Mishuana Goeman, Tonawanda Band of Seneca, is an Associate Professor of Gender Studies, Chair of American Indian Studies Interdepartmental Program and the Special Advisor to the Chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs at UCLA. She is the author of Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) as well as a Co-PI on two community based digital projects, Mapping Indigenous L.A (2015), which gathers alternative maps of resiliency from Indigenous LA communities, and Carrying Our Ancestors Home (2019), a site concentrating on better working tribal relationships and communications as it concerns repatriation and NAGPRA.
“Beyond the Grammar of Settler Landscapes and Apologies”
This talk focuses on the Indigenous methodology of creating anti-colonial networks through the form of introductions. By looking at the place-based practice of an introduction in the case of UCLA, I engage with what it means to live, learn and work on occupied territory. In examining the colonization of California in relation to the rise of the UC system, we will engage with the following questions: How do we move past mere acknowledgement of dispossession and move toward better work with indigenous communities? How do apologies, while evoking empathy, fail to provoke action in relation to opening spaces on our campuses? What must we consider in the very process of acknowledgements and moving our educational settings forward? How do settler grammars threaten a fertile terrain for Indigenous futurities?