The Center for Native American and Indigenous Research collaborates with colleagues throughout the APS and beyond to organize public presentations, international conferences, family and adult programming, and major exhibitions highlighting projects in or aligned with Native American and Indigenous Studies.
The Indigenous Learning Forum (formerly the Indigenous Studies Seminar Series) is a space for sharing Indigenous-led and community-engaged projects, as well as research in Native American and Indigenous Studies and related fields.
Forum sessions are held roughly once a month between September and May, on Thursdays at 3 pm Eastern, over Zoom.
For more information visit the Indigenous Learning Forum website.
Every summer CNAIR holds a workshop for our Digital Knowledge Sharing (DKS) Fellows. As part of that workshop, we invite an esteemed scholar to give a public, hybrid Keynote presentation. You can read about many recent DKS Keynote lectures below, and watch recordings on our YouTube channel!
This symposium connected with the APS Museum’s 2016 exhibition, Gathering Voices: Thomas Jefferson and Native America. The exhibition traced the story of Native American language collection at the APS from Thomas Jefferson’s Indian vocabularies to the anthropological fieldwork of Franz Boas and his students to the language revitalization and community-based initiatives supported by CNAIR today. The symposium expanded upon the core themes of the exhibition: translation across cultures and borders, the politics of representation, practices of language collection and study, cultural continuity and change, and the transformation of the material archives.
The APS's Fall 2020 conference "Relationships, Reciprocity, and Responsibilities: Indigenous Studies in Archives and Beyond" was held online September 21-25, 2020 as part of the Native American Scholars Initiative. The conference reflected new and emerging scholarship in Native American and Indigenous Studies and allied fields. Archived videos of the keynote and presentations are available on the conference page.
Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of CNAIR's founding, this hybrid conference was held October 10-11, 2024. "Following Knowledge Forward: A Gathering to Mark a Decade of Indigenous Knowledge and Collaboration at CNAIR" was an opportunity for people to gather together and share their experiences, insights, and visions for the future surrounding collaborative, community-engaged work in language and cultural revitalization, particularly the relationships between Indigenous knowledge and archives. Videos of conference sessions are available on the FKF YouTube Playlist.
'Launching Boas Papers Volume 2 on "Franz Boas, James Teit, and Early Twentieth-Century Salish Ethnography"' with Andrea Laforet, Angie Bain, John Haugen, Sarah C. Moritz, and Andie Diane Palmer. April 17, 2024 (Virtual Discussion)
"Becoming Catawba: Catawba Indian Women and Nation-Building, 1540–1840" with Brooke M. Bauer. March 13, 2024 (Lunch at the Library)
"Ethical returns, access and complicating the archive” with Maura Sullivan. November 29, 2023 (Lunch at the Library)
"'Old Ventura, about whom little is known': Music, Masculinity & California Missions," with Deborah Miranda and Laura Furlan. June 14, 2023 (Virtual Discussion)
"A Dialogue on Miskitu People’s Cosmovision and its Social and Environmental Implications" with Ruth Matamoros Mercado. March 22, 2023 (Virtual Discussion)
"Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures" with Kelly Wisecup. February 2, 2022 (Virtual Discussion)
"Book Launch: Indigenous Languages and the Promise of Archives" with Kayla Begay, Justin Spence, Cheryl Tuttle, Margaret Ann Noodin, and Cary Mille. December 8, 2021 (Public Lecture)
'"Still They Remember Me": Newell Lyon's voice speaks from the Speck papers' with Carol Dana, Margo Lukens, and Conor Quinn. November 3, 2021 (Virtual Discussion)
"Catawba Women: Humor and Violence in the Carolina Backcountry, 1760-1840," with Brooke Bauer. June 15, 2021 (Fellows Showcase)
"Emotional Zapotec Epistemologies: The Relevance of Physical Space, Cosmic time, and Interconnectivity when Discussing Zapotec Emotional Injuries," with Candy Martínez. June 8, 2021 (Fellows Showcase)
"Revitalization Lexicography: The Making of the New Tunica Dictionary" with Patricia Anderson. April 28, 2021 (Virtual Discussion)
"Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore: Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico" with Rafael Ocasio. February 17, 2021 (Virtual Discussion)
"The Indian Law Bombshell: McGirt v. Oklahoma" with Robert J. Miller. November 19, 2020 (Virtual Discussion)
"New Directions in the History of the Americas" with Hannah Anderson, Janine Boldt, Angela Tapia, Timothy Bowers Vasko. June 16, 2020 (Public lecture)
"At the Bridge: James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging" with Wendy Wickwire. April 17, 2020 (Virtual Discussion)
"Indigenous Archives and Public History" with Eric Hemenway. July 31, 2019 (Public Lecture)