Indigenous Learning Forum

Inspired by the work of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR), the APS Library & Museum's Indigenous Learning Forum (formerly the Indigenous Studies Seminar Series) is a space for sharing Indigenous-led and community-engaged projects, as well as research in Native American and Indigenous Studies and related fields.

Forum sessions are held roughly once a month between November and May, on Thursdays at 3 pm Eastern. They are held over Zoom. Registration is required and free, and open to attendees of all backgrounds and affiliations. Presenters represent diverse Indigenous communities, professional and scholarly fields, and career levels. 

Se ofrecerá interpretación en español/inglés para todas las presentaciones. 

Spanish/English interpretation will be offered for all presentations.

Questions should be sent to Ruth Rouvier, Native American Scholars Initiative Engagement Coordinator, at [email protected].

2024-2025 Program 

Fall 2024

Thursday, September 12: Kaylen James (Itazipco Lakota/Mdewakantunwan Dakota/University of Minnesota-Twin Cities) and Dr. Samantha Majhor (Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Descendant/Marquette University), "Remembering from the Heart and Mind: Oceti Sakowin Approaches to Digital Archiving and Website Design" 

Thursday, November 7:  Raul Macuil Martínez (Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. Unidad 131-Hidalgo, México), "Patrimonio documental comunitario en náhuatl de Tlaxcala, México" 

Thursday, November 21: Rosalba Gomez Bautista (Mixtec (Ñuu Saví - People of the Rain)/Sacramento State University), "Resistance Beyond Displacement: How Indigenous Migrants in Oaxaca, Mexico Redefine Resistance Beyond Transnational Borders 1980-2020" 

Thursday, December 5: Annemarie Gillies (Ngā Hapū o Waimārama /Te Kura I Awarua, Eastern Institute of Technology) and Tākuta Xavier Forde (Ngāti Huia/Te Kotahi Research Institute, University of Waikato), "Te Taunaha i ngā Tapuwae ō mātou Tīpuna/Reclaiming the footprints of our Ancestors: Piloting the use of Traditional Knowledge Labels by Ngā Hapū o Waimārama for their archaeological sites in Aotearoa New Zealand"

Spring 2025

Thursday, January 23: Andrew Abdalian (American Philosophical Society) "Just one more quick edit: Lessons from the making of the Tunica Language Textbook"

Thursday, February 20: Jessica Locklear (Lumbee/Emory University), "Following the Pines: Lumbee Mobility and Indian Identity in the Deep South"

Thursday, March 20: Emily Jean Leischner (American Philosophical Society), "Activating Nuxalk Ancestral Governance to Protect the Nuxalk Language with the American Philosophical Society (APS)"

Thursday, April 17: Jacqueline S. Campo (Quechua/University of Massachusetts Boston), "Ñuqaqa runa simitam rimachkani: Learning Quechua as a Heritage Language"

Thursday, May 8: Anca Wilkening (Harvard University), Ian McCallum (Munsee-Delaware First Nation/University of Toronto), Velma Noah Nicholas (Delaware Nation at Moraviantown/University of Victoria),  “Akiinziitookw - Let's Read Together!” Collaborative Interpretation of Moravian Munsee Lenape Manuscripts and Ancestral Voices at Harvard’s Houghton Library"

Past Presentations

Spring 2024 

Thursday, January 18: Rayo Cruz (Bëni Xidza Collective/Universidad de Guadalajara, México), "La enseñanza del Zapoteco como segunda lengua/Teaching Zapotec as a second language"

Thursday, February 15: Jacqueline S. Campo (University of Massachusetts Boston), "Limeños andinos: Narratives of indigenous Quechua migrants from the Andes to Lima, the capital of Peru"

Thursday, March 21: Jennifer Komorowski (Oneida Nation of the Thames/Toronto Metropolitan University) and Nyssa Komorowski (Oneida Nation of the Thames/University of Toronto), "Ukwehuwe Stories: A Philosophy and History of Being in the World"

Thursday, April 18: Keith Richotte, Jr. (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians/University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill), "The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told: Native America, Plenary Power, and the U.S. Constitution"

Fall 2023 

Thursday, November 2: Alexandra Lamiña (Kitu-Kara/University of Texas at Austin/APS), "Indigenous Countertopography of Femicide: Witnessing the Modern Gender Genocide"

Thursday, November 30: Hali Dardar (United Houma Nation/Smithsonian), "Archival Material in Media Art – the 2023 Indigenous Gulf Stream"

Spring 2023 

Thursday, February 9: Mneesha Gellman, Emerson College, "Learning to Survive: Native American and Immigrant-Origin Youth Wellness in Schools." 

Thursday, March 30: Ian McCallum, University of Toronto, "Asiiskusiipuw." 

Thursday, May 25: Joseph Dupris, University of Colorado Boulder, "The American Indian in western linguistic inquiry: Toward tribalized language research."

Fall 2022 

Friday, October 28: Marlen Rosas, Haverford College, "Contending Visions of Indigenous Education in Ecuador: The Potential of the Radical 1940s."

Friday, December 16: David Dry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "Advocating for Allotment: Civil Rights and Sovereign Ends."

Spring 2022 

Friday, January 21: Blake Grindon, Princeton University, “The Mohawk Atlantic in the Age of Revolution: Cultural Brokerage and the Politics of Alliance, 1775-76"

Friday, February 18: Eli Nelson, Williams University,   "Transing the first Native American Doctor."

Friday, April 22: Alejandra Dubcovsky and George Aaron Broadwell, University of California Riverside and University of Florida,   "Cumenatimococo, With all our Heart: Native Literacy and Power in Colonial Florida."

Friday, May 13: Robert Caldwell, Brown University, "  Albert Gallatin, philology and the emergence of ethnological mapping in the United States: Natural Sciences and Republican Ideals."

Spring 2021 

Friday, January 22: Patrick Lozar, University of Victoria, "'Home was, part of north of the line, and part of the time south of it': Families, Belonging, and Status in a Persistent Borderland." 

Friday, February 12: Mary McNeil (Harvard University), "The Factory of Genocide: Deer Island’s Carceral Geography"

Friday, March 19: Elizabeth Ellis (New York University), "  Remembering, Forgetting, and Mythologizing the Petites Nations”

Friday, April 16: Thompson Smith, Tribal History and Ethnogeography Projects, Séliš-Ql̓ispé Culture Committee, Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes, "Sk͏ʷsk͏ʷstúlex͏ʷ — Names Upon the Land: A Geography of the Salish and upper Kalispel People"

Friday, May 14: Katrina Srigley (Nipissing University) and Glenna Beaucage (Culture and Heritage Department, Nipissing First Nation), "Contributions to Ngodweyaan (Family) and Ezhidaayang (Community) on and beyond Nbisiing Nishnaabeg Territory"

Spring 2020 

Friday, February 7: Jessica Locklear, Temple University, “A History of Lumbee Migrations to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1945-2004; Chapter 2: A Lumbee Church on Frankford Avenue, 1965-2004”

Friday, March 6: Rosanna Dent, New Jersey Institute of Technology, “Bureaucratic Vulnerability: Possession, Sovereignty, and Relationality in Brazilian Research Regulation”

Friday, April 24: Cindy Ott, University of Delaware, "Ranch Work: Conflict, Compromise & Collaboration Among Historic Rivals," chapter 1 of Biscuits & Buffalo: Reinvention of American Indian Culture in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Friday, May 15: Peter Olsen-Harbich, The College of William & Mary, “"Quand ung homme a desservi mort” (When a Man Deserves to Die): Encountering Coercion in the Medieval Eastern Woodlands, 1501-1611”

Fall 2020 

Friday, November 6: Shandin Pete, Salish Kootenai College, “A Review of Salish Astronomical Knowledge".

Friday, December 18: Jermani Ojeda Ludeña, University of Texas at Austin, “Using Media to Promote Quechua Culture and Identity in the Peruvian Andes"

Fall 2019 

September 18: Morgan Ridgway, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and 2018-2019 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Native American Scholars Initiative (NASI) Predoctoral Fellow, "(Re)Thinking Indian: The Handbook of the North American Indian and the Body in the Decade of the Bicentennial"

October 30: April Anson, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Penn Program for the Environmental Humanities, "Master Metaphor: Environmental Apocalypse and the Settler State of Emergency"

December 10: Kate Riestenberg, Postdoctoral Fellow in Linguistics, Bryn Mawr College, "Promoting Zapotec language learning through meaningful social interaction"