Indigenous Americas

The Indigenous Americas Working Group is an interdisciplinary workshop for scholars in various disciplines to engage current scholarship in Native American and Indigenous Studies, workshop their own works-in-progress, host NAIS scholars on campus, and generate important conversations about contemporary art and politics in NAIS. While grounded in the histories and geographies of the hemispheric Americas and the complex terrain of tribal and settler-colonial national formations, the group is also interested in transnational circuits of indigenous mobility and comparative global indigenous studies, engaging and producing research in various humanities and humanistic social science departments.


10-15-2018 IAWG Event

Moose in the Room: Time To Talk About Indigenous Male Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada

10.15.2018 | 4:00 PM |  554 Barrows Hall

with Robert Innes, Associate Professor and Department Head,
Department of Indigenous Studies, University of Saskatchewan

Professor Innes is a member of the Cowessess First Nation and author of Elder Brother and the Law of the People: Contemporary Kinship and Cowessess First Nation (Manitoba 2014) and co-editor (with Kim Anderson) of Indigenous Men and Masculinities: Legacies, Identities, Regeneration (Manitoba 2015).

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Co-sponsored by the Indigenous Americas Working Group, Center for Race and Gender, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Canadian Studies, and Native American Studies.



10-8-2018 IAWG Event

A Red Girl’s Reasoning … & Creating: Indigenous Women Creatives In Kanata/Canada

10.15.2018 | 12:00 – 1:00 PM |  223 Dwinelle Hall 

with Renae WatchmanAssociate Professor, English and Indigenous Studies; Co-Director, Office of Academic Indigenization, Mt. Royal University, Calgary

Professor Watchman teaches literature and film courses. Her work and research interests remain transdisciplinary and include: North American Indigenous Literatures, History and Culture (all eras), Indigenous Feminisms, Comparative Literature, Orality, (Post-/neo-) colonialism & decolonizing literature, Globalization of Native American Powwows and Powwow Phenomena and Film Studies (Contemporary, Global, and Indigenous).

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Co-sponsored by the Indigenous Americas Working Group, Center for Race and Gender, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Canadian Studies, and Native American Studies.



Flyer for 4-10-2018 IAWG Event

The River Is In Us: Fighting Toxics In A Mohawk Community

04.10.2018 | 3:00 – 4:30 PM |  554 Barrows Hall

with Elizabeth Hoover, Brown University

As a Native community downwind, downstream and down gradient from one federal and two New York State Superfund sites, Akwesasne Mohawks have had their share of concerns about the impacts of contamination on the health of their bodies, culture, and environment. Akwesasne formerly relied on fishing and farming for its livelihood until it was discovered in the 1970s and 1980s that neighboring industries had released fluoride into the air and PCBs into the river that bisects the community. This discovery led Akwesasne community members to embark on a decade-long community based participatory research project (CBPR) with a large university in an attempt to determine if it was safe for Mohawk mothers to breastfeed their babies, and if the overall health of the community had been impacted by exposure to contamination. Based on ethnographic and archival research, this presentation discusses the benefits and challenges of CBPR for effective research in Native American communities; the collateral impacts of environmental contamination on Indigenous health, culture and food systems; and the inspiring ways in which this community is developing programs to ensure their own resiliency.

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Sponsored by the Indigenous Americas Working Group, Native American Studies, and the Berkeley Food Institute.



Flyer for 2020-2018 IAWG Event

Indigenous London: A Book Talk with Coll Thrush

02.20.2018 | 3:00 – 4:30 PM |  554 Barrows Hall

Historian Coll Thrush offers a new and compelling view of London’s history through the lived experiences of Indigenous women, children, and men who have traveled to the city, willingly or otherwise, since the beginning of the sixteenth century. They included captives and diplomats, missionaries and medicine people, poets and performers, athletes and sovereigns. Together, their stories illuminate a London that has until now largely been ignored: an imperial capital shaped in profound ways by its entanglements with Indigenous peoples and places.

BIO
Coll Thrush is associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia, where he is also affiliated with UBC’s Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. Originally from the Seattle area, he lives in Vancouver on unceded Coast Salish territories.

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Sponsored by the Indigenous Americas Working Group, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Center for Race and Gender, and the Native American Studies Program.




Indigenous Americas Events