Upcoming Events

In the Round: Roundtable of Native and Indigenous Scholars at NYU

Friday, October 2, 5-8PM
Roundtable: 5-6:30PM
Welcome Reception: 6:30-8 PM
Location: Kimmel Center Rm 804/805

Presences: Representations of/by Native Americans and Indigenous Peoples

Thursday, November 19, 2-4PM
Location: Kimmel Center, Rm 405

This roundtable panel looks at the documentation and representation of Native American and Indigenous memory, heritage, culture, and history by both Native and Indigenous peoples and others. Participants, including both practitioners and scholars, draw from a wide range of mediums including sound, visual art, and film.

Developing Development: Native American and Indigenous Peoples and Questions of Progress

Thursday, February 18, 6-8PM.
Location: Kimmel Center, Rm 905.

This roundtable considers development both in terms of how Native and Indigenous peoples have worked for their own development and indicators of growth appropriate to their own experiences as well as how outside social and economic development has impacted Native and Indigenous populations and land.

Talk About Voices: Native and Indigenous Sociolinguistics and Language

Thursday, April 1, 6-8PM.
Location: Kimmel Center, Rm 405.

The preservation of Native American language, according to a recent informal survey, is rated by 70% of NYC Native Americans as their greatest concern. This roundtable looks at how Native and Indigenous language rights and practices affect cultural norms and context, identity, community, memory, and social status.

If you are interested  in participating at any of these roundtables, either as a presenter or moderator, please contact max.liboiron@nyu.edu.

Planned Activities

Course-sharing Consortium with Columbia University

Because neither of our institutions currently offers a sufficient palette of courses in Native American and Indigenous Studies, a Consortium will be developed which will allow students at both schools to take selected courses at the other school while paying tuition at their home institution. This process will require oversight by a joint NYU-Columbia committee and anyone interested in participating in that process should contact Jim Matthews (nativepeoplesforum@nyu.edu).

Urban Indians

Most Native American programs in universities have strong and sometimes formal engagements with nearby Native American communities. Because there are as many as 95,000 self described Native American and Indigenous people in New York City, more than any other US city, NPF at NYU has a unique opportunity to focus on “Urban Indians”. To open this dialog, we will collaborate with local Native American organizations such as the Northeastern Two Spirit Society (Harlan Pruden, Director), among others. We will soon begin discussion on the direction of this initiative and anyone interested in participating is encouraged to contact Jim Matthews (nativepeoplesforum@nyu.edu).

Student Outreach

Richard Chavolla, Director of the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs, will take the lead on expanding our efforts to build a community for Native American and Indigenous students at NYU. This effort may include outreach to local k-12 students, a summer institute for prospective students, and a possible collaboration with a new member of our Faculty Research Network, the United Tribes Technical College, of Bismarck, North Dakota. Sharon Pacheco of NYU Admissions and Debra Szybinski of the Faculty Resource Network will also be involved.

Recent Events

An Advance Screening of the PBS film "After the Mayflower"

followed by a
Panel Discussion: Testing Relationships in Early New England

Tuesday, April 7, 2009, 6:00 PM
New York Institute for the Humanities
20 Cooper Square (Bowery and 5th St)
5th Floor

After the Mayflower
Directed by Chris Eyre
Episode #1 of a 5-part weekly series, “We Shall Remain” to be aired on PBS, The American Experience in April and May, 2009.

This episode chronicles the early relations and negotiations between the native tribes of "New England" and the European settlers. The Wampanoag and their leader Massasoit welcomed the Pilgrims and assured their survival through the first winter. But the “Thanksgiving Dinner” was the beginning of a story that became a sad and sinister saga of cruelty and power.

Panel Discussion:
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Silver Professor of History, NYU, Chair
Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel, Tribal Historian and Medicine Woman, the Mohegan Tribe
Walter Woodward, Connecticut State Historian and Assistant, Professor of History, University of Connecticut

Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel is the Medicine Woman and Tribal Historian for the Mohegan Tribe. Her great-aunt, Medicine Woman Dr. Gladys Tantaquidgeon, trained her in Tribal oral tradition, traditional lifeways and spiritual beliefs. After receiving a B.S.F.S. in history/diplomacy from Georgetown University and an M.A. in history from the University of Connecticut, she traveled throughout New England as a storyteller for the Tribe. In 1992, she won the first annual Non-Fiction Award of the Native Writer’s Circle of the Americas, for her manuscript The Lasting of the Mohegans (Mohegan: Little People Publications, 1995). Shortly after that, Zobel became the first American Indian appointed by Governor Lowell Weicker to the Connecticut Historical Commission. In 1996, she received the first annual Chief Little Hatchet Award, granted for contributions to the success and survival of the Mohegan people. Zobel has written several books, including Medicine Trail: The Life and Lessons of Gladys Tantaquidgeon (University of Arizona Press, 2000) and a traditional Mohegan children’s story co-authored with Joseph Bruchac, entitled Makiawisug: The Gift of the Little People (Mohegan: Little People Publications, 1997). Zobel’s most recent book is Oracles: A Novel, a futuristic novel in which the fictional Yantuck Indians must find a way to preserve the natural environment that survives on their reservation.

Walter W. Woodward is the State Historian of Connecticut and Assistant Professor of History at the University of Connecticut. He is a scholar of the early colonial period in American history, and has written on the complex interactions of Europeans and indigenous peoples in New England in the decades following the arrival of the Mayflower. Woodward has also appeared in a number of documentaries related to this subject, including appearing in and narrating the History Channel’s documentary “Massacre at Mystic,” an account of the 1637 Pequot War. His forthcoming book is Prospero’s America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy, & the Creation of New England Culture to be published by the University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American Culture.

Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Silver Professor of History at NYU, is a historian of the early modern Atlantic with a particular interest in encounters and understandings of American Indians and Europeans. She is the author, most recently, of The Jamestown Project (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007) and Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca, 2000), which won the American Historical Association's Prize in Atlantic History.

Free and Open to the Public

Indian, Not Indian: Native Identity in the 21st Century

Saturday, February 7, 2009, 1:00 pm-5:15 pm
Diker Pavilion
The National Museum of the American Indian
1 Bowling Green, New York City

Sponsored by: The Native Peoples Forum, NYU, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and the Public Theater.

Keynote Address: David Treuer (Ojibwa), Author, Prof. University of Minnesota.

Moderators: Silver Prof. Karen Kupperman, History, and Asst. Prof Noelle Stout (Cherokee), Anthropology

Particpants: Cara Cowan Watts (Cherokee), Cherokee Tribal Council of Oklahoma
Randy Reinholz (Choctaw), San Diego State University and the Autry Museum
Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band Choctaw/Cherokee), Artist
Charlene Teters  (Spokane), Activist, Prof., Institute of American Indian Arts

Dramatic Monolog from "Tales of an Urban Indian", Darrell Dennis (Shuswap Nation), Actor, Author

Directions: Across from Battery Park.
Subway: 4/5 to Bowling Green, R/W to Whitehall St., 2/3 to Wall St.

From left to right, the participants are  Jeffrey Gibson (Choctaw/Cherokee), Artist; Darrell Dennis (Shuswap), author/actor, Prof. of History; Karen Kupperman, NYU Prof.;  Charlene Teters (Spokane), Insitute of American Indian Arts; Cara Cowan Watts (Cherokee), Cherokee Tribal Council, Oklahoma; Prof. David Treuer (Ojibwa), U. Minn.; Asst. Prof. Noelle Stout (Cherokee), NYU; Prof. Randy Reinholz(Choctaw), Sad Diego U. and the Autry Museum

>www.Americanindian.si.edu  >Event Flyer

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Native American Language in Crisis: A Panel Discussion.

3:00 pm Saturday, December 6, 2008, Room 803, Kimmel Hall, 60 Washington Square South, NYC, NY 10012.
Silver Professor Mary Louise Pratt will moderate a panel discussion of this issue which, according to a recent informal survey, is rated by 70% of NYC Native Americans as their greatest concern. Other panelists include:

Carrie Garcia (Desert Cahuilla/Luiseno, Cahuilla language instructor) California Indian Basket weavers Association, Board Secretary Saboba Cultural Resources Assistant Director

Paul Miranda (Cupeno/Desert Cahuilla Cupeno language speaker) Cultural Preservationists/Activist

Miki Makihara Asst. Prof. of Anthropology, CUNY. Linguistic Anthropology, Ethnography, political economy, and ideology of language. Rapa Nui cultural and linguistic heritage.

Mary Louise Pratt Silver Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis. Latin American literature and linguistics, cultural theory, global processes affecting language diversity.

Wes Studi (Cherokee). Actor (Geronimo, Dances with Wolves) and Spokesperson for the Indigenous Language Institute (Santa Fe). Open to the public.

The American Indian Renaissance. A presentation by Prof. Alan Velie, David Bioyd Ross Professor of English, University of Oklahoma.

Thursday, September 8, 2008. Visiting Scholar of Native American Literature. Sponsored by The NYU Departments of English and the NPF.

An Evening with Chis Eyre: A screening of his Smithsonian: National Museum of the American Indian commissioned film "A Thousand Roads"

Monday, October 6, 2008. A discussion session followed with the director, Chris Eyre, Tisch Film School alumnus and "the preeminent Native American Filmmaker of his time". 

In the Land of the Headhunters.

Friday, November 14, 2008, Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival, American Museum of Natural history. The festival was launched with a screening of a restored version of the 1914 Edmund S. Curtis ethnographic melodrama about the Kwakw_a_k_a_'wakw who populate Alert Bay, British Columbia. The original score was performed by a Native orchestra  and representatives of the nation and the restoration group spoke after the screening. The event was sponsored in part by the Native Peoples Forum.

Opportunities

Internships at the National Museum of the American Indian.

Our Museum Studies program has begun discussion with the NMAI to promote internship and other experiences at the museum for students in the Museum Studies Master’s program and in other programs. Professors Bruce Altshuler and Jennifer Stamp of the Museum Studies program are working with Dr. Johanna Gorelick, Director of the the Department of Education at the museum are heading this project. Comments are welcome and if you would like to participate in the any of the above activities please e-mail Jim Matthews.