On Thursday November 17, Sharon Lenzy and Rhonda Grayson will host a presentation on Creek Freedmen Band of Oklahoma’s history and work. The Creek Freedmen Band is a group of former Muscogee Creek citizens who had their tribal citizenship taken away in 1979,and are advocating to have it restored. They are descendants of Creek and enslaved peoples and have a long history in the Creek Nation. This event is sponsored by the Weelaunee Coalition.

Time: 7:30 pm

Place: Zoom – https://emory.zoom.us/j/93309941558  PW – Weelaunee

The James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference is hosting a Colloquium Series during the fall of 2022. Join Dr. Harjo, an Associate Professor of Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma, in discussing Mvskoke theories of knowledge and Indigenous feminisms to examine the Mvskoke community’s understanding of the future. This event is open to attend, but registering in advised.

Click here to register & here to learn more.

Time: 12:00 – 1:30 pm

Place: Jones Room, 3rd floor of Woodruff Library

The Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative, the Hightower Fund, the Department of English, the Department of History, and the Creative Writing Program have co-sponsored the Embodied Tribalography in Fictional Characters and in Native History to kick-off a week of celebrating Native American sports in the southeast. Dr. Howe (Choctaw), Eidson Distinguished Professor in American Literature at the University of Georgia, connects Native American past and present through investigating Native Americans’ relationship with their homelands and the ways they embody it through traditional games. The Coffee and Greetings and the event are open attendance; RSVP for the student luncheon.

To learn more about Dr. LeAnne Howe, link is here.

Coffee and Greetings with Dr. LeAnne Howe

Time: 11:30 am to 12:15 pm

Place: Ebrik Coffee Room at the Carlos Museum

Student Luncheon with Dr. LeAnne Howe, RSVP

Time: 12:30 to 1:00 pm

Place: Bowden Hall Room 323

Embodied Tribalography in Fictional Characters and in Native History

Time: 1:00 to 2:00 pm

Place: Bowden Hall Room 323

From 800 AD to the 1700s, Caddo tribal pottery was prized across the American Southwest and traded as far as France and Spain. The tradition was almost lost when the last Caddo potter, a matriarch of the tribe, stopped making pottery in 1908. In a lecture titled “Caddo Ceramic Traditions and Trajectories,” Chase Kahwinhut Earles, discusses his decades-long effort to help revive, master, and honor ancestral Caddo pottery traditions in order to establish a path forward as a contemporary artist and develop a modern narrative.

Earles’s work has won many awards at Indian art markets and has been exhibited and collected by the Dallas Museum of Art, the Gilcrease Museum, the Spiro Mound Archaeological Center, the Carlos Museum, and many more.

This program has been developed in collaboration with the Atlanta Beltline’s Art on the Beltline project.

This is an in-person event, but if you prefer to attend via Zoom you can register here.

Time: Thursday, September 15, 2022, 7:30-8:30pm

Place: Ackerman Hall in the Micael C. Carlos Museum

To learn more about the event, please visit: https://carlos.emory.edu/calendar?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D159345321&eventid=159345321

The Interdisciplinary Workshop in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies and the Emory Department of History hosts the first event of their Fall 2022 Colonial/Postcolonial Seminar Series with Professor Yanna Yannakakis. She will present a section of her forthcoming book, Since Time Immemorial: Native Custom and Law in Colonial Mexico.

Since Time Immemorial traces the invention, translation, and deployment of Native custom as a legal category and strategy of empire in colonial Mexico. After the Spanish conquest, custom represented the primary mode through which Indigenous communities governed themselves and interfaced with authorities outside the community from the early 16th c. until independence from Spain in 1821. This book examines how the European category of custom was given local meaning, how it became part of the fabric of Indigenous communal life and a potent claim in Spanish courts, and how its purview changed and narrowed over time.

Professor Yannakakis’ Bio: Her research explores the social and cultural history of colonial Latin America, the history of Mexico, ethnohistory, the history of legal systems, and the interaction of indigenous peoples and institutions in Mexico. Her first book, The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca (Duke University Press, 2008) examines how native cultural brokers negotiated with Spanish courts and the Catholic Church to open and maintain a space for the political and cultural autonomy of indigenous elites and their communities during Mexico’s colonial period. This book was awarded the 2009 Howard Francis Cline Memorial Award given by the Conference on Latin American History for the best book on the history of Latin America’s indigenous peoples.

Time: Wednesday, September 21st, 4pm-6pm EST

Location: Anthropology Building, Room 206

This seminar is co-sponsored by the Emory History Department. For questions, and if you would like to read a background chapter of Yannakakis’ book, please contact Hugo Hansen at hugo [dot] hansen [at] emory [dot] edu

The Atlanta Beltline and Emory are co-sponsoring the Southeast Woodlands Stickball Summit, including a stickball game and panel discussion in collaboration with NAISI and the Carlos Museum. This event centers around the new Atlanta Beltline artwork “Itti’ kapochcha to’li’” by Addison Karl (Chickasaw and Choctaw). First, there will be an exhibition stickball game in the historic Old 4th Ward Activity Park, beginning at 10:30am EST, followed by a panel discussion about the history and future of stickball at 7:00pm EST.

Time: Saturday, October 15th, 10:30am-3:00pm, then 7:00pm

Place: Old 4th Ward Activity Field (the game), Ackerman Hall at the Carlos Museum (panel)

Toli (stickball) has been enjoyed by many of the Woodland Nations of the Southeast of the US. Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Cherokee have deep roots in the game. The Chickasaw played as a substitute for war, to settle disagreements, as well as enjoy sports and athletics. This artwork is a celebration of generation after generation playing this game. Karl dedicates this work to his grandfather, whose Toli sticks featured prominently in the home he grew up in and for the woodland nations on whose land the artwork is being installed. Click here to learn more.

Addison Karl Bio: Born in Denver, Addison Karl is currently base in Italy, and is a Chickasaw and Choctaw visual artist, painter, sculptor, and public artist. Karl’s artistic emphasis finds its way through multidisciplinary materials and methods to create a visual narrative. The execution of his visual library is deeply rooted within the methods of creation. Pulling references from personal interactions, nature, culture, the history of humanity, altruism, perception of colors, and emotional states. His process explores two main domains combining humanitarian figurative & aesthetic subject matter. In working internationally with different cultures, Addison has explored the social construct of individual versus community. These ideas raise issues he feels are primordial to discuss in both contemporary and public arenas. Furthermore, through his artistic practice, he hopes to reintroduce into shared visual space a sense of ownership.  Addison works with the Chickasaw Nation as a growing Culture Bearer.

There will be three Indigenous Language Path (ILP) listening sessions hosted at Emory this Fall!  The entire Emory community is invited to learn and provide insight into the university-wide project to develop physical reminders and rituals on Emory’s Oxford and Atlanta campuses to honor Muscogee language and knowledge, as the indigenous language and knowledge of this land.

On Oxford campus, there will be a dinner listening session for students, faculty, and staff, and on Atlanta campus there will be a faculty/staff breakfast session, a student lunch session, and in the afternoon a Muscogee Teach-in and Stomp Dance on the Academic Quad that will be open to all.

Information about these sessions and RSVP forms can be found here.

Time: 10/27 from 5:30pm-7:30pm (Oxford College Session) & 10/28 from 10:00am-11:30am and 12:00pm-1:30pm (Emory College Sessions) & 10/28 from 2:30pm-5:00pm (Teach-In and Stomp Dance)

Locations: Dean’s Dining Room (Oxford College Session) & Convocation Hall (Emory College Session) & Academic Quad (Muscogee Teach-In)

To learn more about the Indigenous Language Path, please visit: https://president.emory.edu/race-social-justice/task-force/language-path.html

The Emory community is invited to learn about and provide input into a university-wide project to develop physical reminders and rituals on Emory’s Oxford and Atlanta campuses to honor Muscogee language and knowledge as the indigenous language and knowledge of this land. To get started on the process toward the Path, will be a series of open engagement sessions with the Native-led consulting firm Kauffman Associates, Inc. (KAI). The third session is for faculty, staff and students on the Atlanta Campus and will be accompanied with dinner.

RSVP is required. All events are in-person encouraged, but there is also a Zoom option if needed. RSVP for in-person here or zoom here.

Time: Thursday, April 7, 2022, 5:30-7:00pm

Place: Atlanta Campus, Convocation Hall 210

To learn more about the Indigenous Language Path, please visit: https://president.emory.edu/race-social-justice/task-force/language-path.html

Please note that additional engagement opportunities are being planned for the Fall 2022 semester.

With questions, please contact religiouslife [at] emory [dot] edu