Jeremy Carnes: Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Central Florida
Laura M. Furlan: Associate Professor of English, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Becca Gercken: Morse Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor of English and American Indian Studies, University of Minnesota Morris
Darren Edward Lone Fight: enrolled member, Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota; Citizen, Mvskoke Creek; Founding Director, Center for the Futures of Native Peoples and Assistant Professor of American Studies, Dickinson College

Archives are valued as holding myriad stories through the primary and artifactual sources that can reproduce or disrupt dominant narratives. Archival Studies demands that we consider issues of access and absence—considerations that are especially important in an Indigenous Studies context. How do Indigenous peoples appear in the archives? Whose stories are included and how? Why are Indigenous knowledge-keeping systems—the archives of oral histories, ledger narratives, and others—so often met with skepticism? 

Panelists will approach these questions, and others, while discussing projects focused on the archives around boarding schools in the United States, archival reclamation and reading strategies in contemporary Indigenous art, the shifting meaning of archival texts over a lengthy Plains ledger art research project, and seemingly non-literary texts. Ample time for conversation and Q&A will follow.

Presented by the Institute for Advanced Study and the Mellon Environmental Stewardship, Place, and Community Initiative.