A Symposium for Indigenous Land, Water, and Environment
Hybrid program, consisting of on-site experiences and livestream broadcasts
For whom have environments been protected, conserved, or honored? The prolonged impacts of environmental racism and settler colonialism, exacerbated by infrastructural and economic inequalities are realities shared by communities of color and Indigenous nations. How have notions of the commons and public lands, so central to environmental discourse in the United States, been used to simultaneously dispossess Indigenous territory and advance ideologies of conservation and protection? In light of the historical trajectory of these claims, catastrophic climate change, and ongoing global pandemic, how are Indigenous communities responding to and asserting their relationships to land and environment? Building and imagining more sustainable relationships with our environments, one another, and our other-than-human kin is crucial to our collective survival.
Inspired by the more than two dozen artistic collaborations featured in the exhibition Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40 at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago—including work by Jeffrey Gibson, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Fazal Sheikh, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Mel Chin—Relational Futures offers a platform for dialogue around Indigenous environmental advocacy and research in the context of enduring legacies of toxic exposure, resource extraction, and global public health crisis.
Bringing together Indigenous scholars, activists, and policymakers from the Indigenous Southwest to the Indigenous Midwest, this three-day program is open to all students, faculty, staff, and community members with the intention of building solidarity around our common commitments to environmental stewardship and relational care.
FREE, open to the public. Space is limited for in-person gatherings. Please review the schedule and register in advance.
Schedule
For the full schedule, list of presenters, and registration information please visit the Toward Common Cause website.
Relational Futures is presented in conjunction with the D’Arcy McNickle Distinguished Lecture series at the Newberry Library and the Film Studies Center at the University of Chicago, with additional support from the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern University and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago.
Image: Jeffrey Gibson, STAND YOUR GROUND, 2019. Cotton and linen, digitally printed fabric, polyester thread, cotton batting, 87 1/2 x 68 in. (222.3 x 172.7 cm). Courtesy of the Artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL.