Why Indigenous Canoes? Indigenous Resurgence and So Much More

Tuesday, May 37:00—8:30 PMOnline

Indigenous water craft -- and the crafts of enacting deep relations of kinship and reciprocity with the water environment -- have tremendous carrying capacity, and cover a lot of literal and metaphorical ground. This presentation shares how a “trans-indigenous”, multi-sensoried, and mixed-media canoe-building and knowledge exchange and kin-making project (including virtual canoes and voyaging) among Dakota and immigrant Pacific Islanders in the plains of rural western Minnesota is also proving to be crucial site of Indigenous political, cultural, and intellectual resurgence for the 21st century.

Hailing from the Micronesian region of the Pacific (born and raised in Guam; maternal lineage to Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia), Professor Vicente “Vince” Diaz (https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/vmdiaz) is chair of the Department of American Indian Studies and Director of the Native Canoe Program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His areas of specialty include critical Indigenous theory and practice, comparative and global Indigenous studies, canoe culture revitalization, and the interphase of indigenous art, science, and politics.

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