2024 Past Events
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Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Free, registration required: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/we-ride-for-her-tickets-1042898506507?aff=oddtdtcreator
7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
We Ride for Her is a documentary short film that sheds light on the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women and relatives. Directed by Katrina Sorrentino and Prairie Rose Seminole (Arikara/Sahnish, Northern Cheyenne) and produced by Red Sand Project, We Ride for Her follows an Indigenous women's motorcycle group that rides to end the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives.
Prairie Rose Seminole and Katrina Sorrentino will join us for a discussion following the screening.
This event is co-sponsored by the Dutchess County Commision for Human Rights.
Learn more about the project: https://www.werideforher.com/
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Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Weis Cinema 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World reveals the untold story of the Native American influence on popular music. The film travels deep into the South, guided by Pura Fe (Tuscarora/Taino), Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Cyril Neville (Choctaw), bringing to light a missing chapter in our history books: how Indigenous music was part of the very fabric of American popular music from the beginning, but the Native American contribution was left out of the story, until now.
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Monday, November 11, 2024
Olin Humanities, Room 204 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Rethinking Place and the Bard Center for Indigenous Studies is hosting a Fall Senior Colloquium for seniors interested in discussing their Senior Projects. This is an opportunity to get feedback from peers and the Center's associated faculty and staff. We encourage all seniors in American & Indigenous Studies, and other Seniors whose projects fall within the lens of Native American and Indigenous studies, to attend.
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Friday, November 8, 2024
A solo dance choreographed and performed by Wanjiru Kamuyu
Hessel Museum 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Portraits in red investigates the dominant standard of beauty and puts in question the image of the body. The dominance of the European and US beauty and fashion industries’ capitalization and globalization of a homogenized standard of beauty is the springboard for the work’s research. Portraits in red examines conflicting ideas, issues and challenges identified with the politics of the body such as dominance, oppression, assimilation, objectification and exotification. This is propelled by an ingrained need to adapt and assimilate into a Western, biased mold of what connotes beauty. Portraits in red is a universal narrative that is bold, brave, and uncompromising in its mission. This performance is free, registration required.
Born into a bi-cultural home (Kenya/USA) and having lived on three continents (Africa, North America and Europe), Wanjiru Kamuyu continues to be intrigued by each society’s general relationship to the notion of beauty and the provocations that arise around the image of the body. Based on the 2013 reconstruction of a 2005 solo, Spiral, she decided to revisit the idea in collaboration with the artistic expertise of choreographer and dramaturge Robyn Orlin. Her intrigue with the notion and definition of beauty, particularly in the case of the female body, serve as her points of inquiry.
Portraits in red at Bard College is hosted by Center for Indigenous Studies and Center for Curatorial Studies. Wanjiru Kamuyu is a Visiting Artist in Residence through the Bard Dance/Villa Albertine partnership.
Wanjiru Kamuyu, native Kenyan and based in Paris, France, is associate artist with the National Choreographic Center Nantes (France), a Live Feed artist with New York Live Arts (USA) and seasons 2022 to 2024 was associate artist with Theater L’Onde (Vélizy, France).
Kamuyu founded dance company, WKcollective, which is associate company with creative production agency camin aktion (Montpellier, France). Her choreographic works “Portaits in red”, “An Immigrant’s Story”, “Fragmented Shadows” and dance short “La visite” tour in the US, Africa, Asia and Europe.
Her career began with its genesis in New York City. Kamuyu holds a MFA (performance & choreography) from Temple University (Philadelphia, PA). She has served as Visiting Guest Professor at Mills College (USA) and is currently core faculty for University of South Florida’s Dance in Paris semester and summer programs.
Credits
Choreography & Performance: Wanjiru Kamuyu
Dramaturgy: Robyn Orlin
Musique (composition): Nate May
Musique (arrangement): lacrymoboy
Costume conception: Robyn Orlin
Costume execution: Birigit Neppl
Production: WKcollective, a dance company
Diffusion: camin aktion | caminaktion.eu
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Wednesday, November 6, 2024
with Wanjiru Kamuyu
Bard Chapel 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
A Community Sing and Movement Circle is a gathering space to commune, heal, rejoice and reflect collectively through the power of song and movement. The space invites an invocation of the human spirit in celebration and upliftment. Drawing upon African and African American traditions of song and movement as vectors of liberation, participants will sing and move while engaging in the discovery and
rediscovery of their communal points of connection. Through a collective energy each individual will bring forth and share through their unique and powerful sources of expression all while appreciating the beauty of diversity as an attribute to their community. No prior movement or singing experience is required. A body, a voice an open and willing spirit is all that one needs to bring to the circle.
Wanjiru Kamuyu (choreographer, dancer and teacher)
Founder of WKcollective
Masters of Fine Arts (performance & choreography – Temple University (USA)
www.caminaktion.eu/en/wkcollective/
Wanjiru Kamuyu, native Kenyan based in Paris, France, is associate artist with the National Choreographic Center Nantes (France), a Live Feed artist with New York Live Arts (USA) and seasons 2022 to 2024 was associate artist with Theater L’Onde (Vélizy, France).
Kamuyu founded dance company, WKcollective, which is associate company with creative production agency camin aktion (Montpellier, France). Her choreographic works “Portaits in red”, “An Immigrant’s Story”, “Fragmented Shadows” and dance short “La visite” tour in the US, Africa, Asia and Europe. Commissions include collaborations with directors Jérôme Savary (France); Jean François Auguste (France); Hassan Kassi Kouyate (France); US esteemed dance departments (Mills College, University of Michigan, Wayne State
University, Stephens College); artistic consulting/outside eye for choreographer Bintou Dembele; choreographer assistant to Nathan Trice; storyteller Nathalie La Boucher; and community engagement projects with New WORLD Theater (USA), choreographer Eun-mi Ahn (Festival Paris Quartier d’Été), Euroculture and the National Center for Dance project Assemblé (France). Her career began with its genesis in New York City. As a performer she has worked with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Bill T. Jones, Molissa Fenley, Anita
Gonzales, Okwui Okpokwasili, Nathan Trice, Dean Moss, Tania Isaac… and in Europe with choreographers Robyn Orlin, Emmanuel Eggermont, Anne Collod, River Lin, Nathalie Pubellier, Irène Tassembedo, Bartabas, Stefanie Batten Bland, director/writer Françoise Dô, writers Karthika Naïr, Deepak Unnikrishnan, visual artist Jean-Paul Goude and TV director Christian Faure. Alongside Kamuyu has performed in industrials, television and Broadway musicals, The Lion King (Paris) and FELA ! (UK and Equity European and US
tours). While touring she offers master classes and workshops for dance companies, universities, community and dance centers. Kamuyu holds a MFA (performance &choreography) from Temple University (Philadelphia, PA). She has served as
Visiting Guest Professor at Mills College (USA) and is currently core faculty for University of South Florida’s Dance in Paris semester and summer programs.
www.caminaktion.eu/en/wkcollective/
Instagram : wanjirudance
Facebook : Wanjiru Kamuyu
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Thursday, October 24, 2024
A Talk with Kevin Patterson
Campus Center, Weis Cinema 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
This talk explores the impact of mining in the Western US and racial and ethnic inequities in exposure to metals, examining how these disparities affect dietary and drinking water quality and the subsequent health effects of exposure. It will also discuss preliminary community partnered initiatives in the Navajo Nation and pathways forward.
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Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Center for Human Rights and the Arts Talks Series
RKC 103 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
In this lecture, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay invites the audience to stay at the threshold of the museum in order to recognize the impossibility of decolonizing museums without decolonizing the world. Refusing to study what was plundered as mere objects as museums command us to do, but rather as evidence of a destroyed world, Azoulay decenters the category of “restitution,” and proposes to understand plunder as communal remains. Azoulay weaves the plunder of objects stolen from Jews in Europe—and their partial restitution within the broader picture of European plunder from other places, among them from the world of her ancestors in the Maghreb, from Palestine, and West Africa, in an attempt to undo the exceptionalization of “the Jews” which continues to serve Euro-American imperial interests on a global scale.
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Monday, September 23, 2024
with Cameron Fraser-Monroe (Tla’amin First Nation), choreographer in residence at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and Brandi Norton (Iñupiaq), curator of public programs at Center for Indigenous Studies
Thorne Studio, Fisher Center at Bard 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
šɛgatəm
[shAY-ga-tum]: to lift someone up
Tla’amin Nation Elders are fiercely resilient and hardworking, and create a self-reliant community that understands when to ask for help. In this emotional premiere from Cameron sinkʷə Fraser-Monroe, he draws on his traditional, contemporary, and ballet practice to share the story of a leader facing burnout who must learn the hard way to lean on his community.
Composer: Jeremy Dutcher
Lighting Designer: Andy Morrow
Dancers: Kyra Soo and Logan Savard
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Friday, September 20, 2024
Presented Lucas Ondak, Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and Frances Cathryn, editorial projects manager, Forge Project.
Olin 107 2:00 pm – 4:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
This two-hour workshop will cover two perspectives on a research project formed between Forge Project, a Native-led arts organization, and Bard College Rethinking Place initiative. The collaboration between the arts space and academic institution hopes to uncover the history of the land in the surrounding region over time. This workshop will try to answer the question of the role and use of colonial archives in decolonial contexts.
Using as its starting point the moment of full displacement of the Moh-He-Con-Nuck from their homelands (and partnering with the Stockbridge Munsee Community Cultural Affairs department to share these histories), Frances Cathryn and Lucas Ondak are working to produce a land “narrative” that will answer the question of the origin of New Forge Road where Forge Project is situated.
Frances will share details on the formation of the project, and how Forge will work with the SMC to create a model for replicable research in the future. Lucas will explain the process of finding evidence through primarily local, in-person archival research, the ethical challenges of utilizing archives predicated on Indigenous erasure, and the methodologies and protocols for interacting with them. Participants are then invited to bring their own research projects for feedback with the group in a post-presentation discussion.
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Monday, September 9, 2024
Blithewood 312/313
Blithewood Manor 312/313 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Come chat and have tea with our team.
To access the office, buzz into Blithewood via the South entrance. Take the elevator to the third floor and upon exit, turn right. The office will be directly on your left.
See you then!
- Brandi Norton, Melina Roise, & Olivia Tencer
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Friday, July 19, 2024
Blithewood Manor Piano Room 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
About Mali Obomsawin
Wabanaki bassist, composer, and songwriter Mali Obomsawin’s music flies in the face of Western tropes that insist Indigenous cultures are monolithic, trapped in time. Highlighting centuries of clever adaptation and resistance in her own community, Obomsawin points toward abundant horizons for Indigenous peoples.
Mali Obomsawin will perform at Spiegeltent at Bard on July 19, co-presented with the Center for Indigenous Studies. Learn more and get tickets here.
About Angelica Sanchez
Pianist, composer, and educator Angelica Sanchez relocated to New York from Arizona in 1995. Since making the move to the East Coast, Sanchez has collaborated with esteemed artists such as Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Motian, Richard Davis, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Nicole Mitchell, and Rob Mazurek, among others. Notably, Sanchez leads various groups, including her latest ensemble, the Nonet.
Her musical contributions have garnered recognition in both national and international publications, including Jazz Times, the New York Times, the Wire, and Downbeat, among others. Sanchez received the 2024 Rockefeller Brothers Pocantico artist residency, the 2022 Civitella Fellowship in Italy, and most recently the Jazz Gallery Composition Fellowship.
The piano duo project How to Turn the Moon, featuring Marilyn Crispell, was voted one of the top 50 best recordings in 2020 by NPR critics. Additionally, her album Sparkle Beings was selected by the New York Times as one of the top 10 Jazz recordings of 2022. Her Nonet recording, Nighttime Creatures, was recognized as one of the Best Recordings in 2023 by Downbeat magazine and featured on NPR’s Fresh Air.
Angelica Sanchez holds a master’s degree in arranging from William Paterson University and currently serves on the faculty at Bard College.
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Wednesday, July 3, 2024
Lucille Grignon of Ancient Roots Homestead
Bard Farm 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In many lineages, oral history and traditional knowledge shares customarily take place outside of a colonial classroom environment and instead in a gathering space, while working with hands, tending a garden, or sharing some tea.
On July 3 at 3:00 pm, Rethinking Place and the Bard Farm will host a seed story share event with Lucy Grignon of Ancient Roots Homestead, where we will gather to have tea, swap seeds, and share experiences of plant relationships. If you would like, bring some seeds, a story, or a snack to share.
Please bring sun protection and water. If it’s nice, we will be in the sunshine!
Lucille Grignon (Stockbridge-Munsee) is a homesteader at Ancient Roots Homestead, which is located on the Stockbridge-Munsee Reservation. She has transitioned from teaching in a modern colonial classroom into working as an educator of Ancient Indigenous skills, ideas, and traditions guided by the ways of her ancestors.
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Thursday, May 16, 2024
Olin Hall 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Nicole Wallace and Lou Cornum: A Reading and Conversation
May 16, Olin Auditorium, Bard College, 3:30pmCo-Sponsored by Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck and AS 222 Indigenous Feminist Critiques and GeographiesLou Cornum (Diné/Bilagáana) is Assistant Professor of Native American Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. They hold a Ph.D. in English from the City University of New York Graduate Center, an M.A. from the University of British Columbia, and a B.A. from Columbia University.
Their research interests broadly encompass Indigenous Cultural Studies with particular attention to Native American literature and Indigenous Futurism. Looking to science fiction as a form of theorizing land and the human, Cornum’s first project puts into dynamic conversation concepts and texts across Critical Indigenous Studies, Black Studies, and Geography. In 2020, they co-edited a special issue of Canadian Literature titled “Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror.” An additional ongoing project is a study of what they call “the irradiated international”, the diffuse collective of peoples affected by atomic testing, atomic bombs, and uranium mining. “Radioactive Intimacies: The Making of Worldwide Wastelands in Marie Clements’s Burning Vision” was published in the Critical Ethnic Studies Journal in 2020. They are a founding editorial collective member of Pinko: A Magazine of Gay Communism.Nicole Wallace’s first chapbook, WAASAMOWIN, was published by IMP in 2019. Most recently, Nicole was the June/July 2020 poetry micro-resident at Running Dog and a 2019 Poets House Emerging Poets Fellow. Recent work can be read in print in Survivance: Indigenous Poesis Vol. IV Zine and online at Running Dog, A Perfect Vacuum, and LitHub. They have also contributed to programs and publications celebrating the work and life of the late poet, Diane Burns, author of Riding the One-Eyed Ford (Contact II, 1981).
Through their ongoing participation in language classes and through their work as a writer and poet, Nicole is dedicated to reconnecting with and carrying forward the Ojibwe language (Ojibwemowin / Anishinaabemowin). They have participated in remote language classes with Dr. Wendy Makoons Geniusz through UW-Eau Claire, and most recently with Memegwesi Sutherland through the Minneapolis American Indian Center/Culture Language And Arts Network.
Nicole received a BA from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study (2008) and a Masters of Library Science in Archives and Preservation of Cultural Materials from Queens College, CUNY (2012). They have lived and made work as a guest on occupied Canarsee and Lenape territory (NYC) since 2005 and are currently the Managing Director of The Poetry Project. Nicole is of mixed settler/European ancestry and is a patrilineal descendent of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe)
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Thursday, May 9, 2024
An event for listening and commemoration of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
New Annandale House, Experimental Humanities 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join Experimental Humanities, the Center for Indigenous Studies, and Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck for a day of listening and commemoration for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls. #MMIW #MMIWR #NoMoreStolenSisters
We will gather at 2:30 pm at the Experimental Humanities Building (New Annandale House) at Bard College for listening to activist voices, sharing resources, and speaking and writing names. The event will include a composition by Luis Chavez.
Please wear red.
Find more resources on MMIWG/MMMIWR below:
National Indigenous Women's Resource Center: https://www.niwrc.org/resources
"Death in the Shadow of the Umbrella" by Aiyyana Maracle premiered at the Queer Arts Festival in Vancouver 2015
Camera: Bradley A. West
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Friday, April 26, 2024
Dr. Royce K. Young Wolf (Hiraacá, Nu’eta, and Sosore, ancestral Apsáalooke and Nʉmʉnʉʉ), Inaugural Assistant Curator of Native American Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and Collection Manager of the Native North American and Indigenous Collection, Yale Peabody Museum
Bito ’60 Auditorium, Reem-Kayden Center 103 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Dr. Royce K. Young Wolf is a Hiraacá (Hidatsa), Nu’eta (Mandan), and Sosore (Eastern Shoshone) mother, language and culture activist, curator, artist, and writer. She is a member of the Ih-dhi-shu-gah (Wide Ridge) Clan and is a child of the Ah-puh-gah-whi-gah (Low Cap) Clan, with close relations to her Apsáalooke (Crow) families. Her cultures, languages, and education in the arts, collection management, and language revitalization are integral to her journey beyond the impacts of being a fourth-generation Indian boarding school survivor. At the University of Oklahoma, she received her MA in Native American Studies focused on the Shoshonean Language Reunions and the cultural survivance of her Newe, Numu, and Nʉmʉnʉʉ (Comanche) relations. Her PhD in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology focused on the impacts of colonization on intergenerational knowledge transmission, and cultural and language vitality. She continues to expand upon this research and connections made through her dissertation titled, Pursuing an Understanding of Relationship Making within Language Revitalization: Conversations with Indigenous Language Activists.
Dr. Young Wolf is a recipient of the Cobell Scholarship, the Plains Anthropological Society Native American Student Research Award, the University of Oklahoma Social Sciences Graduate Student Research Award, and is a member of the United Nations Global Indigenous Languages Caucus. She is a founding member alongside her elders who created the MHA Nation Language Department and the MHA Interpretive Center. In 2021, Dr. Young Wolf was selected to be the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral fellow in Native American Art and Curation and a Presidential Visiting fellow at Yale University. She is currently the inaugural Native North American Collection Manager and Assistant Curator of Native American Arts, a duel appointment at the Yale University Art Gallery and Yale Peabody Museum. Dr. Young Wolf continues to prioritize Indigenous language and culture revitalization throughout her curatorial and collection management work which centers on culturally responsive care, decolonization, rematriation, survivance, and relationship (re)making.
The Bard College Center for Indigenous Studies will host its inaugural symposium on Thursday, April 25, and Friday, April 26, at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The symposium includes workshops, lectures, and discussions centered around Dr. Beth Piatote’s (Nez Perce enrolled Colville Confederated Tribes) brilliant play Antíkoni, an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone. Dr. Beth Piatote’s (Nez Perce enrolled Colville Confederated Tribes) play Antíkoni is from her collection The Beadworkers and was written in part while in residence as a fellow at Bard Graduate Center. Inspired by this work’s themes of possession, belonging, and inheritance, the Center for Indigenous Studies has invited speakers to discuss tribal preservation, NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), and the universality of the values that run through both Sophocles’ Antigone and Piatote’s adaptation.
Press Release: View
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Thursday, April 25, 2024
By Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican), Tribal Repatriation specialist for the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Nation.
Blithewood Manor 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
It is invaluable to Tribal citizens to welcome home lost or looted family heirlooms as part of collective cultural heritage. Bonney Hartley, repatriation representative for Stockbridge-Munsee Community, will share insights from the community’s repatriation efforts in the region and highlight ways that the Tribal Historic Preservation Program has approached matters of possession and belonging in claiming items under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The presentation will also offer recent insights and opportunities in light of the new NAGPRA regulations that took effect in January.
The Bard College Center for Indigenous Studies will host its inaugural symposium on Thursday, April 25, and Friday, April 26, at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The symposium includes workshops, lectures, and discussions centered around Dr. Beth Piatote’s (Nez Perce enrolled Colville Confederated Tribes) brilliant play Antíkoni, an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone. Dr. Beth Piatote’s (Nez Perce enrolled Colville Confederated Tribes) play Antíkoni is from her collection The Beadworkers and was written in part while in residence as a fellow at Bard Graduate Center. Inspired by this work’s themes of possession, belonging, and inheritance, the Center for Indigenous Studies has invited speakers to discuss tribal preservation, NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), and the universality of the values that run through both Sophocles’ Antigone and Piatote’s adaptation.
Press Release: View
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Thursday, April 25, 2024
Read by Kahelelani Mahone and Ciko Sidzumo
Blithewood Manor 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Scenes from Antíkoni
Performed by Kahelelani Mahone and Ciko Sidzumo
Contextualization by Beth Piatote, Julie Burelle, and Laurie Arnold
Codirected by Jack Ferver, assistant professor of theater and performance, and Brandi Norton, curator of public programs at Bard Center for Indigenous Studies
Kahelelani aka HEAVY PLEASURE (Kanaka Maoli, DJ, interdisciplinary artist) originates from the ahupuaʻa o Kailua, in the moku o Koʻolaupoko, on the island of O’ahu. Utilizing sound as a tool to grapple with themes like gender and sexuality, embodiment, and belonging, Kahelelani creates containers to experience joy, connection, and reflection as potential sites for decolonial world-building.
Ciko Sidzumo is a second year student at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard. She joins the program from Johannesburg, South Africa. Ciko’s research interests include period poverty, gender-based violence, and movements that work toward the eradication of both.
Press Release: View
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Thursday, April 25, 2024
By Beth Piatote (Nez Perce, Colville Confederated Tribes) as a part of “Antíkoni: A Symposium.”
Weis Cinema 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
The timeless and profound themes expressed in Antigone, the great tragedy by Sophocles, has made it one of the most adapted plays in theater, speaking to political and ethical problems around the world. In my talk, I will describe my own engagement with the play in my revision, Antikoni, which centers a Nez Perce-Cayuse family debating the fate of ancestral remains, family loyalty, and what it means to live between spiritual law and the law of the State. I will explore the ways in which the play is an adaptation, but is also about adaptation--about Native people struggling to adapt and find a way through systems that are hostile to them, and the price that is paid along the way.
This event is free and open to the public, no registration required.
Dr. Beth Piatote’s (Nez Perce enrolled Colville Confederated Tribes) play Antíkoni is from her collection The Beadworkers and was written in part while in residence as a fellow at Bard Graduate Center. Inspired by this work’s themes of possession, belonging, and inheritance, the Center for Indigenous Studies has invited speakers to discuss tribal preservation, NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), and the universality of the values that run through both Sophocles’ Antigone and Piatote’s adaptation.
The Bard College Center for Indigenous Studies will host its inaugural symposium on Thursday, April 25 and Friday, 26 at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The symposium includes workshops, lectures, and discussions centered around Dr. Beth Piatote’s (Nez Perce enrolled Colville Confederated Tribes) brilliant play Antíkoni, an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone. Piatote will give her public keynote address “Antíkoni and the Question of Adaptation” on Thursday, April 25, 2:00–3:30 pm ET in Weis Cinema, located in the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College.
Press Release: View
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Thursday, April 25, 2024 – Friday, April 26, 2024
The Inaugural Symposium of the Center for Indigenous Studies
The Bard College Center for Indigenous Studies will host its inaugural symposium on Thursday, April 25, and Friday, April 26, at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The symposium includes workshops, lectures, and discussions centered around Dr. Beth Piatote’s (Nez Perce enrolled Colville Confederated Tribes) brilliant play Antíkoni, an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone. Piatote will give her public keynote address “Antíkoni and the Question of Adaptation” on Thursday, April 25, 2:00–3:30 pm ET in Weis Cinema, located in the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College. A closing public lecture “Between the Heart and Horizon Line: Culturally Responsive Care in Collection Management” will be delivered by Yale University’s Dr. Royce K. Young Wolf (Hiraacá, Nu’eta, and Sosore, ancestral Apsáalooke and Nʉmʉnʉʉ) on Friday, April 26, 4:30–5:30 pm ET in the Bito ’60 Auditorium, located in the Reem-Kayden Center, Room 103, at Bard College. All talks are open to the public and do not require registration.
Dr. Beth Piatote’s (Nez Perce enrolled Colville Confederated Tribes) play Antíkoni is from her collection The Beadworkers and was written in part while in residence as a fellow at Bard Graduate Center. Inspired by this work’s themes of possession, belonging, and inheritance, the Center for Indigenous Studies has invited speakers to discuss tribal preservation, NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), and the universality of the values that run through both Sophocles’ Antigone and Piatote’s adaptation. Invited guests include Dr. Laurie Arnold (Sinixt Band Colville Confederated Tribes), the director of Native American Studies and Professor of History at Gonzaga University; Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican), tribal historic preservation manager for the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans; Dr. Julie Burelle, performance studies scholar, dramaturg, and assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California San Diego; and Dr. Sailakshmi Ramgopal, classicist, artist, and assistant professor of history at Columbia University.
Symposium Schedule
Apr 25, 2024
2:00–3:30 pm, Weis Cinema, Bertelsmann Campus Center
Opening Keynote: “Antíkoni and the Question of Adaptation”
Dr. Beth Piatote (Nez Perce, Colville Confederated Tribes)
Staged Reading of scenes
4:30-5:30pm, Blithewood
Information to follow
6:00–7:00 pm, Blithewood Manor
“Possession, Belongings and Inheritance: Stockbridge-Munsee Community’s Approach to NAGPRA”
Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee Community)
Apr 26, 2024
9:15–10:45 am, Finberg House (seating is limited, please arrive early)
“Antíkoni in a Settler Classroom on Kumeyaay Land: Storytelling ‘in the Meantime’ to Imagine ‘Beyond’ It”
Dr. Julie Burelle, associate professor of performance studies in the Department of Theatre and Dance at UC San Diego
11:00–12:00 pm, Finberg House (seating is limited, please arrive early)
“Antíkoni as Public History”
Dr. Laurie Arnold (Sinixt Band of the Colville Confederated Tribes), professor of history and director of Native American Studies; Powers Chair of the Humanities at Gonzaga University
1:15–2:30 pm, Finberg House (seating is limited, please arrive early)
Dr. Sailakshmi Ramgopal, assistant professor of history at Columbia University
“Teaching Antigone and Antíkoni”
2:45–4:00 pm, Finberg House (seating is limited, please arrive early)
Dr. Amy Pistone, assistant professor of classical civilizations at Gonzaga University
Tyler Archer, postdoctoral fellow in classical studies at Bard College
4:30–5:30 pm, Bito ’60 Auditorium, Reem-Kayden Center 103
Closing Keynote: “Between the Heart and Horizon Line: Culturally Responsive Care in Collection Management”
Dr. Royce K. Young Wolf (Hiraacá, Nu’eta, and Sosore, ancestral Apsáalooke and Nʉmʉnʉʉ)
Press Release: View
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Friday, April 12, 2024
An electronic music performance
CCS Classroom 102 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
White People Killed Them is one of several imaginings of new designations, calamities, and celebrations by group members recorded in 2019 when we all happened to be in New Mexico. We encourage surprise inventions and innovations towards erecting, maintaining, and the defending of democratic spaces (beyond the limits of the band stand) in your community with other front line warriors. The name of the band is a group of words commonly paraphrased on many monuments across the United States.
CCS Classroom 102, April 12th, 7:00pm. Doors open at 6:30.
Limited entry is available on a first-come first-served basis, please arrive early.
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Thursday, April 11, 2024
Rethinking Place Morrison Lecture 2024
Olin Auditorium 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Scholars have been concerned either to criticize or to praise Morrison’s sparing inclusion of Native Americans in her novels. Are they beneath her notice? Or have they gone unnoticed by us? Following Morrison’s own methods in arguing that the “real or fabricated” “Africanist presence” in white American literature is crucial to writers’ “sense of Americanness,” we might pursue how the “Native American presence” works in her literature not only in historical and political terms, but also in aesthetic and cultural terms. This talk considers how, across her oeuvre and career, the Native American figure—meaning literary character; racial type; literary trope; and silhouette or profile—shapes her “sense of blackness.”
A reception catered by Samosa Shack Kingston to follow talk beginning at 4:30pm.
This event is the 2024 lecture of the Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck Toni Morrison lecture series.
Namwali Serpell is a Zambian writer and a Professor of English at Harvard University. She received a 2020 Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction, the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing, and a 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and was selected for the Africa39. Her first novel, The Old Drift (Hogarth, 2019), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction, the Grand Prix des Associations Littéraires Prize for Belles-Lettres, and the L.A. Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. It was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review and one of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of the Year. Her novel, The Furrows: An Elegy (Hogarth, 2022), was long listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the Carol Shields Award for fiction, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the California Book Award for Fiction. It was named one of the New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2022, and one of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. Her nonfiction book, Stranger Faces (Transit, 2020), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
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Thursday, April 11, 2024
Bito 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join American and Indigenous Studies and the Center for Indigenous Studies for a workshop with our guest composers and performers Raven Chacon, Marshall Trammell, and John Dieterich. Their group, White People Killed Them, is one of several imaginings of new designations, calamities, and celebrations. We encourage surprise inventions and innovations towards erecting, maintaining, and defending democratic spaces (beyond the limits of the band stand) in your community with other frontline warriors.
White People Killed Them will perform on Friday, April 12, at 7 pm in CCS Classroom 102.
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Wednesday, April 10, 2024 – Friday, April 12, 2024
Montgomery Place Estate 1:30 pm – 4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Register for timed entry here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/865614204387?aff=oddtdtcreator
Returning Home is the first small scale contemporary Native photography exhibition to take place in the Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College. The exhibition addresses long standing Indigenous child removal policies and practices of Canada and the United States, whose governments strategically implemented the kidnapping of Native children to be sent to Indian boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries to sever familial ties and dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and lifeways. By introducing the history of the United States’ settler colonial past and ongoing present alongside the works of four contemporary Native photographers—Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke(Crow))—and poet Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee), this exhibition provides narratives of resistance, resilience, dissent, subversion, memorialization, and what Anishinabe writer Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,” that disrupt historic and contemporary notions that Native peoples are helpless victims who are unfit to raise their own children – often infantilized by a paternalistic US government through colonial welfare practices. This exhibition is an intervention in a house museum whose history is intertwined with the forced removal of the Mohican peoples in early colonial New York.
Returning Home aims to highlight Indigenous representation, narrative, survivance, futurism, and resilience through contemporary Native art. The show will include pieces from the Forge Project's collection, as well as a written commission from Institute of American Indian Arts MFA Candidate Bonney Hartley. An accompanying publication will provide in-depth contextualization of land dispossession in the US, forced removal of Native peoples in New York State, and the impact of Indian boarding schools.
All events require separate registration. Exhibition viewing is not included in event registration.
Exhibition Viewing Hours:
April 6th & 7th, 1:00-5:00pm (timed entry every 15 minutes- register here)
April 10-12th, 1:30-4:00pm
Schedule of Events:
April 6th, 1:30pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley (reservation required, doors open at 1:00pm)
April 6th, 4:00pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite - registration required
April 7th, 3:00pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor's center. Register for the webinar here.
April 10th, 6:30pm: Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work & practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.
Sponsored by Hudson Valley Greenway and the Mellon Foundation, as a part of Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck.
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Sunday, April 7, 2024
Online Event 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Sponsored by Hudson Valley Greenway and the Mellon Foundation, as a part of Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck.
This event will be via Zoom, with viewing available at the Montgomery Place visitor's center. Register for the Zoom talk here.
All events require separate registration. Exhibition viewing is not included in event registration.
Exhibition Viewing Hours:
April 6 & 7, 1:00-5:00 pm (timed entry every half hour—register here)
April 10–12, 1:30–4:00 pm
Schedule of Events:
April 6, 1:30 pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley (doors open at 1pm - registration required)
April 6, 4:00 pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite - registration required
April 7, 3:00 pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor's center. Register for the zoom talk here.
April 10th, 6:30pm: Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work & practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.
Returning Home is the first small scale contemporary Native photography exhibition to take place in the Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College. The exhibition addresses long standing Indigenous child removal policies and practices of Canada and the United States, whose governments strategically implemented the kidnapping of Native children to be sent to Indian boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries to sever familial ties and dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and lifeways. By introducing the history of the United States’ settler colonial past and ongoing present alongside the works of four contemporary Native photographers—Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke(Crow))—and poet Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee), this exhibition provides narratives of resistance, resilience, dissent, subversion, memorialization, and what Anishinabe writer Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,” that disrupt historic and contemporary notions that Native peoples are helpless victims who are unfit to raise their own children – often infantilized by a paternalistic US government through colonial welfare practices. This exhibition is an intervention in a house museum whose history is intertwined with the forced removal of the Mohican peoples in early colonial New York.
Dana Claxton is a critically acclaimed artist who works with film, video, photography, single/multi-channel video installation, and performance art. Her practice investigates indigenous beauty, the body, the sociopolitical, and the spiritual. Her work has been shown internationally and is held in public, private, and corporate collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, Mackenzie Art Gallery, Audain Art Museum, Eiteljorg Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Forge Project, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery. She is professor and head of the Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory with the University of British Columbia. She is a member of Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations located in SW Saskatchewan and resides in Vancouver Canada.
Dana comments, “I am grateful for all the support my artwork and cultural work has received. I am indebted to the sun and my sundance teachings—mni ki wakan—water is sacred.”
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Saturday, April 6, 2024
Part of “Returning Home: A Contemporary Native Photography Exhibition”
Montgomery Place Estate 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Sponsored by Hudson Valley Greenway and the Mellon Foundation, as a part of Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck.
All events require separate registration. Exhibition viewing is not included in event registration.
Exhibition Viewing Hours:
April 6th & 7th, 1:00-5:00pm (timed entry every 15 minutes - register here)
April 10-12th, 1:30-4:00pm
Schedule of Events:
April 6th, 1:30pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley (doors open at 1pm - registration required)
April 6th, 4:00pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite - registration required
April 7th, 3:00pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor's center. Register for the zoom talk here.
April 10th, 6:30pm: Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work & practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.
Returning Home is the first small scale contemporary Native photography exhibition to take place in the Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College. The exhibition addresses long standing Indigenous child removal policies and practices of Canada and the United States, whose governments strategically implemented the kidnapping of Native children to be sent to Indian boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries to sever familial ties and dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and lifeways. By introducing the history of the United States’ settler colonial past and ongoing present alongside the works of four contemporary Native photographers—Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke(Crow))—and poet Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee), this exhibition provides narratives of resistance, resilience, dissent, subversion, memorialization, and what Anishinabe writer Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,” that disrupt historic and contemporary notions that Native peoples are helpless victims who are unfit to raise their own children – often infantilized by a paternalistic US government through colonial welfare practices. This exhibition is an intervention in a house museum whose history is intertwined with the forced removal of the Mohican peoples in early colonial New York.
About Cara Romero: "An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, I am a visual storyteller, activist, and mother. Born to interracial parents in LA, I grew up between the reservation and big city sprawl. I am known for dramatic fine art photography that examines Indigenous life in contemporary contexts. As an undergraduate at the University of Houston, I pursued a degree in cultural anthropology and was disillusioned by how Native Americans are portrayed in academia and media. After realizing that photographs could do more than anthropology did in words, I shifted my medium. With training in film, digital, photojournalism, editorial portraiture, and commercial and fine art photography, my work is shaped by 25 years of formal study and artistic practice. Blurring the lines between fine art and activism, I tell stories of cultural memory, collective histories, and autobiography. My work commonly explores themes of environmental racism, power and belonging of Native womxn, Native sub-pop, and mythos.
As my work continues to grow and evolve, my imagery–which ranges from pointed satire to the supernatural in everyday life — conveys the complex realities of contemporary Native peoples. Now entering my mid-career, my work has been acquired by major institutions including The Met, The MoMA, The Amon Carter, as well as the Forge Project Collection. Over the past 3 years, I have been commissioned to create monumental-scale public art including the 2019 Desert X Biennial and NDN Collective’s #TONGVALAND billboard series in Los Angeles. Since 2017, I have mentored four emerging Native American women photographers in my studio. Mother of three children, I travel between Santa Fe and the Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation, where I inherited my childhood home and maintain close ties to my tribal community and ancestral homelands through art and activism."
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Saturday, April 6, 2024 – Sunday, April 7, 2024
Montgomery Place Estate 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Register for Timed Entry
Returning Home is the first small scale contemporary Native photography exhibition to take place in the Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College. The exhibition addresses long standing Indigenous child removal policies and practices of Canada and the United States, whose governments strategically implemented the kidnapping of Native children to be sent to Indian boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries to sever familial ties and dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and lifeways. By introducing the history of the United States’ settler colonial past and ongoing present alongside the works of four contemporary Native photographers—Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke(Crow))—and poet Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee), this exhibition provides narratives of resistance, resilience, dissent, subversion, memorialization, and what Anishinabe writer Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,” that disrupt historic and contemporary notions that Native peoples are helpless victims who are unfit to raise their own children – often infantilized by a paternalistic US government through colonial welfare practices. This exhibition is an intervention in a house museum whose history is intertwined with the forced removal of the Mohican peoples in early colonial New York.
Returning Home aims to highlight Indigenous representation, narrative, survivance, futurism, and resilience through contemporary Native art. The show will include pieces from the Forge Project's collection, as well as a written commission from Institute of American Indian Arts MFA Candidate Bonney Hartley. An accompanying publication will provide in-depth contextualization of land dispossession in the US, forced removal of Native peoples in New York State, and the impact of Indian boarding schools.
All events require separate registration. Exhibition viewing is not included in event registration.
Exhibition Viewing Hours:
April 6th, 2:00-3:30pm (timed entry every 15 mins - register here)
April 7th, 1:00-5:00pm (timed entry every 15 mins - register here)
April 10-12th, 1:30-4:00pm (timed entry every 15 mins - register here)
Schedule of Events:
April 6th, 1:30pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley (reservation required, doors open at 1:00pm)
April 6th, 4:00pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite - registration required
April 7th, 3:00pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor's center. Register for the webinar here.
April 10th, 6:30pm: Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work & practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.
Sponsored by Hudson Valley Greenway and the Mellon Foundation, as a part of Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck.
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Saturday, April 6, 2024
Part of “Returning Home: A Contemporary Native Photography Exhibition”
Montgomery Place Estate 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Bonney Hartley is a ’25 MFA-Creative Writing candidate at Institute of American Indian Arts and holds an MSocSci in International Relations from University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is an enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and serves as a Tribal repatriation specialist. She is a founding member of Mohican Writers Circle and has forthcoming work in the Boundless exhibit catalogue (Smith College Mead Museum), The Last Milkweed (Tupelo Press), and North Berkshire Landscapes: A Celebration (Tupelo Press &Williamstown Rural Lands). Bonney lives within Mohican homelands in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Artist’s Statement:
My piece is offered to foreground and activate Returning Home with an archaeological reflection through layers of home, the land, inhabitation, removal, memory, and continuance.
All events require separate registration. Exhibition viewing is not included in event registration.
Exhibition Viewing Hours:
April 6th & 7th, 1:00-5:00pm (timed entry every 15 minutes - register here)
April 10-12th, 1:30-4:00pm
Schedule of Events:
April 6th, 1:30pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley (reservation required, doors open at 1:00pm)
April 6th, 4:00pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite
April 7th, 3:00pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor's center. Register for the webinar here.
April 10th, 6:30pm: Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work & practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.
Returning Home is the first small scale contemporary Native photography exhibition to take place in the Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College. The exhibition addresses long standing Indigenous child removal policies and practices of Canada and the United States, whose governments strategically implemented the kidnapping of Native children to be sent to Indian boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries to sever familial ties and dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and lifeways. By introducing the history of the United States’ settler colonial past and ongoing present alongside the works of four contemporary Native photographers—Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke(Crow))—and poet Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee), this exhibition provides narratives of resistance, resilience, dissent, subversion, memorialization, and what Anishinabe writer Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,” that disrupt historic and contemporary notions that Native peoples are helpless victims who are unfit to raise their own children – often infantilized by a paternalistic US government through colonial welfare practices. This exhibition is an intervention in a house museum whose history is intertwined with the forced removal of the Mohican peoples in early colonial New York.
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Thursday, March 14, 2024
Campus Center, Weis Cinema 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Kalen Goodluck ’16 is a Diné, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Tsimshian journalist and photographer based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, whose work focuses on Indigenous Affairs, near and far. Goodluck is a graduate of the Bard College Human Rights Program, class of 2016. kalengoodluck.com
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Friday, February 23, 2024
A Gonzaga Webinar with Dr. Christian Ayne Crouch, Dr. Beth Piatote, Julie Burelle, and Amy Pistone, moderated by Dr. Laurie Arnold
Gonzaga University The second program inspired by author and playwright Beth Piatote’s play Antíkoni considers how Native American story can inform social justice learning that equips students and institutions to move beyond land acknowledgments. Panelists will share their experiences with the study of multiple canons and how those narratives vitalize classrooms and the humanities as a whole.
Panelists: Dr. Beth Piatote (Nez Perce enrolled Colville) is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Arts Research Center at the University of California Berkeley. Dr. Julie Burelle is Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre + Dance at University of California San Diego. Dr. Christian Crouch is Dean of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of History and American and Indigenous Studies at Bard College. Dr. Amy Pistone is Assistant Professor of Classical Civilizations at Gonzaga University.
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Thursday, January 18, 2024
With the Center for Indigenous Studies
Campus Center 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Join us for an evening of warm soups inspired by Native chefs and local ingredients along with a screening of Gather, a film on the modern Indigenous food sovereignty movement. Vegan and gluten free option available.
January 18
Dinner: 5:30 pm in MPR, Campus Center
Screening of Gather: 6:30 pm in Weis Cinema, Campus Center
Gather is an intimate portrait of the growing movement amongst Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political and cultural identities through food sovereignty, while battling the trauma of centuries of genocide.
Gather follows Nephi Craig, a chef from the White Mountain Apache Nation (Arizona), opening an indigenous café as a nutritional recovery clinic; Elsie Dubray, a young scientist from the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation (South Dakota), conducting landmark studies on bison; and the Ancestral Guard, a group of environmental activists from the Yurok Nation (Northern California), trying to save the Klamath river.