Event—McNickle Center

2020 and 2021 NCAIS Summer Seminar

This institute explores how Indigenous people, communities, and nations have navigated collaborations and contestations over Indigenous cultural objects, art, and performance, both historically and into the present and future. What happens when Native heritage objects, stories, forms of knowledge, and expression move through time and space, often well beyond their communities of origin? How and why have important Native items like baskets, wampum, textiles, and visual arts been “collected,” whether by community-based groups or institutions such as tribal museums, or by outsiders, including Euro-colonial museums--and with what consequences? What are the histories, presents, and futures of repatriation in Indigenous North America and beyond, especially in the wake of NAGPRA and in the midst of evolving digital practices of translation and replication? This institute grapples with how communities and scholars can engage in productive dialogues about meaning and memory, and recognize as well as transform relationships, systems of power, and other forms of interaction. Our goals are to foster a generative, knowledge-sharing space for grappling with collaboration and contestation, which will support institute participants in conceptualizing, beginning, and carrying out original research and interpretive projects. Significant institute time will be devoted to participants' own project development, and to small-group and one-on-one conversations, mentoring, and sharing of works-in-progress.

This event took place over two summers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first session, a Digital Reading Seminar was held in July 2020. The second session will be held in July 2021 in a hybrid format.

Institute Participants

Hilary Abe, University of Minnesota

Roxanne Beason, Oklahoma State University

Colton Brandau, University of California-Davis

Camille Callison, University of Manitoba

Aimée Carbaugh, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Paige Figanbaum, University of Nevada-Las Vegas

Thomas Kivi, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Mathilde Magga, University of Washington

Samantha Maza, University of Chicago

Ryuichi Nakayama, University of New Mexico

Wren Palmer, University of Michigan

Gilda Posada, Cornell University

Cordelia Rizzo, Northwestern University

Isabella Shey Robbins, Yale University

Julia Silverman, Harvard University

Christopher Thrasher, Penn State

Alexander Williams, University of Colorado-Boulder

Sawyer Young, University of Oklahoma

Additional Institute Participants from 2020

Glenys Ong Echavarri, University of Washington

Sarah Pillatzki-Warzeha, University of Minnesota