On behalf of Southeastern Oklahoma State University, welcome to our fifth Native American Symposium, Being Native Native Being: Identity and Difference. Oklahoma's diverse Native American heritage offers a unique perspective on the studies of literature, film, history, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, and communications.
The Native American symposium seeks to increase public understanding and appreciation of Native American culture in all its expressions. Varied special events offer many opportunities for communication, education, and pleasure. The conference planning committee has provided us with a unique experience to raise our level of consciousness regarding Native American culture. Their dedication to bringing this special event to our campus is indeed commendable. I hope you enjoy Being Native Native Being: Identity and Difference.Sincerely,
Glen D. Johnson
President
8:00 am: Sidewalk Café - Conference registration
9:00 am: Sidewalk Café - Welcome Comments by Dr. Chad Litton, Chair, Native American Symposium Committee
9:30 am: Magnolia Room
| Ethnobotany: Plants, People, Purpose,” Dawn Morningstar, Oklahoma State University Ethnobotany studies how people use and conceptualize plants in their local environments. Morningstar uses as a door into individual identity, cultural realities, and the future of human relationships with the land. |
| Pashofa : Ceremony, Society, and Chickasaw Identity,” Matt DeSpain, University of Oklahoma Examines the Chickasaw dish of pashofa as a cultural artifact that embodies the changes in Chickasaw culture and society from the late 1700s to the present. |
| "Being and Becoming 'New Indians': Identity and Indian Youth Councils of the 1950s and 1960s,” Sterling Fluharty, University of Oklahoma Explores the role of the NIYC in shaping Indian youth identity, particularly during the social turmoil of the 1960s. The intensification of Indian youth identity, pan-Indian issues, and the debate over the retention of traditional Indian cultures and lifestyles are addressed. |
9:30 am: University Center 215
| “Sweet Chaos: The Native American Renaissance and the Grateful Dead,” Adrian L. Cook, University of Texas at Dallas Focuses on the parallels and complementary natures of Native American beliefs, literary/spiritual practices, and society with that of The Grateful Dead and its “followers,” especially as the enactment of a unique American Vision Quest. |
| “Contemporary Muscogee (Creek) Music: Traditional, Christian, and Popular,” Hugh W. Foley, Rogers State University Examines the interaction and cross-fertilization of traditional Muscogee music with that of the African-American slaves, Christian hymns, and modern blues, country, rock, and rap. |
| “Dancing on Multicultural Ground,”John Jaramillo and Adair Landborn Discusses dance as a cultural practice that can comprehend and express the deep ideological ambiguities of multiculturalism, as well to construct hybrid cultural identities capable of transcending ethnic boundaries. |
12:00 till 1:00 pm: Lunch on your own
1:00 pm: Magnolia Room
| “Place and Storytelling: Native and Non-Native Accounts from the Intermountain West, ”Richard Francaviglia, University of Texas at Arlington Explores and compares how the varied and spectacular landscapes of the Great Basin region have inspired Paiute, Soshone, Mormon, and other storytellers. Urges greater sensitivity to topography’s role in shaping storytelling and beliefs. |
| “Literary Cartography and Environmental Justice: Mapping Native American Novels,”Alex Hunt, West Texas A&M University Examines how Silko, Erdrich, and Hogan, among others, have performed a kind of literary land reclamation using maps and mapping metaphors to critique European-American environmental exploitation and abuse. |
| “Complicity: Infanticide and Sacrifice in Silko’s Almanac of the Dead,” Bonnie Roos, Austin College Discusses treatment of traumatic violence within the context of other colonial and post/neo-colonial writers such as Rigoberta Menchú and Chinua Achebe. |
1:00 pm: Henry G. Bennett Library, Native American Collection Room
| “Indian and Oklahoma Territory Publications, 1835-1907,” Dottie Davis, Library Director, SOSU |
3:15 pm: Library, Native American Collection Room
4:00 pm: Library, Native American Collection Room
| Slide and video presentation with a question and answer session afterwards. |
7:00 pm: Little Theater - Kimberly Norris Guerrero
8:00-9:00 pm: Wesley Center - Dessert Reception
9:00-11:00 pm: Russell 100 - Film: Naturally Native, 1998
8:00 am: Sidewalk Café - Conference registration
8:15 am: Magnolia Room
| “The Other Side of the Story: The Importance of James Welch’s Fools Crow Novel,” Patricia DiMond, University of South Dakota
Shows how Welch’s novel deconstructs the stereotypical and one-sided representation of supposed Indian barbarism in European-American literature and culture. |
| “American Indian Literature and the Law: Competing Forms of Justice in Welch’s Indian Lawyer and Erdrich’s Shamengwa”,
Stephanie Fitzgerald, Claremont Graduate University Compares the punitive white American system of justice as depicted by Welch with the path of restorative justice practiced by the tribal judge of Erdrich’s short story, emphasizing how the latter strengthens native sovereignty. |
| “Imperialism and Revolution: History and Story in Todd Downing's Murder Mysteries,”
Melissa Hearn, Northern Michigan University Discusses the metaphors of colonial domination and other historical allusions, which are often more important than the mystery plot in Downing’s novels. |
8:15 am: Ballroom
| “Spiritual and Biological Creation and the Concept of Relatedness,”
Ray Pierotti, University of Kansas Compares Western and indigenous concepts of creation, emphasizing the deeper awareness and sympathy generated in the latter for the inter relatedness between human and nonhuman members of the ecological community. |
| “Mnemonic Devices and Landscape: Creating Identity and Community through Native American Myth,”
Kelley E. Rowley, Cayuga Community College Discusses the “Pour quoi Element” as a memory device that has nourished and sustained the mythopoetic vision of Native American cultures in the past, present, and future. |
| “Approaching Ritual: A Comparison of Greek and Apache Origin Myth and Its Performance,”
Marla Dean, Louisiana State Universitylege Offers "recontexturalization” (reconstructing through the senses) exemplified in the Apache Na’ii’ees puberty ritual as an alternative to the more purely intellectual recontextualization of Aeschylus’ Orestia by modern scholars. |
8:15 am: University Center 215
| “Unforgetting the Bonds that Heal: Memory, Land, and Environment in Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms,”
Carrie Bowen-Mercer Explores how Hogan depicts women as the healers of cultural and ecological crisis through their physical and spiritual journeys in space and time to reconnect family and culture and fight against environmental destruction. Compares Western and indigenous concepts of creation, emphasizing the deeper awareness and sympathy generated in the latter for the inter relatedness between human and nonhuman members of the ecological community. |
| ‘If You Believe It, So It Will Be’: Simulation, the Land, and Identity in the Fiction of D’Arcy McNickle"
Rebecca Hooker Analyzes the concept of simulation (in McNickle’s case simulating “ the good Indian”) as a rhetorical tactic or performance through which Native peoples can appropriate Indian stereotypes within Anglo culture to accomplish various goals. |
| “Stolen Land, Stolen Dignity: Legal Land Theft in the Southwest and the Consequences to American Indian Identity,”
Matt Theory Examines the effects of displacement from the land on Native Americans’ self-identity and their subsequent roles in Anglo society. /td> |
10:00 am: Magnolia Room
| “Traumatized Narrative: The Role of Individual and Collective Trauma in Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed”
Robert Procyk, Saskatchewan Indian College Examines the ways in which trauma envelops Halfbreed, including the traumatic history of the Metis people and the impact of the Church, colonialism, and racism on their lives, ultimately traumatizing Campbell’s narrative as well. |
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“‘I can smell spring everywhere as it erupts in the bowels of death’: The Transformation of Trauma in Joy Harjo’s Poetry,”
Shannon Vails, Weatherford College Explores how Harjo evokes traumatic experiences both personal and historical and deals with them via myth as a way of healing psychic pain and nurturing individual and communal identity, survival, and renewal. |
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““Tools of Self-Definition: Dauenhauer’s How to Make Good Baked Salmon,”
Chris C. Russell, Iowa State University Examines how Dauenhauer’s poem rewrites Tlingit identity in the postmodern age by hybridizing oral tradition with non-traditional artistic forms such as English-language poetry. nurturing individual and communal identity, survival, and renewal. |
10:00 am: Ballroom
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“Matrix Unloaded: What Momaday and Silko Have to Teach Us About Modernity,”
Ken McCutchen, Tarleton State University Examines how Dauenhauer’s poem rewrites Tlingit identity in the postmodern age by hybridizing oral tradition with non-traditional artistic forms such as English-language poetry. nurturing individual and communal identity, survival, and renewal. |
| “Native American Critical Voices in Cinema and Theatre,”
William Over, St. John’s University Compares plays and films that support affirmative and exploratory channels of identity and empowerment such as Inter-Tribal and Smoke Signals with those that leave such possibilities unresolved such as Dances With Wolves. |
10:00 am: University Center 215
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“Caucasian Blues: Images of Whiteness in Alexie’s Indian Killer,”
Clayton Michaels Explores how Alexie caricatures Native “Wannabees” not just for comic effect, but rather as essential messages of what being Native is really all about and how contemporary Anglos should relate to Native cultures and people. |
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“Gendering Smoke Signals: Native Masculinity and the Fantasies of the Men’s Movement,”
Whitney Myers Argues that Smoke Signals offers a critique of how the white Men’s Movement has embraced crude stereotypical notions of an idealized Native masculine mystique that are ultimately unnecessary and absurd. |
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“Beyond the Pale: Leevier’s ‘Psychic Experience of an Indian Princess’ and the Tactics of Simulation,”
Rebecca Hooker Presents Leevier as using a Native woman’s career as a spirit medium to critique a Western worldview that actually thwarts white people’s efforts to experience a connection with the spirits living around them. |
12:00-1:00 pm : Lunch on Your Own
1:00 pm: Magnolia Room
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“Rooting the Hometeam: Sandy Sunrising Osawa and the Native American Documentary,”
Brad Gambill, Waynesburg College Examines Osawa’s documentaries as unpacking issues related to the different ways Native and non-Natives view the land, emphasizing the deep-rooted connection of Native people to it, which cannot be severed without damaging consequences. |
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“Claiming Another Homeland: Kay Walkingstick’s Italian Settings,”
Lee Schweninger, University of North Carolina-Wilmington Argues that the Cherokee painter Kay Walkingstick “claims” Europe for the Cherokee through her images and titles of her paintings and forces the European finally to deal with a Native American from her own Native point of view. |
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“The Little Guy in the Back: John Vanderlyn’s The Death of Jane McCrea, Colonial-Native Interactions and Identity
Formation”
Dena Gilby, Endicott College Discusses how this painting when read in conjunction with historical documents reveals an influential gender paradigm of the “savage” but strong Indian, the impotent Colonial man, and the helpless, sexually alluring Colonial women. |
1:00 pm: Ballroom
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“Rooting the Hometeam: Sandy Sunrising Osawa and the Native American Documentary,”
Brad Gambill, Waynesburg College Examines Osawa’s documentaries as unpacking issues related to the different ways Native and non-Natives view the land, emphasizing the deep-rooted connection of Native people to it, which cannot be severed without damaging consequences. |
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"Sapokni Pit Huklo Momah: Still Listening To My Grandmother: Life Strategies for Being Choctaw While Looking Black,”
Robert Keith Collins, University of California-Berkeley Highlights the experiences of both enrolled and non-enrolled Choctaws of African American admixture as gleaned from life-history interviews in 1998-2000, disputing the popular connection between ethnicity and skin color. |
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“African-Indigenous Relations in Colonial Mexico,”
Daniel Althoff, Southeastern Oklahoma State University Examines the often-hostile relations between imported African slaves and the indigenous peoples of Mexico, which ultimately produced a surprising and unique adaptation to colonial Mexican society in the Afro-mestizo. |
| “Cherokee in My Blood: An Affirmation of African and Native American Relations,”
Charlene Graham, Georgia State University Explores the historical relationship between African freedXmen and former slaves and the Cherokee and Seminoles tribes in the southeastern United States. |
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“The Politics of Passing: Racial ‘Passing’ by American Indians",
Veronica R. Hirsch, University of Arizona Argues that investigation into racial passing is necessary, not only to create an accurate depiction of the range of Native people’s experiences, but also to explore how individuals and communities may reclaim personal and collective identity and recapture political sovereignty. osed rights and privileges of citizens used in the U.S legal system is an anachronistic and self-serving tool to sustain white American domination over the Native peoples. |
1:00 pm: University Center 215
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“Sequoyah and The Cherokee Talewa Tablet,”
James R. Harris, Old Negev Research Institute Discusses the role of Sequoyah in relation to “Old” Cherokee and Old Negev inscriptions, along with the ancient movements and religion of the Cherokee people before the arrival of white Europeans. |
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“Scientific Dogma or Indigenous Geographic Knowledge: Was America a Land Without a History Prior to European Contact?”
Joseph A. P. Wilson, Michigan Technological University Examines the schism between scholarly views of an autonomous pre-Columbian America and the belief in ancient maritime contacts between America and the wider world, using the traditional geographic knowledge of the Athabaskans. |
4:00 pm: Magnolia Room - Featured Speaker - William Means
From the Oglala Lakota Native American activist, Means was founder of the International Indian Treaty
Council and is currently President of the Board. During his 9 years as Executive Director, Means was
responsible for the establishment of a system for documenting human rights violations against Indians.
He is also co-founder of the U.N. Working Group on Indigenous Populations and an expert on U.S. &
Indian Treaty relations. He has been on the Grand Governing Council of the American
Indian Movement since 1972. He is a veteran of Wounded Knee 1973 and helped
coordinate legal defense work on over 500 Wounded Knee federal indictments. He is also on the Board of
the World Archeological Congress and has lectured extensively at major universities
here and abroad.
6:00-7:00 pm: Ballroom - Keynote Banquet
7:00-8:00 pm: Ballroom - “An Evening with N. Scott Momaday
This year’s keynote address will be delivered by N. Scott Momaday. Born a Kiowa in the Oklahoma Dust bowl, and
raised on reservations in the Southwest, Momaday has been described by the New York Times as “the dean of American
Indian writers.” His first novel House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and
he has won countless other awards for his work as a poet, playwright, artist, essayist, and novelist.
Currently the Regents Professor of Humanities at the University of Arizona, Momaday is also the founder
and Chair of The Buffalo Trust, a non-profit foundation for the preservation and restoration of Native American
culture and heritage.
Momaday’s other published works of fiction include In the Bear’s House (which incorporates his own paintings), The Way to Rainy Mountain and The Ancient Child. His poetry has been collected in The Gourd Dancer and In the Presence of the Sun. He is the author of The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages, his memoir, The Names, the children’s book, Circle of Wonder: A Native American Christmas Story, and two plays, Children of the Sun and The Indolent Boys.
9:00-11:30 pm: Russell 100 - Film: Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, 2001
The epic retelling of an Inuit legend about an evil spirit causing strife in the
community and one warrior’s battle with its menace. Directed by Zacharias Kunuk and filmed
entirely with Inuit actors speaking Inuktitut (English subtitles).Perhaps the best modern film recreation of
traditional Native life yet made.
8:00 am: Sidewalk Café - Conference registration -Continental Breakfast
8:45 am: Magnolia Room
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“Captivity and the Captivity Narrative: Opening the Gap,”
Adam Ruh Attempts to identify and define the boundaries of the captivity narrative as a genre, by recognizing the differences between captivity as an event and as a narrative, which allows for a less culturally biased interpretive framework. |
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“Captivity in Linda Hogan’s Memoir, The Woman Who Watches Over the World,”
Stephanie Gustafuson Examines how Hogan uses the narrative of memory as a means to heal, survive, and overcome the aftermath of spiritual and psychological captivity embodied in Native history, even when the literal captivity is part of the distant past. |
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“The Reverse Captivity Narrative: (Re)Telling Captivity from the Native Point of
View,”
Stephen Brandon Explores the narratives of Native American captivity at the hands of Europeans, especially those told and published by Native authors, whether at the court of Spain, by US state militias, in boarding schools, or jailed Indian activists. |
8:45 am: Ballroom
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“Caught in a Western Paradigm: An Aboriginal Experience,”
John Hansen, Saskatchewan Indian Federated College Discusses how conventional educational practices affect the Aboriginal population from the perspective of an aboriginal educator. Addresses the need for greater awareness of Aboriginal experiences and circumstances. |
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“Culture-Sensitive Health Care and Native Americans,”
Linda Gregg, Amberton University Examines the incorporation of traditional Native healing methods in combination with Western medical practices at a health facility run by the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma in Talihina, Oklahoma. |
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“How Does Acculturation Stress and Depression Differ for Native Americans Living in Urban Areas and on Indian Reservations?”
Jean Bedell-Bailey, Capella University Analyzes and evaluates the various methods for comparatively testing acculturation stress and depression among Native Americans and other populations. |
8:45 am: University Center 215
| “‘Walk the Good Road to the Day of Quiet’: The Ramifications of the Shatter Zone on the Trans-Mississippi West,” Brian Craig Miller, University of Mississippi Examines the ramifications of the “Shatter Zone,” defined as the areas of instability created by European contact that resulted in political turmoil, cultural upheaval, and social transformation and dislocation for Native peoples. |
| “Movement and Identity: William the Perpetual Wanderer” Cathy Rex, Auburn University Explores how Apess’ peripatetic life on the fringes of society represents a search for a coherent and stable identity, which he ultimately finds in sheer movement and resistance to the terms of his exclusion from white society. |
| “Bodies as Evidence: Reclaiming the ‘Native’ Southerner in Diane Glancy’s Pushing the Bear and Robert Conley’s Mountain Windsong,” Angela Mullis, University of Arizona Uses Glancy and Conley along with contemporary documents to reclaim the history of Native removal from the southeastern United States, especially that of the Cherokees, as a narrative of Native community and cultural survival. |
11:00 am -12:50 pm: Baptist Campus Ministries - Luncheon and Roundtable Discussion
A free barbecue lunch and a roundtable discussion by past and present chairs of the Native American Symposium Committee.
1:00 pm: VPAC Amphitheater
| “Between a doorstep Barter Economy and Industrial Wages: Women’s Labor on the Northwest Coast,” Carol Williams, University of Lethbridge Demonstrates how Native women on the Pacific Coast created surprisingly entrepreneurial strategies that challenge conventional concepts of labor in order to support their families and kin during economically difficult times. |
| “The Evolution of an Art Form: Paiute Beaded Baskets,” Carole McAllister and Carlon Andre, Southeastern Louisiana University Uses the Bernheimer collection of American Indian beaded baskets, the world’s largest, and personal interviews with award-winning artisans to survey the evolution of this unique 20th-century Native art form. |
| “With the Hands of our Mothers: Native American Woman and Pottery Production in the Southwest” Andriana Foiles, Texas Woman’s University Explores how the production of traditional Native pottery by contemporary Native American women not only provides financial support for their families, but also creates an avenue for self-expression and cultural reinvigoration. |
3:00 pm: Visual and Performing Arts Center Gallery Event
Donald And Cathy Cole
The Coles are residents of Denison, Texas and make authentic and fully-researched
Native American artifacts. Donald, of Cherokee-Chickasaw descent, concentrates
on arrow and spearheads, knives, bowls, rattles, and tanning hides. Cathy, of
the Sac and Fox and Shawnee tribes, creates pine needle and sweet grass
baskets, as well as doing Native beadwork. Both will display and discuss
samples of their work.
4:00 pm: VPAC Gallery Event – The Charles and Miriam Hogan Collection of Native American Art
Roxanne Clark, an SOSU student and Secretary of the Native American Council, will
introduce and describe the collection and its history. A brief description is provided on the first
page of this program.
7:00 pm: Morrison 319 - Film: American Graffiti: This Thing, Life
An ensemble drama produced by Restless Natives Motion Picture Production Company about four Native Americans whose seemingly
separate lives are connected in more ways than expected.
9:00 pm: Morrison 319 - Film: The Fast Runner
A reprise showing of this exceptional film.