51³Ô¹ÏÍø

Co-sponsored by Clements Center for Southwest Studies at 51³Ô¹ÏÍøMethodist University and in Chicago, with support from the University of of New Mexico, the University of Washington, and Princeton University.

Co-organized by Rani-Henrik Andersson (University of Helsinki), Boyd Cothran (York University), Elizabeth Ellis (Princeton, Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma), Joshua L. Reid (University of Washington, Snohomish Indian Nation), and Samuel Truett (University of New Mexico).

This two-part symposium anchors visions of the past and future into a deeper planetary archive, one linked to Native nations and Indigenous communities and their historical border crossings world-wide. It seeks to connect exciting new work in global indigenous studies with Native-centered work on place, mobility, climate-change and justice, human and other-than-human kinship, migration and sanctuary, borderlands and border crossings, Native trans-national relationships and social movements, and indigenous politics, identities, diplomacy, and cross-community relations in historical contexts of global change.

The symposium met SMU’s satellite campus in Taos, NM in September 2025, and then again at a second meeting hosted by The Newberry Library in February 2026.

Participants include:

Camden Elliott, Auburn University, “Smallpox and Wabanaki (Border)Lands, 1675-1764;”

Robin Garcia, University of Virginia, and Kumu Kanoelani Davis, Ho’aka Mana, “Chanting to Mauli Ola; Hawaiian Cultural Arts, Well-being, and Climate Resilliance on Molokai,” with additional authors including Dr. Naseemah Mohammed Ogunnaike, UVA, Sophia Gibby, UVA, and Grace Cray, UVA;

Jessica Jiang, UC Berkeley, “Intimate Exclusions: Disentangling Chinese-Salish Families at the Forty-Ninth Parallel;”

Ryan Tucker Jones, University of Oregon, “Sperm Whale Clans and Kahiki: The Diasporic Pacific Worlds of Polynesian Whalers and their Prey;”

Kendall Lovely, UC Santa Barbara, “From Seas to Southwest Jewelry: Precious Stones and Indigenous Cross-Currents in Time and Space;”

Yusuf Mansoor, University of Connecticut, “Navigating an Atlantic World of Slaveries: Indigenous Transatlantic Movements from New England to Tangier, 1675-1683;”

Pedro Munaretto, Universidad Nacional de San Martin (Argentina), “Invisible Crossings: Indigenous Malvinas Veterans and the Limits of National Memory;”

Hayley Negrin, University of Illinois at Chicago, “Indigenous Women and Masculinist Portrayals of Power in Borderlands History;”

Jon Parmenter, Cornell University, “Transboundary Trade and the Covenant Chain: The Mohawks of Kahnawà:ke, 1700-2023;”

Jorge Ramirez-Lopez, UC Santa Barbara, “Indigenous Migration within Mexico and the United States as Global Indigenous Histories;”

Lindsey Willow Smith, University of Minnesota, “Native Women’s Roles in Activism in 1970s Detroit through Newpaper and Oral Histories;”

Mary Peterson Zundo, Independent Scholar, “Of Skulls and Skeins: Indigenous Art Activism, Sovereign Herding, and Cross-Border Mobilities through Sápmi and Diné Bikéya.”

Image: "Apache scouts drilling with rifles, Fort Wingate, New Mexico" NAID: 530918.