News & Events

Calendar Archive: 2005-2006 Events

Fall 2005

Septermber 14, 2005 at Asian American Studies

NAH Reading Group

The theme this year is "Colonial Oppression and Academic Decolonization."

Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth, "Who Stole Native American Studies?" 
Wheeler, Winona, "'Ethnic' Assimilates 'Indigenous': A Study in Intellectual Neocolonialism"
Wilson, Waziyatawin Angela, "Reclaiming Our Humanity: Decolonization and the Recovery of Indigenous Knowledge," in Indigenizing the Academy.
Yellow Bird, Michael, "Reclaiming American Indian Studies."

This first session will be an introduction to American Indian studies and how they are variously "disciplined" by the needs, interests, and concerns of indigenous peoples for the purpose of, according to Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, "pass[ing] on a vibrant tradition of indigenous resistance to colonization and oppression [so that] tribal-nation autonomy will be invested with power and insight."

For your reference, download the meeting dates and download the bibliography

September 15th, 2005

Open House

September 23-24, 2005

CIC American Indian Studies Consortium Fall Conference at The Ohio State University, Newark Campus

The theme of this year's conference is "Native Knowledge Written on the Land."

September 28, 2005-January 14, 2006 at The Newberry Library

Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country

Professor Frederick E. Hoxie is curator of the exhibit "Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country" which will open at the Newberry Library in Chicago on September 28 and run through January 14. 

"Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country" enriches the traditional account of the Corps of Discovery's expedition by telling the other half of the story—the story of the Native Americans the explorers encountered in the West.  Focusing on five communities the expedition team met in their journey to the Pacific Ocean, the exhibit explores the native cultures that inhabited the "Indian Country," details the interactions between the explorers and western Indians, and considers the impact of those encounters on the past and present lives of those Indian tribes.

The exhibit includes approximately 120 items from the Newberry Library's renowned American and American Indian history collections and additional materials on loan from peer institutions and organizations along the Lewis and Clark trail.  The items on display, together with the voices and images of living Native Americans, invite visitors to reflect on the triumphs and tragedies that accompanied and followed Lewis and Clark's remarkable adventure.

October 12, 2005 at Asian American Studies

NAH Reading Group

To prepare for the meeting, please read Andrea Smith, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (South End Press, 2005).  

Professor Smith will join us, giving us an opportunity to meet and talk with the author and to think through ways of conceptualizing violence in American Indian studies contexts.

Professor Smith is 2005-06 Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in American Indian Studies and assistant professor of American Culture and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan.  She holds a PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in History of Consciousness.  She is a longtime anti-violence activist and co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. She is interim coordinator for the Boarding School Healing Project and, as a Ralph J. Bunche Fellow, coordinated Amnesty International USA's research project on sexual violence and American Indian women.  She recently was nominated by the Swiss Commission of UNESCO for the Nobel Peace Prize.

October 14, 2005

Global Educational Dialogue: Freirian Pedagogy and Brazilian Education

This is a multicultural event intended to create a dialogue on issues of education, popular culture, and critical pedagogy based on the participants' experience in Brazil.  This presentation is to share educational philosophies outside the U.S. context based on curriculum, music, and adult education.

Paid for by the Student Cultural Programming Fee

October 19, 2005 at La Casa Cultural Latina

Professor LeAnne Howe
Show, Don’t Tell:  Factions, Fictions, Film and the Diplomacy of Americas Favorite Pastime

Choctaw author and Associate Professor LeAnne Howe will be discussing how a dream and a document fueled her investigations into the diplomacy of Indian baseball in her fiction, film, and scholarship.

October 25, 2005  12-1:30 at the Native American House

Lunch and Learn with Rita Pyrillis and Jerry Clown

In a relaxed and open conversation, please come hear Rita and Jerry talk about their careers as a journalist and a cultural preservationist. 

Rita Pyrillis (Minneconjou Lakota) is a freelance journalist who has written for the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and United Press International among other publications.  She teaches at the University of Wisconsin-- Parkside and at NAES (Native American Educational Services) College in Chicago.

Jerry Clown (Minneconjou Lakota) is a cultural preservationist who grew up on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation in South Dakota.  He is a direct descendent of Crazy Horse and a passionate advocate for Lakota people.  He attended Haskell Indian Nations University and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

October 25, 2005 at the Asian American Cultural Center

"More than 'the Chief':  Native Issues and the News"

The UI Department of Journalism, in cooperation with American Indian Studies and the Living Learning Communities, invites you to join Native journalists and scholars and Illinois media professionals in a dialogue exploring the issues making news in Native communities.

Sponsored by the Office of the Chancellor

November 10 at the College of Law Auditorium

The Intellectual Property Legal Society will be presenting a talk on: The Trademark Implications of Retiring the Chief Illiniwek Logo

By Richard Stockton of Banner & Witcoff, Ltd. 

(Banner & Witcoff is one of the top intellectual property firms in the United States with offices in Chicago, Washington DC, Boston, and Portland).

November 15, 2005 at La Casa Cultural Latina

 Sarita Cannon, Postdoctoral Fellow in American Indian Studies

Narratives of Negotiation and Renaming: Living at the Crossroads of Black and Native Cultures

Born and raised in San Francisco, Dr. Cannon earned an A.B. in Literature from Harvard University. She recently completed her Ph.D. in English at the University of California at Berkley where she wrote her dissertation entitled "Searching for the Authentic Red-Black Self: Depictions of African-Native Subjectivity in Literature, Visual Art, and Film." Sarita's teaching and research interests include Native American Studies, African American Studies, Autobiography, and U.S. Ethnic Literatures.

Wednesday, December 7 at the Levis Faculty Center

An Evening with Joy Harjo

Ms. Harjo is the recipient of several awards. She was named the 2005 Writer of the Year - Film Script by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers for the script for A Thousand Roads, 2005, made for the National Museum of the American Indian. She was named the 2003-2004 Writer of the Year - Poetry for How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001 and the 2003-2004 Storyteller of the Year for her new CD, Native Joy for Real by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. This highly anticipated event is being sponsored by the NAH Programming Committee, Creative Writing Program, Department of Latino/a Studies, and the Office for LGBT Concerns and also, paid for by the Student Cultural Programming Fee.

Spring 2006

September 28, 2005-January 14, 2006 at The Newberry Library

Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country

Professor Frederick E. Hoxie is curator of the exhibit "Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country" which will open at the Newberry Library in Chicago on September 28 and run through January 14. 

"Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country" enriches the traditional account of the Corps of Discovery's expedition by telling the other half of the story—the story of the Native Americans the explorers encountered in the West.  Focusing on five communities the expedition team met in their journey to the Pacific Ocean, the exhibit explores the native cultures that inhabited the "Indian Country," details the interactions between the explorers and western Indians, and considers the impact of those encounters on the past and present lives of those Indian tribes.

The exhibit includes approximately 120 items from the Newberry Library's renowned American and American Indian history collections and additional materials on loan from peer institutions and organizations along the Lewis and Clark trail.  The items on display, together with the voices and images of living Native Americans, invite visitors to reflect on the triumphs and tragedies that accompanied and followed Lewis and Clark's remarkable adventure.

January 21, 2006 at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts Lobby

Strong Medicine Band

As part of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration, join Strong Medicine Band as they carry on the tradition of coming together as Native American people in this mix of traditional and contemporary music and dance. From the Pow Wow drum to the electric guitar and drum set, Strong Medicine reminds us that though culture constantly evolves, the values of music and dance remain the same.

February 24, 2006 at the Native American House

Issues Facing Native American Housing in either an Urban or Rural Settings:  A Conversation with Rodger Boyd

Mr. Boyd, a member of the Navajo Nation, is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Native American Programs (ONAP), Department of Housing and Urban Development.  ONAP programs provide housing funds to Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians through the Indian Housing Block Grant Program.  Mr. Boyd will be speaking about housing issues for Indians on-and-off reservation communities. 

March 8, 2006 at the Asian American Studies conference room

2005-06 IPRH/AIS Reading Group "Colonial Oppression and Academic Decolonization"

Clark, "Wa a o, wa ba ski na me ska ta!"
Justice, "Seeing (and Reading) Red"
LaDuke, Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming
Yellow Bird, Michael, "Cowboys and Indians"

March 11, 2006 at McKinley Foundation

Art Night

Join us for a night of pot-luck, music, dancing, children's art center, painting, photography, poetry-reading, sculptures, videos and open-mic. Mr. John Jennings will give an opening presentation on "The Power of Art and Politics"

Contributing organizations:  Critical Research Collaborative (CRC), Graduate and Professional Students of Color (GPSOC)

Paid for by the Student Cultural Programming Fee

March 29, 2006 at La Casa Cultural Latina

Dr. Andrea Smith, Postdoctoral Fellow in American Indian Studies

"Unlikely Alliances: American Indian and Christian Right Organizing"

March 31, 2006 at La Casa Cultural Latina

Weaving the Stories of Yesterday with Today

Nora Wilkinson & Myra Tso-Kaye will present stories about how the creation of their pottery, hand woven rugs, and herbal medicine translate from traditional skills and knowledge into contemporary art forms.

Nora Wilkinson, born in 1953 and raised by her parents in the Blue Canyon country on the western portion of the Diné Nation, currently resides in Sanders, Arizona where she mainly weaves Navajo rugs as her source of income.  She enjoys the process of weaving and intends on continuing to pass this tradition on to her children.

Myra Tso-Kaye art work includes effigy vessels which is more contemporary than traditional Navajo pottery.  She also creates story tellers and decorates her work with different cultural appliqués or etchings.  Navajo Traditional pottery is considered a folk art and her family has showed their work at the Santa Fe Indian Market and the Smithsonian Institute.  As a family, they make traditional vessels for ceremonies to be used as drums and utensils.

April 5, 2006, at the Levis Faculty Center

Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble

The Native American House is delighted to announce that the Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble will be coming to campus for a single performance.  The ensemble is committed to reclaiming the living history of the Aboriginal People of the Americas, and is comprised of three First Nations' women who address the contemporary challenges Native experiences.  Turtle Gals' vision encompasses art, history, and cultural identity, and their body of work contributes to a paradigm shift in the consciousness of colonial culture.   

April 13, 2006 at College of Law

Mr. George Lewis, President of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin

Mr. Lewis will be addressing the contemporary legal issues facing the sovereign Ho-Chunk Nation and the many tensions between American Indian nations and the local and federal government.

This event is sponsored by the Native American Law Student Association

April 26, 2006 at La Casa Cultural Latina

D. Anthony Tyeeme Clark

"Ke ka a mwa, 'Decolonial Anti-Oppression':  Anti-Racism, the Indian-Nation Perspective, and the 'New' American Indian Movement"

"Ke ka a mwa, 'Decolonial Anti-Oppression'" draws upon the lyrics, music, stage performance, and politics of the Navajo rock band Blackfire to theorize anti-racist political activism from locations connected to and that mediate Indigenous ways of knowing and more globally-resonating anti-oppression discourse.  It does so in order to suggest Indigenous intellectual disciplines and anti-oppression politics are worth thinking about together—in conversation—but also to advocate the necessity of moving beyond nationalist parochialisms in American Indian Studies.  Thinking "beyond the nation" is something every discipline needs to do in the twenty-first century in order to anticipate the kinds of questions and issues we should all be thinking about now, immediately, and well into the future.  Blackfire (two brothers and a sister from the Jones and Berta Benally family at Black Mesa, Navajo Nation) use the unfettering promise of music—its distinctive "language"—to talk back to a transnationalizing, globalizing empire and its ongoing war against and to confuse Indigenous peoples.  They call on their non-indigenous and non-Navajo allies to recognize a unique yet eerily common struggle grounded in experience living in the Navajo Nation AND performing "song" around the world (understanding its healing power). 

They reach out to people generally—and globally—who are troubled for a variety of reasons by forms of state-sponsored, corporation-supporting violence—the sorts of suffering and injustice that infects relationships between settler populations and the world's Indigenous peoples.  They argue for a politics I am calling "decolonial anti-oppression" that is thoroughly informed by distinctive Indigenous intellectual traditions and sacred ways of knowing (understood, together, as what I am conceptualizing as the Indian-"nation" perspective to suggest strategic AND critical uses of "nationalist" discourse).  Decolonial anti-oppression plays a vital role in freeing people, Indian and our non-Native allies, and challenging the forces of oppression in AND BEYOND our communities.

Native Feminisms without Apology

Friday, April 28, 2006

Levis Faculty Center, Room 407
Welcoming—5-6 pm
Public Forum—6-8 pm
Reception—8-9 pm

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor
Working Group I—10-12 pm
Working Group II—1:30-3:30 pm
Working Group III—4-6 pm
Concluding Remarks—6-7pm

Because relatively little has been published by Native women on feminist theory, the scholarly and activist public tends to over-simplify Native women activists' theories about feminism, the struggle against sexism both within Native communities and the society at large, and the importance of working in coalition with non-Native women. 

This seminar provides a groundbreaking opportunity for indigenous women to develop indigenous feminist theory and politics, and centers around questions such as:  What is specific about indigenous articulations of feminism?  How do these articulations vary among indigenous communities?; Many indigenous nations have instituted gender-discriminatory policies in the name of "tradition."  What do pro-sovereignty, indigenous feminists interventions into these policies look like?; How can critiques of gender oppression and violence be made central to anti-colonial, pro-sovereignty analysis and politics?

Invited Presenters include:

The workshop is open to the public. No fees or registration required. The workshop is Paid For by the Student Cultural Programming Fee.  Other co-sponsors include the Office of the Chancellor, the Provost’s Office. 

Persons attending the workshop are requested to refrain from using perfume, cologne, and other fragrances to accommodate participants with environmental illnesses.