Calendar Archive: 2007-2008 Events
Fall 2007
Tuesday, August 21 at the Native American House, 2-5 pm
I-Celebrate on Nevada Street
Come join us for food, entertainment, and tours of the Cultural Centers on Nevada Street. Enjoy the music, grab a bite to eat, and learn about programs offered at the Cultural Centers and other departments. Music, dancing, and other performances will be featured on the street stage throughout the afternoon. You don't want to miss this event!
List of Participants
- African American Studies Program
- Asian American Cultural Center
- Asian American Studies Program
- Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center
- Campus Recreation
- Equal Opportunity and Access
- Illini Union
- Intensive English Institute
- Intercollegiate Athletics
- La Casa Cultural Latina
- Latina/Latino Studies Program
- Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender [LGBT] Resources
- Minority Student Affairs
- Native American House
- New Student Programs
- Panhellenic Council
- School of Social Work
- Women's Programs
- WRFU Radio
Sponsored by Office of ODOS, Native American House, Asian American Cultural Center, La Casa Cultural Latina, African American Cultural Center, Office of LGBT Resources, Womens Programs, School of Social Work, Intensive English Institute
Tuesday, Sept 4 at the Native American House, 1206 W. Nevada, 10-11AM
Tuesdays with AIS Faculty
NAH invites you to attend "Tuesdays with AIS faculty," a monthly coffee hour which will feature a member of our AIS faculty. At these gatherings, a faculty member will visiting with students, talking, laughing, and commiserating about classes, movies, books, or whatever topic emerges. Our first guest for this series is Professor Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert.
Thursday, Sept 6 at the Conference Room, Native American House
Reading Group--Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis
This event is a chance to discuss how leading thinkers in American Indian and Indigenous Studies engage and trouble widely-familiar categories of inquiry. It specifically is aimed at creating an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas among emergent and established scholars about research concerned with race and ethnicity, multiculturalism, nationalisms and nationhood, transnationalisms and globalization, social justice, and the futures of research. Following introductions and a brief overview of the year-long reading group and speaker series and a planned spring seminar and symposium with the Unit on Criticism and Interpretive Theory (http://criticism.english.illinois.edu), we will have an open-ended conversation grounded in readings selected for the first meeting of the group.
Wednesday, September 19 to Friday, September 21 at the Native American House
Native American Network of ACPA & Indigenous People’s Knowledge Community of NASPA
Members of these professional associations actively promote the empowerment of American Indian students and staff through education, research, shared knowledge, mentoring initiatives, and online forums about Indigenous issues. These individuals and groups will be delivering workshops for students and staff during their visit.
NAN members in attendance:
Adrienne Thunder, Academic Advisor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
John Garland, Director, National Clearinghouse for Commuter Programs, U of Maryland
Symphony Oxendine, Associate Director of Student Life, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Steve Martin, Director, Native American Cultural Center, University of Idaho
IPKC members in attendance:
Heather Shotton, Coordinator/Multicultural Programs, Oklahoma City University
Irvin Harrelson, Doctoral Student and IPKC Past-Chair, San Diego State University
Stephanie Waterman, Assistant Professor, Warner Graduate School of Education, University of Rochester
Tracy Peterson, Native American and Multicultural Student Support Specialist, Dickinson State University
Donna Brown, Assistant Director of American Indian Student Services, North Dakota University
Thursday, Sept 20, at the Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor, 919 W Illinois St, 5-7 PM
Keeping Culture in Mind: Therapeutic Integration in a First Nation Treatment Center
An enrolled member of the Gros Ventre tribe of Montana and a cultural psychologist, Joseph P. Gone's (Clinical Area and American Culture, Native American Studies, University of Michigan) numerous articles address a key dilemma confronting mental health professionals who serve Native American communities, namely how to provide culturally appropriate helping services that avoid the neo-colonial subversion of local thought and practice.
This lecture is part of the speaker series titled Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis
Monday, September 24, at Newberry Library, 60 Walton St, Chicago, at 10:00AM
"Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives"
The 2007 CIC AIS Symposium "Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives," the first of a three-year symposia examining "Indigenous Past and Present," will be held at the Newberry Library on Monday September 24.
Wednesday, Oct 3 at the Native American House, 1206 W Nevada, 12PM
AISES Meeting: Building Strong Communities Together: Science, Technology, and Native Values
American Indian Science and Engineering Society will host a meeting where the topics that will be discussed include: future goals, speaker/discussion series, and summer symposium.
Thursday, Oct 4 at the Conference Room, American Indian Studies Program
Reading Group--Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis
This week's texts include the following:
Gone, Joseph P., "Psychotherapy and Traditional Healing in American Indian Cultural Contexts: A Comparison of Ethnotherapeutic Paradigms," manuscript in preparation.
Miller, Bruce Granville, "Who Are Indigenes? A Comparative Study of Canadian and American Practices," American Behavioral Science 50 (December 2006): 462-477.
Porter, Robert, "The Demise of the Ongwehoweh and the Rise of the Native Americans," Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal 15 (Spring 1999): 107-183.
Yellow Horse Brave Heart, Maria, and Lemyra M. DeBruyn, "The American Indian Holocaust: Healing Historical Unresolved Grief," American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research 8, no. 2 (1998): 60-82.
Monday, October 8, at the Native American House
An Indigenous Peoples' Day Celebration!
Come meet the faculty, staff, and students of the Native American House and American Indian Studies Program.
Wednesday, Oct 10, at the Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor, 919 W. Illinois St, 4-6 pm
Persistence of Peoplehood: Regenerating Indigeneity during the Forced Federalism Era
A member of the Cherokee Nation, Jeff Corntassel's (Indigenous Governance Programs, University of Victoria, British Columbia) forthcoming book, Forced Federalism: Contemporary Challenges to Indigenous Nationhood, examines how Indigenous nations in the U.S. mobilize politically during the 1990s up to the present day as they encounter new threats to their nations at the state and federal levels of governance.
This lecture is part of the speaker series titled Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis
Monday, Oct 15, at the Illini Union Bookstore, Author's Corner, 4:30-5:30
Novelist Susan Power will visit the Author's Corner to discuss her book The Grass Dancer. Susan Power is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and a descendant of the Sioux Chief Mato Nupa (Two Bears). She received degrees from Harvard/Radcliffe and Harvard Law School, and attended the Iowa Writers Workshop. She is a writer and poet , and also teaches creative writing.
Tuesday, Oct 16 at Alice Campbell Alumni Center, 601 S. Lincoln Ave., 7:30 PM
The Fourth Chancellor's CAS Special Lecture
The First Indian Lawyer and the Birth of Federal Indian Law
Frederick E. Hoxie, Swanlund Professor of History and Professor of Law, University of Illinois
James McDonald (Choctaw, 1801-1833?), the first American Indian to practice law in the United States, was born in Mississippi. At the start of his legal career, McDonald was enlisted to assist his chief, Pushmataha, in defending the Choctaws' homeland from the advances of a rising generation of frontier politicians, a group led by soon to be president Andrew Jackson. The legal arguments McDonald devised during this crisis failed to prevent his tribe's removal to the West, but they formed the basis for articulating a doctrine of indigenous rights within American law.
Support for this series as a whole is provided by: Office of the Chancellor and The Center for Advanced Study
Thursday, Nov 1, at the Conference Room, American Indian Studies Program
Reading Group--Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis
The readings include the following:
Alfred, "Sovereignty"
Anaya, "Implementing International Norms"
Champagne, "Rethinking Native Relations with Contemporary Nation-States" and "Indigenous Strategies for Engaging Globalism"
Corntassel, "Partnership in Action?"
Tuesday, Nov 6, at the Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor, 919 W Illinois St, 4:30-7:30
Indian Studies and Postcoloniality: An Analysis
Professor Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (Native American Studies and English, Eastern Washington University) is Isianti/Ihanktowan, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, Fort Thompson, South Dakota. An award-winning poet, essayist, and scholar, and a founding editor of the journal Wicazo Sa Review, her many publications include I remember the fallen trees: new and selected poems, Aurelia: A Crow Creek Trilogy, Anti-Indianism in Modern America: A Voice from Tatekeyas Earth, Notebooks of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, and New Indians, Old Wars.
This lecture is part of the speaker series titled Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis
Wednesday, Nov 14 at the Illini Union Bookstore, 4:30
Professor LeAnne Howe will be reading from and signing her new novel, Miko Kings. The novel is set in Indian Territory's queen city, Ada, during the baseball fever of 1907, but quickly moves back and forth in time from 1969 during the Vietnam War, to present-day Ada, Oklahoma. For the Indians, baseball in the 19th century was not merely a sport — it was a politically charged act against a history of genocide and displacement where a Native pitcher could access his own power, and the power of ancient ballplayers who'd been playing the game long before immigrants began arriving in the New World. The story centers on the lives of Hope Little Leader, a Choctaw pitcher for the Miko Kings, and Ezol Day, a Choctaw postal clerk in Indian Territory who travels forward in time to tell present-day narrator Lena Coulter, the stories and what happened to the team.
Wednesday, Nov 14, at the Conference Room, American Indian Studies Program,
New Graduate Minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies (pending approval)
Please join core faculty members of the American Indian Studies Program to learn about requirements for the pending Graduate Minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies. If you currently are a graduate student interested in applying for the Graduate Minor in the coming years, or in doing the course work now and having that work count retroactively, then attending this meeting is crucial as you move forward with your course work and other degree requirements in your home programs.
Friday, Nov 16, Saturday, Nov 17, and Sunday, Nov 18 at the UIC Pavillion
The American Indian Center’s 54th Annual Powwow "Honoring Our Tribal Nations"
For more information about this event, contact the American Indian Center
Thursday, December 6 at the Conference Room, American Indian Studies Program
Reading Group--Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, New Indians, Old Wars (University of Illinois Press, 2007).
Dale Turner, "Towards a Critical Indigenous Philosophy," in This Is Not a Peace Pipe (U. of Toronto P, 2006), pages 94-121 and 159-162.
Robert Warrior, "The Native American Scholar: Toward a New Intellectual Agenda,"Wicazo Sa Review 14 (Fall 1999): 46-54.
Dec 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 at 7:30 PM and Dec 9 at 2 PM at Illinois State University
The Unnatural and Accidental Women by Metis playwright Marie Clements
The Unnatural and Accidental Women was inspired by the victims of Gilbert Paul Jordan, a serial killer who sought his victims in the Downtown East Side area of Vancouver. Metís playwright Marie Clements sought to give voice to the women Jordan targeted, women who had remained faceless and nearly nameless in all public accounts of the murders, although Jordan's name was well-known. A barber, Jordan became known as the "boozing barber," named so for his m.o., which was to pour alcohol down the throats of his victims, nearly all of whom were probably First Nations women working as prostitutes in the Downtown East Side. Although some women were found with unbelievably high levels of alcohol in their blood -- in one case, as high as .91 -- and others had bruising around their face, the official cause of death on the coroner's reports was commonly "unnatural and accidental." Jordan was convicted of only one murder -- on a charge of manslaughter -- and served six years in prison.
Spring 2008
Tuesday, Jan 22 at 1204 W. Nevada, American Indian Studies, Conference Room, 12:00
A Tribalography: Exploring Anishinaabeg Conceptions of Identity in the 1910s
Dr. Jill Doerfler, Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in American Indian Studies
Identity has long been an important issue for American Indians. Non-Indian conceptions and perceptions of identity have dominated in academia, law, and popular culture while American Indian understandings are often absent from the conversation. For example, then the sale of allotments in the early twentieth century came into question on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, the United States federal government used racial identity as the primary factor in determining the legality of the land sales.
Consequently, hundreds of Anishinaabeg were interviewed about their understandings of racial identity and blood quantum. It became apparent that, at best, the conception of "mixed-blood" and "full-blood" as biological/racial categories were new to the Anishinaabeg of White Earth. Despite the fact that Anishinaabeg did not use race or blood quantum as a way to define identity, race was still employed as the ultimate determiner in the allotment sale cases. Drawing upon the interviews and the construction of several "characters," Doerfler explores the varied ways in which the Anishinaabeg of White Earth challenged the simplistic notion of blood quantum and conceptualized identity on their own terms during the early twentieth century.
Click flyer to view lecture in RealPlayer.
Monday, January 28 at IPRH, 805 W Pennsylvania, Urbana, 8:00-10:00PM
Decolonizations: Subaltern Studies and Indigenous Critical Theory (reading group)
Introducing Subaltern Studies and Indigenous Critical Theory
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. "Ch. 1: A small history of Subaltern Studies." Habitations of modernity : essays in the wake of subaltern studies. University of Chicago Press, 2002. 3-19, 149-153.
Guha, Ranajit. "On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India." Selected Subaltern Studies. Guha, Ranajit and Gayatri Spivak (eds.). Oxford University Press, 1988. 37-44.
Alfred, Taiaiake and Jeff Corntassel. "Being Indigenous: Resurgence Against Contemporary Colonialism." Government and Opposition 40. (2005: Sept): 597- 614.
Cheyfitz, Eric. "The (Post)Colonial Predicament of Native American Studies." Interventions 4.3 (2002): 405-427.
Tuesday, Jan 29 at 1204 W. Nevada, American Indian Studies, Conference Room, 12:00
A Constellation of Fires around One Fire: Relation and Multiethnic Imagination from the Indian Territory Outwards
Dr. Tol Foster, Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in American Indian Studies
Foster argues that American Indian notions of relation represent a more supple worldview than that of enlightenment thought, and compliment not only postmodern understandings of knowledge and ideology, but also constitute a coherent way of articulating unity through diversity than do those derived from western approaches. In his current project, Foster is tracing this argument through the work of twentieth century artists arising from the historical Indian Territory, where such ideas of relation were hegemonic, as they challenge broader American cultural assumptions of radical individuality and capitalism, reliance on technology and progress, and teleological and existential superiority.
Foster will focus particularly on the idea of relation as it applies within the Creek Nation at Green Corn ceremonials and in the Freedmen debates, as it extends outward to connect Osage traditional practices with scientific observation, and as it extends between humans and non-human persons in the work of John Joseph Mathews. Foster contends that such notions of relation have already impacted American cultural life, and are poised to become a viable epistemic approach to contemporary anxieties and problems for indigenous and non-indigenous people alike.
Click flyer to view lecture in RealPlayer.
Saturday, February 9 at The Spurlock Museum, 2:00pm
The Spirit Survives: The Boarding School Experience, Then and Now
For decades the First Nations of North America suffered the loss of their children to government boarding schools, where they were forcibly re-educated in programs intended to speed their assimilation and civilization, at the cost of culture and identity. Thomason introduces her listeners to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania and its profound and broad-reaching impact on Indian and non-Indian people since its inception in 1879 and far beyond its closing in 1918. She shades this history with personal memoir, biography of indigenous activists and culture keepers of the 19th and 20th centuries, and knowledge of the impact of the boarding schools on Indian people today. Her story explores the inner resources that enabled the spirit and identities of Native peoples to survive and raises provocative questions for all contemporary Americans: Why does the story of the boarding school experience matter to America in the 21st century? Can we learn from this? What must be done so that we can move into the future as wiser human beings?
Dovie Thomason is Lakota and Kiowa Apache, a former high school teacher and college professor, and a professional storyteller.
Thursday, Feb 14, at the Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor, 919 W Illinois St, 4:30
The World and Everything On It: The Creation of a Native Universe by 19th C. Kanaka Writer Joseph Kanepuu
Noenoe K. Silva (Indigenous Governance, University of Hawai'i at Manoa Between) will deliver the lecture entitled "The World and Everything On It." 1856 and 1880, Joseph Kanepuu, a schoolteacher, produced a body of work in the Hawaiian newspapers in Hawaiian. He wrote articles to educate the public about world geography and to educate young Hawaiians in the traditional language and stories. This nearly unknown writer was one of many who wrote the Hawaiian understanding of the world in our own language, in our nation. His work provides to generations of Native Hawaiians a glimpse of the struggles of 19th century Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) through the work of an extraordinary scholar.
This lecture is part of the speaker series titled Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis
Monday, February 18 at IPRH, 805 W Pennsylvania, Urbana, 8:00-10:00PM
Decolonizations: Subaltern Studies and Indigenous Critical Theory (reading group)
Co-hosted by the Unit on Criticism and the American Indian Studies Program
Friday and Saturday, February 22-23, at the Illini Union
Liberty & Justice for All: Voting for Change
The Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference (MBLGTACC) is an annual conference that works to encourage and promote diversity, activism and network development among LGBTQA students, staff and faculty throughout the regional Midwest. The conference, created by students for students, serves as an open forum for education and awareness of issues that affect the LGBTQA community.
Saturday, March 1 at Wilbur Wright College, Chicago, 1:00-9:00
2008 Native American Youth Conference and Social Powwow
Chicago Public Schools, Title VII Indian Education Public Hearing
Theme: "Native American Youth Leadership"
Keynote Speaker:
Ryan Wilson, NIEA Board Member
John Dall (Ho-Chunk), Chairman, CPS Title VII, Citywide American Indian Ed Council (CAIEC)
Youth Address:
Lisa White (Ojibwe/ Ho-Chunk), CPS CAIEC Youth Ambassador
Samantha Selby (Choctaw), President, CPS Title VII Choctaw Youth Club
Ernesto Cueller (Choctaw), Co-President, CPS Title VII Choctaw Youth Club
Jaime Begay (Navajo), President, CPS Title VII Navajo Club
Brandy Selby (Choctaw), President, American Indians Business Leaders Jr Chapter
Daniel Schexnider (Sac & Fox), CPS Title VII Artist
TBD, Anishnaabe Club
Lynda White (Ojibwe/Ho-Chunk) Wright College Native American Student
Social Powwow:
Master Ceremony: Leonard Malatare (Salish)
Youth MC: Michael Schexnider (Sac & Fox)
Arena Director: Shann Maupin (Choctaw)
Apprentice Arena Director: Coty Selby (Choctaw)
Head Man: Jaime Begay (Navajo) Navajo Club President
Head Woman: Lisa White (Ojibwe/Ho-Chunk) CAIEC Youth Ambassador
Raffle: Choctaw Club- Easter Basket Raffle
Navajo Club- Native American items!
RSVP Jolene Aleck, Coordinator Title VII Indian Ed Program: jfaleck@cps.k12.il.us
Monday, March 3 at Center for the Visual Arts, Room 147, Illinois State University, 7:00
"Indigenizing the Creation and Consumption of Children's Literature"
Debbie Reese will be delivering a lecture as part of the The Lois Lenski Children's Literature Lecture Series at Illinois State University.
Monday, March 3 at IPRH, 805 W Pennsylvania, Urbana, 8:00-10:00PM
Decolonizations: Subaltern Studies and Indigenous Critical Theory (reading group)
Co-hosted by the Unit on Criticism and the American Indian Studies Program
Thursday, Mar 6, Alice Campbell Alumni Center, 601 S. Lincoln Ave., Urbana, 4:30
Bifurcations, Equivocations and Invocations: Redefining Indigenous Citizenship in the Dying Days of Empire
Makere Stewart-Harawira is at the University of Alberta where she teaches in the Indigenous Peoples Education program. A New Zealand Maori scholar whose disciplinary interests are in Indigenous peoples, imperialism and global transformation, Stewart-Harawira has been actively involved in issues to do with Indigenous peoples, globalisation, and education for over a decade. Formerly Acting Head of the Postgraduate Studies Department at Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi, tribal university, Dr. Stewart-Harawira is the author of The New Imperial Order: Indigenous Responses to Globalization.
This lecture is part of the speaker series titled Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis
Monday, March 10, at Lucy Ellis Lounge, Foreign Languages Building, 3:30-5:00
EVENT IS CANCELLED -- WILL BE RESCHEDULED
Good Ideas for Books and Articles That You Wouldn't Have Time to Write Even If You Lived to Be 100
All too often we study the lives of Native Americans solely through the written histories and stories of non-Native people, particularly before the twentieth century. However, Native people created an
astoundingly large archive of their own ideas through tribal and regional newspapers. Dr. Daniel F. Littlefield Jr., will discuss some of the possibilities of these texts for contemporary Native people and
scholars. Additionally, Dr. Littlefield will focus on what a serious researcher might do both in the newspaper and periodicals collection at the American Native Press Archive now containing runs of more than 2200 final titles, and also within the Sequoyah Center's burgeoning manuscripts and Native American Art collection.
Editor and author of over sixteen books on Native American history and literature, Dr. Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., Director of the Sequoyah Research Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, is also the founder of the American Native Press Archives, the world's largest archival repository of Native American newspapers and periodicals. The Sequoyah Research Center is home to the Dr. J. W. Wiggins Collection of Native American Art with its more than 2000 pieces of art.
March 7 to March 16
Drake Theater, The Frank House, Merryman Performing Arts Center, Kearney, NE
Honoring the Sandhill Cranes Tribute Retreat
Wang Ping, LeAnne Howe, Janet McAdams, James Thomas Stevens, Fredy Chicangana, and Hugo Jamioy Juagibioy will read poetry and take retreat with 500,000 Sandhill Cranes on their 60,000,000 year annual migration apex to Nebraska.
Featured Poets: Wang Ping, LeAnne Howe, Janet McAdams, James Thomas Stevens, Fredy Chicangana, Hugo Jamioy Juagibioy and Allison Hedge Coke.
Sponsored by Reynolds Chair, UNK Departments of English, Modern Languages, Ethnic Studies and Intnl Studies. Nebraska Arts Council, Nebraska Humanities Council, Kearney Community Foundation, and Alley Rose.
Thursday-Saturday, March 13-15, at Michigan State University
Michigan State University's American Indian Studies Program, and the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers are pleased to announce the 2008 Returning the Gift Conference, to be held March 13th-15th in the MSU Union at Michigan State Univeristy.
For more information: http://aisp.msu.edu/returning_the_gift.html
Wed, Mar 26 at Pollard Auditorium, 611 W. Park Street, Urbana, 5:30PM
Ethnicity, Language, and Health-Care: Impacting Access to Care in Guatemala
Guatemala is a majority indigenous nation, and most of the population speaks one of several Mayan languages as their first language. A significant portion of the population has no or very limited Spanish ability. Despite this, all medical and health services offered by both the national and international sectors are exclusively in Spanish. The results are profound disparities in health outcomes between the indigenous and non-indigenous sectors of the country. In this event, Peter Rohloff and Magda Silvia Mux -- both staff members for Wuquâ Kawoq, a Guatemalan medical NGO-will present film, photography, and ethnographic data which document the experiences of indigenous Maya attempting to access the health care system. They will also describe some of the results of their own work, which attempts to develop, advocate, and deliver same-language health care services.
Peter Rohloff received his PhD (2003) and MD (2007) from the University of Illinois. He is currently executive director of Wuquâ Kawoq, a non-governmental organization in Guatemala working at the intersection of health care and language revitalization.
Magda Silvia Sotz Mux is a lifelong resident of San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala. As an educator, she has been involved for over 10 years in Kaqchikel language revitalization efforts. She also currently manages several field projects for the NGO Wuquâ Kawoq. She will be a scholar-in-residence at the University of Illinois during the spring of 2008.
Thursday-Saturday, March 27-29, at the Mystic Lake Casino Hotel, Mystic Lake, MN
The Native American Literature Symposium is organized by an independent group of indigenous scholars committed to making a place where Native voices can be heard. Since 2002, we have brought together some of the most influential voices in Native America to share our stories -- in art, prose, poetry, film, religion, history, politics, music, philosophy, and science -- from our worldview.
For more information: http://english2.mnsu.edu/griffin/.
Monday, March 31, at the Native American House, 1206 W. Nevada, Urbana
Student Meet & Greet
Dr. Larry Emerson (Diné) will be delivering a series of presentations and workshops where the aim ranges from: engaging Indigenous learning processes and their impact on research; using the application of traditional modalities of learning; facilitating dialogue on sustaining Native learning communities; reviewing the meaning and usage of critical reflection and Indigenous ways of knowing; assessing the praxis within organizations and their connections to decolonizing methodologies.
These events are funded by the Native American House Student Cultural Programming Fee
Thursday, April 3, at the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago's Native American Student Association, the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, the Department of Anthropology, and the International House Global Voices Lecture Series present: "Did American Indians Invent Baseball? Answer: Yes!"
Choctaw novelist LeAnne Howe, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Associate Professor of American Indian Studies and English, will read from her latest novel, Miko Kings, An Indian Baseball Story. She will also talk about the research that went into her bold assertion that "Indeed, American Indians have been playing baseball hundreds of years before you knew who landed on our shores!"
5:30-6:00 PM – Reception
6:00-7:00 PM - Lecture and Discussion
International House, National Room 1414 E. 59th Street
Thursday, April 3 at PAR (Pennsylvania Avenue Residence Hall), 8:00-9:30 PM
Unfair Privilege and Stereotyping of Native People
This event features Dr. Larry Emerson and is funded by the Native American House Student Cultural Programming Fee. This event is free and open to the public.
Thursday, April 3 -Saturday, April 5
AASRP Biennial Conference
Rupture, Repression and Uprising: Raced and Gendered Violence along the Color Line
By marking the anniversaries of the 1908 Springfield, Illinois riot, and the cataclysmic events of 1968, this conference (re)investigates their legacies for a dawning new century. This commemoration also provides a powerful point of entry into larger scholarly conversations about the history of riots, other organized violence against racialized bodies (including sexual and state violence), rebellions and resistance, and their reverberations across time and space.
Sponsored by African American Studies and Research Program
Friday, April 4 at the Native American House, 1206 W. Nevada, 12 Noon
Hozho Nahazdlii: Towards a Practice of Diné Decolonization
This event features Dr. Larry Emerson and is funded by the Native American House Student Cultural Programming Fee. This event is free and open to the public.
Friday, April 4 - Saturday, April 5 at Purdue University
CIC-American Indian Studies Consortium Spring 2008 Conference
Conference details posted on the CIC-AIS webpage
Sat, Apr 5 at Colonel Wolf Elementary School, 403 E. Healey, Champaign, 10am
Indigenous Resistance to Colonialism in Higher Education
This event features Dr. Larry Emerson and is funded by the Native American House Student Cultural Programming Fee. This event is free and open to the public.
Monday, April 7 at IPRH, 805 W Pennsylvania, Urbana, 8:00-10:00PM
Decolonizations: Subaltern Studies and Indigenous Critical Theory (reading group)
co-hosted by the Unit on Criticism and the American Indian Studies Program
Thursday, April 10 at the Illini Union, 8AM - 5PM
Race, Diversity & Campus Climate conference
Race, Diversity, and Campus Climate is the focus of a major conference to be held April 10, 2008 at the Illini Union on the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign campus. This conference builds on and extends the theme of the inaugural conference held in 2006 which focused on "Documenting the Differences Racial and Ethnic Diversity Makes: Uncovering, Discussing, and Transforming the University." The goal of the Race, Diversity, and Campus Climate conference is to present information the University of Illinois and similar universities can use to make the campus more diverse and inclusive. We are particularly interested in issues related to campus climate and diversity scholarship. This year's theme can be in interpreted in a number of ways, but must focus on forms of inquiry that impact research and practice in higher education, while advancing the commitment to the practice of democracy and equality within a changing multiracial U.S. society.
Thursday, April 10 - Saturday, April 12, at the University of Georgia
Native American and Indigenous Studies: Who Are We? Where Are We Going?
The Institute of Native American Studies at University of Georgia will host an international scholarly meeting. This is the second of three meetings that a steering committee of scholars from across the continent has planned as a way to explore the possibility of creating an academic association for scholars who work in American Indian/Native American/First Nations/Aboriginal/Indigenous Studies.
For more informatio: http://www.instituteofnativeamericanstudies.com/NAIS-2008/NAISindex.html.
Thursday, April 10 at the Native American House, 1206 W. Nevada Street, 2 PM
Nurturing & Supporting Students Using Indigenous Epistemologies
This event features Dr. Larry Emerson and is funded by the Native American House Student Cultural Programming Fee. This event is free and open to the public.
Thursday, April 10
As part of the national PBS health series Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?, Bad Sugar will be premiering on April 10, 2008 (Locally, Bad Sugar will air at 9:00 PM on WILL-TV, channel 13. It will repeat at 1AM and then again at 2AM on Saturday).
Bad Sugar
The O'odham Indians (the Pima of the Gila River Indian Community and the Tohono O'odham Nation) of Arizona suffer one of the highest rates of Type 2 diabetes in the world. But is this due to their genes, or is it part of the body's response to decades of poverty, oppression and historical trauma? A new approach rooted in the community re-gaining control over its destiny offers hope where medical-only interventions have failed.
Produced and Directed by James M. Fortier
For a Series Description, go to unnaturalcauses.org
Saturday, April 12, Spurlock Museum, Campbell Lobby
Weaving Demonstrations by Guest Artist Magda Sotz Mux
Ms. Sotz Mux is recognized as a master weaver who continues the ancient Maya practice of weaving on a backstrap loom. Most of her work is done in the contemporary Chiq'a'l style, which incorporates traditional color schemes and geometric patterns as well as more modern counted patterns. Weaving on the backstrap loom—an ancient practice carried on by Maya women in Guatemala today—attests to Maya resiliency and ingenuity in the face of 500 years of colonization.
Qak'aslem, Qakem is supported by the Illinois Arts Council and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Tuesday, Apr 15 at the International Studies Building (910 S. Fifth Street) at Noon
Indigenous Language Revitalization in the Americas: Contemporary Perspectives
A panel sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Illinois . Co-sponsors: American Indian Studies and Departments of Linguistics
The Center for Latin American Studies is organizing a panel discussion on indigenous language revitalization movements in the Americas, set to coincide with a month-long visit to the University by scholar-in-residence Magda Sotz Mux, a Kaqchikel speaker from Chiq'a'l (San Juan Comalapa), Guatemala, during March-April 2008. A number of other events are also being coordinated across various campus units for this time frame, including an exhibit of Maya textiles and weaving demonstrations at the Spurlock Musuem and lectures on health care disparities among indigenous populations at the College of Medicine, as well as community appearances.
The panel discussion will feature presentations by Illinois scholars Brenda Farnell, Anthropology; Ryan Shosted, Linguistics; Anna Escobar, Spanish, Italian & Portuguese, and Amy Firestone, graduate student in SIP. Also, will have Patrick Marlow, Assistant Professor in the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He also currently serves as coordinator for the Denaqenage' Career Ladder Program and the Athabascan Language Development Institute. Magda Sotz Mux will also be a participant. These participants will discuss work related to Dakota/Lakota, Q'anjob'al, Quechua, and Kaqchikel, respectively.
Panel Organizers: Angelina Cotler, CLACS; Peter Rohloff, College of Medicine
Saturday, April 19, Spurlock Museum, Campbell Lobby, 10:00 am–noon
Weaving Demonstrations by Guest Artist Magda Sotz Mux
On April 19, Sotz Muz will demonstrate how traditional brocading techniques are used when introducing design elements on a newly assembled loom. A Kaqchikel interpreter will be on hand for demonstrations and will translate as Magda describes her weaving process and responds to questions and comments from Museum visitors.
Qak'aslem, Qakem is supported by the Illinois Arts Council and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
March 25 through June 8, Spurlock Museum, Campbell Lobby
Qak'aslem, Qakem: Kaqchikel Maya Weaving
A new exhibit this spring, Qak'aslem, Qakem: Kaqchikel Maya Weavings, is a collaboration between the Spurlock Museum, visiting curator Peter Rohloff, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Running from March 25 through June 8 in the Campbell Lobby, this small display discusses three Maya woven textiles. Each piece represents a different village in the Kaqchikel-speaking region of Guatemala. One of these pieces, a po’t (shirt) of brilliant flowers, is a commissioned work, woven for the Museum by Magda Silvia Sotz Mux of San Juan Comalapa.
Qak’aslem, Qakem is supported by the Illinois Arts Council and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Ms. Sotz Mux will be visiting the University during March and April and will demonstrate her weaving techniques on her backstrap loom in special events on April 12 and 19 at the Museum.
April 1 - April 30, Artist in Residence
Monique Mojica
Monique Mojica (Kuna and Rappahannock) is a playwright, actress -- including a role in the movie Smoke Signals --, and singer. As the artist in residence, Ms. Mojica will be leading a workshop and course titled Indigenous North American Theater. This introductory studio course explores the potential of sound, movement, impulse, gesture and storytelling from the body's memory as methodologies for generating performance texts organically.
Tuesday, April 22, at the Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor, 919 W Illinois St, 4:30
White Possession: The Legacy of Cook's Choice
Delivered by Aileen Moreton-Robinson (Indigenous Studies, Queensland University of Technology) "White Possession" examines the figure of Captain Cook and how he looms large in the Australian imaginary as an iconic figure. His name is synonymous with "discovering" Australia and his reputation has grown over time as the West's greatest seafarer. As an enduring icon his face is displayed on water bottles, plates and other paraphernalia in Australian popular culture. As an historical figure he is placed at the beginning of Australian history (Healy 1997:2). Within the academy there is an impressive array of literature about Captain Cook, his voyages and his death. While this paper is also concerned with Captain Cook it seeks to explore why, despite instructions to the contrary, he took possession of Australia without the consent of Indigenous people. I argue that the transition from feudalism to modernity produced a new property owning subject into history ontologically grounding possessiveness as constitutive of the structure of white subjectivity which was enabled epistemologically by the social contract. I further argue that white possession continues to function socio-discursively as an inhibitor reducing the capacity for Indigenous people to be recognised ontologically as possessing a will, as property owning subjects within the nation.
This lecture is part of the speaker series titled Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis
Monday, April 28 at IPRH, 805 W Pennsylvania, Urbana, 8:00-10:00PM
Decolonizations: Subaltern Studies and Indigenous Critical Theory (reading group)
co-hosted by the Unit on Criticism and the American Indian Studies Program
Tuesday, April 29 at the American Indian Studies Conference Room
"That's Why I Sent You to Carlisle": Indian Student Poets and the Stakes of Making Americans at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Cristina Stanciu will be discussing her dissertation project which argues that, despite the vexed and coerced positions in the "making" of Americans, New Immigrants and American Indians shared structurally-connected roles in the drama of Americanization and assimilation at the turn of the twentieth-century. Stanciu reevaluates both legal and literary definitions of "constituting Americans" and shows how the Progressive reforms of "civilizing" the Indian and the alien participated in contests over the meaning of national citizenship, whose unwritten cultural norms were Europe (as the parent culture), English (as the official language), and whiteness (as the color of "true citizenship"). Foregrounding a genealogy of a combined cultural resistance to coercive regimes of "making Americans," the project shows how American Indian and Immigrant students of American democracy and culture carved their own spaces in turn-of-the-twentieth-century American culture.
Tuesday, April 29 at the Saunders Lounge at PAR, 4:15pm – 6:00pm
Indigenous North American Theatre – Demonstration and Performance
The Indigenous North American Theatre course will conclude with a demonstration that is free and open to the public. Being led this semester by Monique Mojica (Kuna and Rappahannock), a celebrated actor and playwright whose work shows a dedication to Indigenous peoples of the Americas, students will demonstrate a work-in-progress that displays the process as well as the product of story weaving and story telling. The working theme of the group is "catastrophes."
Thursday and Friday, May 1-2, at the Levis Faculty Center
Decolonizations: Subaltern Studies and Indigenous Critical Theory -- Symposium
Decolonizations, a two-day symposium organized by the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory and the American Indian Studies Program, brings together leading scholars from postcolonial/subaltern studies and American Indian/indigenous studies. Decolonizations will seek to interrogate the critical purchase of the categories "subaltern" and "indigenous" for urgent issues involving colonialism, decolonization, and globalization. It will cast a comparative and transnational eye on critical movements that have emerged out of different historical and intellectual traditions but offer many opportunities for dialogue.
The conference is, in part, inspired by the twenty-fifth anniversary of Gayatri Spivak's talk "Can the Subaltern Speak?" at a 1983 Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory conference, and the twentieth anniversary of its publication as an essay in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (University of Illinois Press, 1988). "Can the Subaltern Speak?" is arguably the most influential academic essay of recent decades and its influence has spread well beyond postcolonial studies (which it helped to inaugurate) to indigenous studies and cultural studies more generally. Our plan is to mark the anniversary of the essay, but, more importantly, to investigate its continuing implications for a range of contemporary intellectual and political problems. As categories of critical analysis, "subalternity" and "indigeneity" throw into question hegemonic narratives of nation and empire, but also trouble many counter-hegemonic projects premised on meta-narratives of class, progress, and anticolonial nationalism. Engaging critically with indigeneity and subalternity as sites of intellectual inquiry will allow scholars interested in decolonization as well as theories of empire and social justice to address discourses that continue to underpin colonial and neo-colonial institutions in a world increasingly dominated by transnational capitalism and new forms of imperialism.
We are grateful to the following cosponsors: Center for Advanced Study, Center for Global Studies, Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, the LAS State-of-the-Art Conference Fund, and the Student Cultural Programming Fees.
For more information, please visit the conference web site
Friday, May 9 at the ACES Library, Heritage Room, 4 PM
Health Disparities in America 2008
As the former President of the American Public Health Association from 2000 to 2001, Mr. Michael E. Bird (MSW, MPH) has over 25 years of public health experience in the areas of medical social work, substance abuse prevention, health promotion and disease prevention, HIV/AIDS prevention, behavioral health, and health care administration. Mr. Bird is a Santo Domingo-San Juan Pueblo Indian from New Mexico. He has been involved in numerous health disparities projects and programs on a local, tribal, national and international level. Most recently, he was named to serve on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Urban Indian Health Commission.
Presented by the School of Social Work
Saturday, May 10 at the Native American House, 1206 W. Nevada, 6 PM
Native American House Congratulatory Ceremony
We invite you to attend the Native American House Congratulatory Ceremony on May 10, 2008 at 6 pm. The Native American House recognizes the achievements of American Indian students every year. Graduating undergraduates, professional, and graduate students are honored and the ceremony is complemented by a reception featuring traditional and contemporary Native foods.