It was spring 2012, and one of Syracuse University’s student magazines had just released an issue on the season’s fashion trends. On the cover was a woman, bedecked in geometric “tribal” prints, imitating a lion’s roaring face.

“Let these tribal prints let out your savage side,” the caption declared, according to Brianna Carrier, a senior at the time.

Carrier, who is Mohawk, said she was disappointed to see such offensive images and words in a magazine distributed across campus. She went to Regina Jones, director of SU’s Native Student Program, and told her what was going on.

“(Regina) was like, ‘I’ll help you.’ So she started throwing away magazines, too,” Carrier said.

Since she began working for the university 28 years ago, Jones has mentored hundreds of Native American students at SU, which is located on ancestral Onondaga Nation land and has the highest percentage of Haudenosaunee students of any university in the United States, with a total of 108 Native American students as of fall 2016.

Jones co-founded SU’s Native Student Program in 2005, while simultaneously studying for her own bachelor’s degree at the university. In 2004, she received an Unsung Heroes Award from SU for her service to its Native American community.

This November, Jones is helping orchestrate the campus-wide celebration of National Native American Heritage Month, an annual celebration of Native American culture and resilience featuring a film screening, several speakers and a “Rock Your Mocs” day on which indigenous students and faculty are invited to wear moccasins as a symbol of solidarity.

Jones, who is a member of the Oneida Nation, Turtle Clan, still lives on the Onondaga Nation territory, a community of just under 500 people situated 8 miles south of Syracuse University.

Jones grew up on the nation during the 1950s and 60s, and although the community was relatively low-income, Jones didn’t realize her family and community was poor until she left.

At age 24, Jones had her first of four daughters. That same year – 1978 – she participated in the Longest Walk, a march from California to Washington, D.C. to raise awareness of Native Americans’ struggles and protest several bills before Congress that threatened indigenous water and land rights.

In the fall of 1989, she landed a job as a secretary in the physics department at Syracuse University.

Before long, she became known as the “Physics Lady” because she always had staplers, paperclips and dimes for the payphone on hand for students.

“I thought, ‘if that was my child, I would want somebody to smile and be nice to them’ — because school is difficult,” Jones said. “There’s a lot of stress certain times, and if it’s just a staple, you need to make things better — what’s a staple?”

Daily Orange File Photo

Carl Rosenzweig, a professor of physics who has worked at SU since 1976, said that Jones was always willing to help students switch labs or drop classes and was eager to offer any advice or encouragement she could, despite the large number of students in the program.

“It’s very difficult to get some sort of personal rapport with a student in that context,” Rosenzweig said. “And I think (students) found that they could have that kind of rapport with her.”

In 2000, Jones translated her ability to support, nurture and encourage students to a job in the Office of Multicultural Affairs.

Then, in 2005, she and faculty associate Stephanie Waterman co-founded the Native Student Program to better support the Native American community at SU, which Jones said grew “exponentially” after the 2006 creation of the Haudenosaunee Promise Scholarship.

At the same time that she was working in the Office of Multicultural Affairs, Jones was working on her own education, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in child and family studies, which she earned in 2007.

“Because she also got a degree from Syracuse, she also knew what we were going through,” said Terry Jones, a Seneca student who graduated in 2016.

The students who come to study and relax in the Native Student Program’s space at 113 Euclid Ave. know Regina Jones as someone they can turn to for advice, encouragement or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Many of her students – both past and present – referred to her as an auntie or a grandmotherly figure, who goes above and beyond to make sure each student feels at home.

When former student Ira Huff’s mother died, Jones drove the two hours to his home to see him, bringing his friends from school to visit, even though he had already graduated.

“It meant a whole bunch, because she knew how much my mom had meant for me,” said Huff, a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians.

Jones is also known among students for her sense of humor.

“She loves that Beyoncé song, ‘Single Ladies,’” Huff said. “She’d sing that and then she’d do a dance to it.”

Her office is a riot of color, with a green paper turtle framed on one wall, a green, yellow, blue and purple blanket covering another and multicolored beadwork hanging from the shelves. Many of the items are gifts from former students — a testament to the impact she has made.

But Jones said that when she first began the Native Student Program, she was unsure whether her work was meaningful.

“I was like, ‘why am I doing this?’ or ‘what am I doing?’” Jones said. “And then I began to hear back from students, and get little cards … they’re so appreciative for whatever I did.

“Sometimes I didn’t know what I did,” she added.

But Jones said one of the most rewarding experiences of her life occurred outside the Native Student Program when she was working as an apprentice midwife.

The first time she attended a birth, Jones was supposed to act as a photographer.

“I don’t think I took one picture,” she said.

After helping the midwife with the birth, Jones went home in a state of euphoria.

“It was the most wonderful thing I ever felt,” Jones said. “I thought if I could make a difference in one person’s first moments of life and first breath, then I could die a happy woman.”

Published on November 12, 2017 at 8:29 pm

Contact Madeleine: mdavison@syr.edu