Sovereignty: A Minnesota Sesquicentennial Symposium
Friday, December 5, 2008
Three Twin Cities organizations have joined together to present MNdn 150: Beyond Statehood. Ancient Traders Gallery, Form+Content Gallery and University of Minnesota collaborate on a symposium, artists panel and two exhibitions that examine notions of statehood, sovereignty, memory and homeland from the view of Native American artists and scholars. MNdn 150: Beyond Statehood came about as the three collaborative organizations marked the Minnesota celebration of the sesqui-centennial anniversary of Minnesota’s statehood.
Additional support provided by the Space & Place Collaborative, the Department of American Indian Studies, the Department of Art, the CLA Scholarly Events Fund, the Ancient Traders Gallery and the Form+Content Gallery.
Schedule of events
Friday, December 5, Nolte 140
10:00 a.m. Rethinking the Sandy Lake Tragedy: Ethnic Cleansing in the Minnesota Territory - Brenda Child and Erik Redix
10:30 a.m. State Recognition and Termination in Nineteenth Century Southern New England - Jean O’Brien
11:00 a.m. Other Perspectives on White Supremacy in Jena, Louisiana: The Jena Band of Choctaws, State Politics and Federal Policy - Brian Klopotek
2:00 p.m. Statehood, Land Allotment, and the Fictions of Liberalism in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation - David Chang
2:30 p.m. What 50 Years of Statehood has meant for Kanaka Maoli
- Noenoe Silva
3:30 Comment by David Wilkins
4:00 p.m. Rethinking Statehood Symposium and Artist panel
Mona Smith and Joseph J. Allen with moderator Patricia Marroquin-Norby (Not recorded by request of the presenters.)
5:00-11:00 p.m. Shuttles will be provided from the Nolte Center and between galleries for the following exhibitions:
States, Dates and Place Exhibit Opening
Runs through Jan. 24, 2009 at Ancient Traders Gallery, hours are W-F, 11-6, Weekends 11-4. 1113 East Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis
Mnisota Dakota Home photography and video installation with artists Joseph J. Allen and Mona Smith
The exhibit at the Form+Content Gallery will be available from November 20 – December 27, 2008.
Symposium Participants
Joseph J. Allen, Rosebud Lakota, is a native of Eagle Butte, South Dakota, though he has lived in Minneapolis for the last 20 years. He is a freelance photographer and his photographs are in the collections of the Weisman Art Museum, the Minnesota Historical Society and the Shakopee-Mdewakanton Sioux Community archives. His work has also appeared in the books, Four Seasons of Corn: A Winnebago Tradition and Minnesota in Our Time: A Photographic Approach. He has won awards for his work, including a "best photo spread" honor by the Native American Journalists Association in 1998 and a McKnight Photography Fellowship in 1993. He is also former editor of The Circle, a Native American newspaper based in Minneapolis that was named the nations best Native American newspaper in 1993, 1997 and 1999, and he has taught at the American Indian Magnet School in St. Paul, Four Directions High School in Minneapolis and the American Indian Journalism Institute at the University of South Dakota, Vermillion.
Christine Baeumler is a professor of Art at the University of Minnesota. With her work she seeks to raise awareness about ecological issues through studio practice as well as engaging communities in environmental projects focused on ecological restoration. Her recent work has included an interactive environmental art project about climate change at the Bureau of Atmospheric Anecdata, Vogelfrei in Darmstadt, Germany (October 27, 2007 - November 11, 2007) and Naked Wonder, a gallery exhibition with Mark Dion and Eleanor McGough (November 2, 2007 - January 30, 2008).
David Chang is a professor of History at the University of Minnesota and the author of Yesterday's Future: The Twentieth Century Begins (1999) and "'Where Will the Nation be at Home?': Race, Nationalisms and Emigration Movements in the Creek Nation," in Tiya Miles and Sharon P. Holland, eds., Crossing Waters, Crossing Paths: Black and Indian Journey (2004). His current project is "The Color of the Land: Race, Nation, and the Politics of Land Tenure in Oklahoma."
Brenda Child is a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and she is the author of Away From Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences, 1879-2000 (2000) and Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940 (1998) for which she received the North American Indian Prose Award. Her recent work continues to address issues of education and multiculturalism in American Indian communities.
Sonja Kuftinec is a professor of Theatre Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota and the author of Staging America: Cornerstone and Community-Based Theater (2003). She is also a founding member of the Space & Place Collaborative and has been active part in facilitating theater groups to address community, conflict and dialogue in the Balkans, the Middle East and South Asia.
Brian Klopotek is a professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon and the author of "Dangerous Decolonizing: Indians and Blacks and the Legacy of Jim Crow," in Narrating Native Histories in the Americas, edited by Florencia Mallon (forthcoming) and "I guess your warrior look doesn't work every time: Challenging Indian Masculinity in the Cinema," in Across the Great Divide: Cultures of Manhood in the US West, edited by Matt Basso, et al. (2001). His current work includes research into education and race relations among whites, African Americans and American Indians in the Southeastern United States and editing, with Brenda Child, Indian Subjects: New Directions in the History of Indigenous Education (forthcoming).
Patricia Marroquin-Norby is a PhD candidate in the department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota.
Erik Redix is a PhD candidate in the department of History at the University of Minnesota.
Jean O’Brien is a professor of History at the University of Minnesota and the author of Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790 (1997) and "'Vanishing' Indians in Nineteenth-Century New England: Local Historians' Erasure of Still-Present Indian People" in Sergei Kan and Pauline Turner Stong, eds., New Perspectives on Native North America (2006).
Noenoe Silva is a professor of Political Science and Hawaiian Languages at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the author of Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (2004), winner of the the Baldridge prize for best book in history by a resident of Hawai'i in 2003-04.
Mona Smith, Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota, is a multi-media artist, educator and co-founder of Allies: media/art. A former University-level educator, Smith has produced work broadcast through PBS, and shown at festivals, conferences and museums in Europe and North and South America. Her work has received awards from Native and Non-Native film and video festivals; her new media work includes art projects for the web, sites for web distribution of Native focused media, and multimedia installation work, most notably, Cloudy Waters; Dakota Reflections on the River (Minnesota History Center, 2004-2005), City Indians (Ancient Traders Art Gallery, Minneapolis, 2006-2007), and the Bdote Memory Map (in partnership with the Minnesota Humanities Center). Her artistic and educational practice uses image, sound and place to re inhabit the imaginations and the experience of the audience/participant, and to work between, the place of healing, of relationship, of meaning, where spirit and physical, life and death, fear and strength, night and day intersect.
David Wilkins is a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota, the author of American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court: The Masking of Justice (1997) and, with Richard A. Grounds and George Tinker, editor of Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance (2003).