2007-08 American Indian Studies
Speaker Series and Reading Group
Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis
As a category of critical analysis, "indigeneity" marks an intellectual arena located at the crossroads of where the processes of colonization intersect with communities who define themselves in terms of kinship networks, first languages, sacred histories, and ceremonial cycles tied intimately to the landscapes surrounding them. Indigeneity marks a community-grounded intellectual project that challenges and disrupts common constructs such as race, ethnicity, and nation. Those, more familiar terms, pose ontological and epistemological problems for and in indigenous studies; too often they erase indigenous perspectives completely. In the contemporary world, where imposed displacements and diasporas, volatile borders, and coerced exiles confuse and obliterate human perspectives, "indigeneity” holds the promise of illuminating and reframing questions of place, space, movement, and belonging. Thus, this reading group provides occasion to address several questions. For instance, how does "indigenous" signify and challenge the historical and material conditions of colonization, industrialism, and globalization? In what ways does indigeneity permit the remapping of state sovereignty, or the hegemony of multinational institutions? How does indigeneity function as a political, geographical, or theoretical category and how does bringing indigeneity to the fore in fields such as anthropology, communications studies, literary studies, gender and women's studies, history, landscape architecture, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, racialized communities studies, and sociology allow for new intellectual relationships in the humanities? Finally, what are the responsibilities of university-based American Indian Studies scholars to engage legacies of imperialism in which our lands, resources, and intellectual traditions have been appropriated and redeployed as the foundation for state power? Engaging critically with indigeneity as a site of intellectual inquiry allows scholars interested in social justice to radically address discourses that underpin colonial institutions.
Support for this series is provided by:
Center for Advanced Study, Department of Anthropology, African American Studies and Research Program, Asian American Studies Program, Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society, Office of the Chancellor, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, Department of English, Gender and Women's Studies, Department of History, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, Institute for Communications Research, Latina/Latino Studies Program, College of Law, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Department of Political Science, Office of the Provost, Department of Psychology (Clinical/Community Division), Department of Sociology, and the Student Cultural Programming Fees
Schedule of Events:
Meetings are held at 4:30pm in the Conference Room of the Native American House located at 1204 West Nevada Street. Upon request, hard copies of readings are available in advance through campus mail. Graduate credit may be available. Contact Tony Clark (tyeeme@gmail.com) for more information.
Thursday, September 6: Introductions, Setting the Stage
Readings:
Alfred, "Reconceptualizing Nationalism"
Alfred and Corntassel, "Being Indigenous"
Harris and Wasilewski, "Indigeneity"
Holm, Pearson, and Chavis, "Peoplehood"
FEATURED SPEAKER:
Thursday, September 20, at the Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor, 919 West Illinois Street, 5-7 pm
Joseph P. Gone, Psychology (Clinical Area) and American Culture (Native American Studies), University of Michigan
Title: Keeping Culture in Mind: Therapeutic Integration in a First Nation Treatment Center
Introduction: Helen Neville, Educational Psychology and African American Studies and Research Program
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Thursday, October 4: Intergenerational Post-Traumatic Stress and Peoplehood
Readings:
Gone, "Psychotherapy and Traditional Healing in American Indian Cultural Contexts"
Miller, "Who Are Indigenes? A Comparative Study of Canadian and American Practices"
Porter, "The Demise of the Ongwehoweh and the Rise of the Native Americans"
Yellow Horse Brave Heart and DeBruyn, "The American Indian Holocaust: Healing Historical Unresolved Grief"
FEATURED SPEAKER:
Wednesday, October 10, at the Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor, West Illinois Street, 4-6 pm
Jeff Corntassel, Indigenous Governance Programs, University of Victoria, British Columbia
Title: Persistence of Peoplehood: Regenerating Indigeneity during the Forced Federalism Era
Introduction: Bruce P. Smith, College of Law
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Thursday, November 1: Indigeneity and Its Implications for Law and Policy
Readings:
Alfred, "Sovereignty"
Anaya, "Implementing International Norms"
Champagne, "Rethinking Native Relations with Contemporary Nation-States" and "Indigenous Strategies for Engaging Globalism"
Corntassel, "Partnership in Action?"
FEATURED SPEAKER:
Tuesday, November 6, at the Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor, 919 West Illinois Street, 4:30-7:30
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Native American Studies and English, Eastern Washington University
Title: Indian Studies and Postcoloniality: An Analysis
Introduction: Norman Denzin, Institute of Communications Research, Sociology, Cinema Studies, Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Thursday, December 6: Reconfiguring the Intellectual
Readings:
Cook-Lynn, New Indians, Old Wars
Turner, "Towards a Critical Indigenous Philosophy"
Warrior, "The Native American Scholar: Toward a New Intellectual Agenda"
Thursday, February 7: Theorizing Space and Place
Readings:
Biolsi, "Imagined Geographies"
Deloria, "Sacred Places and Moral Responsibility"
Gegeo, "Cultural Rupture and Indigeneity: The Challenge of (Re)visioning 'Place' in the Pacific"
Morton-Robinson, "Whiteness, Epistemology, and Indigenous Representation"
FEATURED SPEAKER:
February 2008, TBA
Noenoe K. Silva, Indigenous Governance, University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
Title: The World and Everything On It: The Creation of a Native Universe by 19th C. Kanaka Writer Joseph Kanepuu
Between 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.
FEATURED SPEAKER:
March 2008, TBA
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.
Thursday, April 3: Indigenous Epistemologies: Forging Links to/in the Pacific
Readings:
Fujikani, "Foregrounding Native Nationalisms"
Kauanui, "Asian American Studies and the 'Pacific Question'"
Osorio, "Ho'oulu Lahui"
Teaiwa, "On Analogies: Rethinking the Pacific in a Global Context"
FEATURED SPEAKER:
April 2008, TBA
Aileen Moreton-Robinson is a Geonpul woman from Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), Quandamooka First Nation (Moreton Bay) in Queensland, Australia and professor of Indigenous Studies at Queensland University. Her publications include Talkin' Up To the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism, which was short-listed for the New South Wales Premier Literary Awards and the W.E. H Stanner Award, and editor of Whitening Race: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism and Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters. She is past president of the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association.
Thursday, May 1: Not the End of the War Songs, Not the End of the Stories: Next Steps
Readings:
Cheyfitz, "The (Post)colonial Predictament of Native American Studies"
Furniss, "Challenging the Myth of Indigenous Peoples' 'Last Stand' in Canada and Australia"
Povinelli, "Sex Rites, Civil Rights"
Tuhiwai Smith, "Articulating an Indigenous Research Agenda"
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