American Indian Studies

John Wright | Campus Protests, Representation, and Educational Reform

The civil rights struggles of the 1960s led to calls for establishment Afro-American and American Indian studies programs at the University of Minnesota. In 1969 the activism of African American and American Indian students and supporters led to the founding of Departments of Afro-American Studies (now African American & African Studies) and American Indian Studies (the first in the nation). The new intercollegiate Higher Education Consortium on Urban Affairs, or HECUA, soon followed.

States of Incarceration: Historicizing the Incarceration of Native People in the Upper Midwest

The States of Incarceration project of the Humanities Action Lab challenges students, scholars, and organizers all over the country to explore local histories of mass incarceration in the interest of collectively understanding ho wthe United States became the world's leading incarcerator. The project uses place-based public and digital humanities, history, memory, and storytelling to help shape the current national dialogue on criminal justice.

Jodi Byrd | Not Yet: Indigeneity, Antiblackness, and Anticolonial Liberation

In the song “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)” from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton Mixtape, the settlement of the Americas is framed through liberal understandings of arrival that transform chattel slavery and forced labor into the exceptional narratives of pulling oneself up from hard labor to freedom. It reflects current political mobilizations against xenophobia and immigration bans that insist that we are all immigrants to the Americas. And it erases completely the ongoing colonization of Indigenous peoples and lands.

A Sense of Where You Are: Water, Place, and Community

The University of Minnesota (Twin Cities campus) is located in Dakota homeland, on one of the great rivers of the world, in a national park. Our responsibilities to this location call us to think about heritage and water in a manner that is fully inclusive. Three community-engaged anthropologists will bring their perspectives to this discussion. Joe Watkins, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, directed the Native American Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma (2007-13) and consults internationally with Indigenous communities on heritage issues.