The University Lecture Committee presents Adrienne Keene on Tuesday, November 15 at 6:30 p.m. in the Iowa Theater in the Iowa Memorial Union. Support is provided by the Latino Native American Cultural Center, the Native American and Indigenous Studies program, and the College of Law.

Jacki Rand (Emerita) and Phillip Round worked on the team that produced Indigenous Mississippi http://indigenousmississippi.com/ Indigenous Mississippi is a digital archive of the work created by an interdisciplinary, multi-university, multi-year research project on Indigenous art and activism about the Mississippi River. Over the course of several years, professors, grad students, artists, and activists collaborated to tell stories that follow the flow of the Mississippi River in order to study how Indigenous peoples confront life and make art in the midst of changing climates.

Join us March 22, 2022 for a presentation by Meskwaki Language Preservation Director Wayne Pushetonequa.

We are planning to tie in our 50th Anniversary Celebration with our 15th Annual Latinx In Action Celebration Week (newly named, LNACC in Action Week) which will take place the week of March 27 - April 2. The day of 50th Anniversary Celebration will be Friday April 1, 2022. The Native American Student Association (NASA) is planning for the 26th Annual Powwow to take place on Saturday, April 2, 2022. It'd be a great opportunity for alumni to stay in town, support this long-lasting tradition, and be in space.

In the middle of the sixteenth century, Indigenous communities in Mexico built 251 missions (conventos) at a moment when drought and disease devastated Native populations by 80%. The conventos are among the largest buildings ever constructed in colonial Latin America. They were once considered to be manifestations of the ‘spiritual conquest’ – the forcible conversion of Indigenous peoples by Spanish missionaries. Scholars using Indigenous sources have recently revealed that Native artists, patrons, and labor regimes were critical to the development of monumental Christian art and architecture in Mexico.

Join Carrie Schuettpelz as she discusses her new book project on November 16, 2021 - 12:00pm CST. The presentation is part of a larger series hosted by the Public Policy Center.

The Department of Anthropology, along with the School of Art & Art History and Native American & Indigenous Studies Program, are pleased to announce that as part of Native American Heritage Month, we are hosting a webinar presentation by Chicago-based Indigenous futurist, artist and architect Santiago X on Tuesday, November 2 at 6:30 PM.

Laura Graham (anthropology) will present an overview of her decades-long collaboration with Indigenous media among Lowland South American Native Peoples, focusing on work among A’uwẽ (Xavante) of central Brazil. A’uwẽ media is situated within the context of national representational projects and understood to be part of Indigenous efforts to achieve what Graham calls “representational sovereignty.” The talk highlights the impact of media work on the lives and subjectivities of specific individuals, not all of whom are A’uwẽ, and illustrates the importance of ethnographic approaches to media and media texts.

As an academic institution, it is our responsibility to acknowledge the sovereignty and the traditional territories of these tribal nations, the treaties that were used to remove these tribal nations, and the histories of dispossession that have allowed for the growth of this institution since 1847. Consistent with the University's commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, understanding the historical and current experiences of Native peoples will help inform the work we do; collectively as a university to engage in building relationships through academic scholarship, collaborative partnerships, community service, enrollment and retention efforts acknowledging our past, our present and future Native Nations.

The University of Illinois announced that it has hired Dr. Jacki Thompson Rand as the inaugural Associate Vice Chancellor for Native Affairs and Senior Adviser to the Chancellor on Native Affairs Issues. Dr. Rand is an historian and member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, with decades of experience in academia and at the Smithsonian Institute.