done by Deborah Dargis. Amy Stephenson (Brothertown/Stockbridge-Munsee), a graduate student in Sociology, added color to the design.

The logo reflects a commitment to Native Studies from an eastern Algonquin point of view and frame of reference. We seek to honor Indigenous peoples of this hemisphere and to preserve and support the integrity of the Native peoples of our region, from Virginia to eastern Canada.

The wampum belt is meant to be a generic representation of the North where such belts traditionally signified diplomacy among Algonquin, Iroquoian peoples and other Native Americans.

In the southern part of the design there are two sets of green tail feathers of the Quetzal, the national bird of Mexico. These represent the notion that the courses in our curriculum also brings focus on the lives and legacies of Indigenous peoples in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

The fans represent easterly and westerly North American peoples: Turkey and Hawk feathers for the East; Eagle feathers for the West. These directional images surround the quahog shell which has numerous functions, and from which wampum beads continue to be fashioned, as they were long ago.

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