Indigenous Studies Engages Ethnic Studies

Due to the success of last year's Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World Conference, the UCSD Ethnic Studies Department will organize a symposium on May 8th, 2009 titled Indigenous Studies Engages Ethnic Studies. The intent of the symposium is to further the dialogue between scholars and students of these two disciplines, in the hopes of pushing Ethnic Studies to take seriously the place of indigenous people in modern racial politics and also indigenous theories of knowledge and social change. The link for the symposium website is below as well as the mission statement for the symposium:

Indigenous Studies Engages Ethnic Studies

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Mission

As scholars in the Ethnic Studies Department at UCSD, we stand incredibly proud of the cutting edge critical race and ethnic studies work developed in our department, and in its potential to push the limits of the larger Ethnic Studies project. In this spirit, we find that in order for Ethnic Studies to move beyond the usual emphasis on immigration, diaspora and slavery paradigms, the critical potential of Indigenous Studies should become an integral part of our intellectual agenda. Just as the scholarship ‘about’ people of color does not describe our notion and practice of Ethnic Studies, scholarship ‘about’ indigenous people must reflect more than merely the violent history of the academy within indigenous communities. It must, in fact, engage the sophisticated indigenous theories, which have been circulating for many years, especially those that confront the ways in which colonial power still operates in nation-states. In the last few years, a number of graduate students and faculty have taken important steps towards facilitating this integration. These include the creation of the “Voicing Indigeneity” podcast, the Post-colonial Futures in a Not-Yet Post-colonial World Conference, and the proposal for an indigenous studies focused cluster hire.

Building on these efforts, we are organizing a one-day critical indigenous studies symposium to be held on May 8, 2009. The symposium focuses on native feminism scholarship because we believe it offers a critical perspective missing in both indigenous studies and in most analysis of race, gender, sexuality, colonialism and citizenship. We have invited Andrea Smith, Audra Simpson and Noenoe Silva, scholars who are at the forefront of this field of thought. Additionally, we have invited 3-4 senior graduate students who are not only moving the field in new directions, but more excitingly are doing so by employing theories emerging from our Ethnic Studies department, thereby highlighting the critical possibilities that lie at the interstices of these fields. Furthermore, this symposium anticipates our desire to improve the recruitment of indigenous graduate students, post-docs and faculty.

We hope the department will actively participate in this symposium in order to push the limits of our scholarship and political commitments, whether they directly fall within what is traditionally seen as the indigenous field or not. Ultimately, this symposium is an invitation to engage in a productive troubling of the ethnic studies project as well as to expand our understanding of what indigenous studies can be.

Conference Photos

Conference Audio #4

"The Audacity of Hope: Contemplating the Futures of Stateless and Refugee Peoples" was the closing plenary for the was the opening plenary for the conference, "Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies," which took place March 5-7, 2008 at the Ethnic Studies Department at University of California, San Diego. This panel hoped to highlight the political âin-between-nessâ shared by indigenous, stateless and refugee peoples. While the panel was interested in considering the productivity of âstatelessnessâ as a category for resistance and transformation, we would also like to discuss the different historic-political conditions that confront indigenous populations in settler and postcolonial societies, refugee populations formed through violent displacements and other global formations of statelessness. The panel took place on March 7, 2008 and consisted of Renya Ramirez (UCSC), Chandan Reddy (UW) and Jesse Mills (USD).

Click here for audio

Conference Audio #3

"Beyond the Fourth World Wall: The Global Practicing of Indigeneity," was a plenary panel for the conference, "Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies," which took place March 5-7, 2008 at the Ethnic Studies Department at University of California, San Diego. This panel hoped to put into conversation different notions of indigeneity as articulated within European settler/colonial societies and within postcolonial worlds. More specifically this panel was interested in discussing indigenous movements across the globe, in order to highlight the multiple and complex ways in which indigeneity is understood, positioned and practiced globally. This panel took place March 6th 2008 and consisted of speakers Denise Da Silva (Ethnic Studies UCSD), Vince Diaz (U Michigan) and Robert Perez (UC Riverside). Robert Perez by personal request, has been edited out of the audio.

Click here to listen to the audio.

Conference Audio #2

"Intersections: A Conversation with UCSD Faculty" was a plenary panel for the conference, "Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies," which took place March 5-7, 2008 at the Ethnic Studies Department at University of California, San Diego. This panel consisted of UCSD faculty who discussed their work, their ideas or the work of their departments in the context of the conference theme. The panel discussed in relation to the conference theme, what sort of work is or isnât being done here at UCSD, and what the panel members or other faculty, grad students or departments are doing to make this campus a more receptive place for doing cutting edge ethnic, indigenous and postcolonial studies, or work which straddles these intellectual disciplines. The panel took place on March 6, 2008 and its participants were Rosemary George (Literature), Ross Frank (Ethnic Studies) and Roberto Tejada (Visual Arts).

Click here to listen to the audio.

Conference Audio #1

"Global Histories/Local Designs: Contemplating San Diego as a Glocal City," was the opening plenary for the conference, "Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies," which took place March 5-7, 2008 at the Ethnic Studies Department at University of California, San Diego. This panel was billed as "A panel of activists from different local organizations who will discuss the ways in which San Diego through issues of militarization, borders, Native American tribes fits into the theme of the conference, or how these issues position San Diego as a site where different ethnic, postcolonial and indigenous world intersect, conflict or disappear." The panelists were Andrea Guerrero, San Diego ACLU and Mshinda Nyofu, UJIMA Institute for Civic Responsibility. This panel took place at the Duetz Room in the Institute of the Americas on March 5th.

Please click here to listen to or download the audio from this panel.

Acknowledgments

The conference was a great success and I'll be posting more info and photos on it soon. In the meantime the conference committee would like to thank and acknowledge the following groups and individuals for their support and help.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to William Runk, Yolanda Escamilla, Theresa Aitchison and Jackie Griffin, for sharing their knowledge, expertise and time, and for keeping the Ethnic Studies department running!

To K. Wayne Yang, Pat Washington, Yen Le Espiritu, Susan Gordon and Lisa Sun-Hee Park, thank you for encouraging your classes to participate!

Thank you to the following individuals for their generous support:
Kim Barrett, Dean of Graduate Studies
Beckie Callahan, VP of Finance, Graduate Student Association
Wayne Cornelius, Director for the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies
Paul W. Drake, Senior Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs
Jeff Elman, Dean of the Division of Social Science
Heath Fox, Assistant Dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities
Ruth Padron, Program Coordinator for Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies
David Pellow, Director for the California Cultures in Comparative Perspective
Thea Tagle, OGS Community Intern
Gershon Shafir, Director, Institute for International, Comparative and Area Studies
Eric Van Young, Dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities

Many thanks also, for their strong interest and support, to:
Rosemary Marangoly George and Lisa Lampert, Department of Literature
Gary Fields, Department of Communication
David Gutierrez, Department of History
Roberto Tejada, Department of Visual Arts

Thank you to the following student organizations for their support:
Shae Lynn Zastrow from the Native American Student Alliance
The Ethnic Studies Collective

To Drew Hendricks and Scott Mosher of Hi-Rez Digital, and Jack Lujan Bevacqua of Pump Fake Nation – thanks for your awesome artwork!

Thank you to Angela Morrill, Madel Ngiraingas and Michael Lujan Bevacqua for sowing the seeds of this conference through their Voicing Indigeneity podcast.

To all our invited guests, presenters, and participants – thank you for making this possible!

Last but definitely not the least, thank you to the graduate students in Ethnic Studies and our fantastic faculty: Pal Ahluwalia, Roberto Alvarez, Yen Le Espiritu, K. Wayne Yang, Ana Celia Zentella. Thank you especially to Lisa Sun-Hee Park, Ross Frank, Denise Ferreira da Silva and David Pellow for their tireless support and guidance.