Fwd: Visions of Alaska Native Citizenship April 25 @ 3:30
Darren Modzelewski
Hi all,
Please forward this email to your department or unit list or anyone who might be interested. This colloquium is free and open to the public. We apologize for any cross-postings. Thank you.
Native American Studies and the Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues
present a panel discussion on
Visions of Alaska Native Citizenship in the Twentieth Century
Thursday, April 25, 3:30-5pm
Wildavsky Room,
Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
2538 Channing Way,
Berkeley, CA
Jessica Bissett Perea (Dena’ina)
UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Music, UC Berkeley
Thomas Michael Swensen (Koniag, Inc., Lesnoi, Inc., Tangirnaq Native Village)
Assistant Professor of Native Arts and Culture, Arizona State University
with Shari M. Huhndorf (Yup’ik) as respondent
Professor of Native American Studies, UC Berkeley
Light refreshments will be served
Synopsis:
This panel explores articulations of Alaska Native Indigeneity and citizenship in relation to two major twentieth century events: the formalization of Alaska as a state in 1959; and the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971. In the years leading up to and following these events, Alaska Native people faced a unique situation given the relative absence of reservations or treaties, which necessitated creative responses to encroaching settler colonialism on their homelands and proximal waters.
In “The Politics of ‘Sound Quantum’ in Contemporary Afro-Inuit Musical Practice,” Perea addresses how the lived experiences and musical expressions of individuals of mixed Inuit and African American descent make audible the intersections between and politics of Blackness and Indigeneity in a post-ANCSA era. She focuses on “tribal funk” innovators Stephen and Phillip Blanchett and the “Eskimo Flow” of DJs HeTook and RiverFlowz (twin brothers Julien and Torin Jacobs), paying particular attention to the ways in which their distinctive styles challenge racialized expectations of Native American and African American performance practices. Their work provides a crucial intervention to what Perea refers to as “sound quantum” ideology, which parallels the colonial and oppositional logics of who “counts” as a Native American or African American person endemic to “blood quantum” and “one drop” ideologies. By listening critically to “Red” and “Black” musical entanglements, this work demonstrates both the multiplicity of Alaska Native musical life and the fluidity of contemporary Inuit identity formation.
“Race and Indigeneity in the Alaska Territory,” by Thomas Michael Swensen, considers US racial culture in relation to Native sovereignty within the Alaska territory from 1941 to 1955. Beginning in the early 1940s a collective of Native activists worked to pass the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945 through the territorial legislature with the hopes of ending segregation in Alaska. While this law may have assisted in recognizing equal rights of the region’s Indigenous people as national citizens, it did little to protect Native land tenure and ownership. For concurrently another movement was afoot to assert land rights that culminated with Tee-Hit-Ton v. United States in 1955. The Supreme Court’s decision denied US law as a venue for Alaska Native land disputes because Congress had yet to recognize Alaska Native communities as being in possession of aboriginal title. The failure to recognize and protect Indigenous rights embodies a form of prejudice beyond the scope of the Anti-Discrimination Act, allowing us a to moment to decouple racial culture and indigeneity in the Alaska territory.
Speaker Bios:
Jessica Bissett Perea is currently working on a book project about Circumpolar Inuit music, performance art cultures, and the politics of self-determination. Drawing upon ethnographic and archival research, Indigenous methodologies, and critical race theory, her research contextualizes the lived experiences and movements of a diverse cadre of Inuit performance artists in order to examine processes and problems of colonial and racial difference as amplified by the usage of “non-traditional” performance practices over time. Jessica is from the Matanuska-Susitna Valley (just north of Anchorage) and is an enrolled member of the Knik Tribe and a descendant shareholder in Cook Inlet Region, Inc. (an ANCSA Corporation). Her innovative dissertation research and dedication to community outreach were recognized with a 2010 Alaska Native Visionary Award, presented by the Alaska Native Heritage Month committee and board of directors. She completed her Ph.D. in Musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles in June 2011 and is currently in residence at Berkeley’s Department of Music as a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow.
Thomas Michael Swensen is a 2011 graduate of University of California, Berkeley’s Ethnic Studies PhD program and was awarded the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in American Indian studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2011-2012. In 2012 he was elected to the board of directors of Koniag Education Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization funding the education and future of Alutiiq people, their communities, and economy. From Kodiak, he is an original enrollee of Leisnoi, Inc and Koniag, Inc. (Native corporations created by the claims settlement of 1971) as well as a member of the Woody Island Tribe, or Tangirnaq Native Village (an IRA based tribal government), which have all generously helped him achieve his educational goals. While still in graduate school the Western Historical Association awarded him the 2010 Autry Prize in Public History. Currently, he works as the Professor of Native Arts and Culture in the Herberger Institute at Arizona State University.
Shari M. Huhndorf’s research and teaching focus on contemporary literary and visual culture, interdisciplinary Native American studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and American studies. She is the author of two books, Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination (Cornell University Press, 2001) and Mapping the Americas: The Transnational Politics of Contemporary Native Culture (Cornell University Press, 2009), and a co-editor of Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture (University of British Columbia Press, 2010), winner of the Canadian Women's Studies Association prize for Outstanding Scholarship. Another co-edited work, Sovereignty, Indigeneity, and the Law (Duke University Press, 2011), a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, won the Council of Editors of Learned Journals award for best special issue of a journal as well as the award for outstanding indigenous scholarship from the American Indian and Alaska Native Professors Association for 2011. Currently, she is working on a manuscript tentatively entitled “Indigeneity and the Politics of Space: Gender, Geography, Culture.” Huhndorf also served for a decade as a member of the board of the directors of the CIRI Foundation, which provides educational funding and supports cultural programs for Alaska Natives in her home community. She is currently Professor of Native American Studies and Comparative Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley.
This event is free, wheelchair accessible, and open to the public. For wheelchair access please call 642-0813 one day prior to the event. Light refreshments will be served.
For more information, call the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues at 510-642-0813 or email iss...@gmail.com.
This event is co-sponsored by the Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues. Please forward this email to your department or unit list or anyone who might be interested. We apologize for any cross-postings. Thank you.
Decolonizing Knowledge
Join DataCenter for a critical dialogue on community-driven research as a path towards self-determination and justice, particularly in indigenous communities and communities of color. Decolonizing Knowledge will recognize two signature moments in the struggle towards Indigenous and Research Justice -- the 2nd edition release of Linda Smith's seminal work, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, and DataCenter's 35th anniversary.
Who: Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Pro-Vice Chancellor Maori at University of Waikato
Michelle Fine, Professor at CUNY and Public Science Project
with Andrew Jolivette, Associate Professor and Chair American Indian Studies, San Francisco State University, as moderator
When: 6pm – 8:30pm, Friday, April 26th, 2013,
Ticket Price: $15
Where: First Congregational Church in Oakland, 2501 Harrison St Oakland, CA 94612
Sponsored by Public Science Project, URBAN at MIT, the Action Research Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and DataCenter. Co-sponsored by the Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues
Read more about the event and register here.
Darren Modzelewski, Ph.D
Fellow, Center for Urban Ethnography
Darren Modzelewski
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