Critical Indigenous Studies Initiative

Spring 2020

In February 2020, the students in Prof. Amber Hickey’s Land, Sovereignty, and Art course, along with several members of the Four Winds Native American Alliance, visited the Wabanaki land reclamation project Nibezun in Passadumkeag, Maine. During a walking tour with Stanley Neptune (Penobscot), the students learned about land-based knowledge initiatives, including the maple-syrup gathering process and Nibezun’s forthcoming medicinal plant trail. The visit concluded with a lunchtime discussion with Penobscot elder and artist Tim Shay.

Fall 2020

“We are on Indigenous Land: Re/Claiming Native
Spaces”

Virtual screening and discussion with Corrina
Gould, Tim Shay & Lilah Akins
This virtual event brings together Indigenous community leaders for a discussion about the reclamation of Indigenous Ohlone and Wabanaki spaces. We will view three short films Beyond Recognition, i am ákʷitən, the medicine tree vessel that carries our relatives, and The Nibezun Project. Q&A discussion follows with Corrina Gould (Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone) of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, Tim Shay (Penobscot) and Lilah Akins (Penobscot) of Nibezun.

Beyond Recognition

The inspiring story of women creating opportunities and organizing strategies to preserve Native cultures and homelands in a society bent on erasing them. Corrina Gould is the spokesperson for the confederated villages of Lisjan/Ohlone, and co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, and Indian People Organizing for Change (IPOC). 

i am ákʷitən, the medicine tree vessel that carries our
relatives

An imaginative exploration of ancestral ties to Wabanaki lands and waters, collectively created by Lilah Akins, Devon Kelley-Yurdin, Emilia Dahlin, Cory Tamler, and Jennie Hahn.

The Nibezun Project provides an introduction to Nibezun, a sacred gathering place of the Wabanaki on the Penobscot River.

Spring 2021

An evening of poetry, performance, and conversation
with Manuel Tzoc Bucup and Paul M. Worley

Manuel Tzoc Bucup (Maya- K’iche’) is an interdisciplinary self-taught poet and a visual performance artist from Iximulew (Guatemala). His works include GAY(0) (2010), El Ebrio Mar y Yo (2011), El Jardín de los Infantes Locos y la Escafandra de Oro (2013), Los Libros-Objeto Polen (2014), No recuerdo y/o pronunciamientos del habla tartamuda (2016), and Wuj (2019). Tzoc Bucup recently spearheaded one of the first Central American queer poetry collections Antología LGBTIQ+ Guatemala (e/X 2018). He is a founder of Maleta Ilegal, a small publishing company, and he has published numerous pieces in literary anthologies and magazines. His visual art has been exhibited in art galleries in Guatemala and abroad (France, Italy, and the US), and he performed The Reestablishment of Abya Yala with Rodrigo Arenas Carter in 2016 in Chile at NYU’s Hemispheric Institute’s 10th Encuentro eX-céntrico: dissidence, sovereignties, performance conference.
Professor Paul Worley is an Associate Professor of Global Literature at Western Carolina University, a Fulbright Scholar, and 2018 winner of the Sturgis Leavitt Award from the Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies. He works on contemporary Latin American literatures and cultures, with interests in Indigenous rights movements in the Americas. Worley is the co-author of Unwriting Maya Literature (2019) with Rita M. Palacios, which received Honorable Mention for the LASA (Latin American Studies Association) Mexico Section Libro en Humanities award. In 2013, Worley authored Telling and Being Told. His work has appeared in Revista Iberoamericana, The Comparatist, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, and Studies in American Indian Literatures. Beyond academia, Worley is a well-known translator of Indigenous literatures, having translated selected works by Indigenous authors such as Manuel Tzoc Bucup, Hubert Malina, Adriana López, and Ruperta Bautista.