In the summer of 1804, a delegation of Osage men and boys traveled to Washington, DC to meet with President Thomas Jefferson, a meeting that turned out to be an important step toward the Osages signing their first treaty with the United States and dispossession from their vast homelands in what is now Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. After that meeting, Jefferson remarked in a letter that that the Osages were “the finest men we have ever seen.” Starting from this seemingly flattering remark, I seek in my paper to consider new ways of interpreting Jefferson’s remark and the broader history of dispossession and US expansionism that it is part of. Of particular interest is the connection between Jefferson’s meeting with the Osages and his hosting just a few weeks earlier of Alexander von Humboldt, the German naturalist, who made his only visit to the US in 1804 on his way home to Europe from South America.  

Indigenous knowledge and biodiversity is regarded as a vast untapped market waiting to be exploited by both private and government researchers.  The presenter will discuss the fundamental conflicts between Indigenous worldviews and rights, and the globalizing forces that seek to force nature and Indigenous knowledge systems into the global market.

The Minneapolis Climate Action and Racial Equity Fund, a partnership between the City of Minneapolis, The Minneapolis Foundation and the McKnight Foundation, was created to connect corporate and philanthropic giving with place-based, community-driven initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within Minneapolis. Leaders from these funding partners discuss the first round of grants awarded in the summer of 2019, as well as their work with communities for future grant cycles and their dreams for the program.

Aimee Witteman leads the McKnight Foundation’s Midwest Climate and Energy program, which focuses on clean energy promotion and development in the Midwest. Paul Odegaard will participate in the discussion on behalf of the Minneapolis Foundation.

The mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II is not only a tale of injustice; it is a moving story of faith. In this pathbreaking account, Duncan Ryūken Williams reveals how, even as they were stripped of their homes and imprisoned in camps, Japanese American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in our nation’s history, insisting that they could be both Buddhist and American. This event is organized by the IAS Research and Creative Collaborative Group called Historical Injustices. Co-sponsors are the Immigration History Research Center, the Religious Studies Program, the Asian American Studies Program, and the Department of History.

Join a conversation about environmental policy with two regional leaders who have organized political and grassroots justice efforts. Halston Sleets served as the Senior Policy Aide for Environmental Justice and Sustainability to Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, and is now the Associate Manager of Sustainable Tech Products at Best Buy. 

Jessica Hellmann leads a discussion on the evolution and current directions of Environmental Sciences and Ecology programs in public higher education. Hellmann is the director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment and the Ecolab Chair in Environmental Leadership. She and her colleagues work to help build a future where people and planet prosper.

In Book 16 of the City of God Augustine of Hippo discusses human bodies described by what he calls "too curious histories" as monstrous; such bodies, he tells us, are also depicted in mosaics on the grand esplanade in Carthage. Augustine here refers to Pliny the Elder's Natural History, where Pliny talks about pygmies, persons with feet so big that they can be used as sun shades, or persons who have only one eye in the center of their foreheads. Augustine additionally sprinkles mentions of extraordinary bodies throughout the City of God, not as described in histories but as present phenomena. Why is Augustine so interested in these bodies and why does he discuss them in greater detail in Book 16? What might that tell us about Augustine’s concepts of histories and the role of extraordinary bodies?