2022 Great Plains Summit Schedule

2022 Great Plains Summit Schedule

April 6-8

This event is part of our series of a events - A Year of Reckoning and Reconciliation: Conversation, Learning, and Connecting.

Reckoning and Reconciliation on the Great Plains: Confronting Our Past, Reimagining Our Future

Virtual and in-person events

APRIL 6

5:30 p.m.: Reception, Lied Commons

Join us for food, drinks, and a special performance by the Umoⁿhoⁿ White Tail Singers before the keynote! Must be registered to attend.

7 p.m.: Healing Historical Harm Caused by Conquest and Colonialism in the Great Plains, Walter Echo-Hawk

In-person and virtual at the Lied Center for Performing Arts as part of of the E.N. Thompson forum.

Introduction: Kevin Abourezk

VIDEO

The Great Plains are traditional homelands of Indigenous tribes that were conquered, colonized, dispossessed, and displaced during the rise and growth of the United States. That nation-building process had harsh traumatic impacts on Native peoples that still linger in today's legal system and are seen in the poor living conditions and social ills of Tribal communities. There comes a time when each settler state must come to terms with its colonized Indigenous peoples, but powerful forces in the United States stymie efforts to repair harm caused by historical wrongs. The post-colonial world calls upon us to brush aside reluctance to address a painful past and turn to the accumulated wisdom traditions of the human race to heal those historical injuries. That healing framework will be examined by Walter Echo-Hawk, a Pawnee attorney who devoted his legal career to Native American justice, including justice for the Pawnee—one of Nebraska's dispossessed aboriginal peoples.

Walter Echo-Hawk is President of the Pawnee Nation Business Council. As an author, attorney, and legal scholar he was the Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair on Democratic Ideals at University of Hawai’i’s Law School (2018). He authored The Sea of Grass (2018); In The Light Of Justice (2013); In the Courts of the Conqueror (2010); and Battlefields and Burial Grounds (1994). A Pawnee Indian with a BA, Political Science, OSU and JD, UNM, he practices law in Oklahoma. In addition to his tribal government duties, he is Chair, Board of Directors, Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM); and is a Knowledge Givers Advisory Board member, First American Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

---

APRIL 7: VIRTUAL

9 a.m. CST: Black Wall Street Remembered, Hannibal Johnson

This presentation will highlight the birth of the robust, segregated Black business community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, fondly dubbed "Black Wall Street," its destruction in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, its rebirth in the wake of the massacre, its second decline during the Civil Rights Era, and its latter-day renaissance.

Johnson is a Harvard Law School graduate, an author, attorney, and consultant. He has taught at the University of Tulsa College of Law, Oklahoma State University, and the University of Oklahoma. Johnson serves on numerous boards and commissions, including the national 400 Years of African-American History Commission and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission. His books, including Black Wall Street 100: An American City Grapples With Its Historical Racial Trauma, chronicle the African American experience in Oklahoma and its indelible impact on American history.

VIDEO

10:30 - 11:30 a.m. CST: Concurrent session block 1

1. Land Acknowledgements: Performance or Praxis?

John Raible (Professor, UNL), Colette Yellow Robe (UNL), Lory Dance (Associate Professor, UNL), Amelia Montes (Associate Professor, UNL)

While land acknowledgements are becoming a more widespread phenomenon in academic spaces, disillusionment is also growing due to what many perceive as the empty, performative nature of these ostensibly well-intended institutional rituals. The purpose of this roundtable is to provide space for a variety of perspectives and voices regarding this topic. (Moderator: Gabe Bruguier)

VIDEO

2. Trauma and Uncertainty among Latinx Immigrant Communities

Thomas W. Sanchez (Associate Professor, UNO)

Immigration Irony: A Better Life Stymied by Law, Trauma, and Uncertainty
The research examines the everyday life of Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals (DACA) as college students, which is characterized by childhood and family trauma, dramatic changes in family and community structure, and instability. It is laced with an othering process based on citizenship and documentation status.

Cristián Doña-Reveco (Associate Professor, UNO)

Crisis and Culture of Fear Among Latino Communities in the Midwest
This presentation looks to analyze the everday life conditions of many Latinos and Latin American immigrants centered around the concept of a "culture of fear" as the conditions created by the government which negatively affect the possibilities of these groups to actively and positively participate in social life.

Isabelle Beulaygue (UNO)

"Somos Gente de Contacto": Emotional Regulation Among Latinos in Nebraska during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Latinos have disproportionately and negatively been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic in the U.S. Emerging research has investigated the economic, employment, and earnings impacts of the pandemic on Latinos, unveiling stark health disparities. Nebraska is home to a diverse Latino community, who has navigated the pandemic from a multitude of angles--health, socioeconomic and emotional. This presentation will explore the role of emotions and emotional regulation among Latinos in traversing pandemic challenges, including how they maintained emotional closeness and social cohesion, despite physical distancing.

(Moderator: James Garza)

VIDEO

3. Uncovering Racially Restrictive Covenants: Omaha’s Spatial Justice Project

Jeannette Gabriel (UNO), Christina Dando (Professor, UNO), Jennifer Harbour (Associate Professor, UNO)

The Omaha Spatial Justice Project at the University of Nebraska-Omaha is an interdisciplinary research project documenting historic implications of redlining and restrictive covenants. Geographer Ed Soja defines spatial justice as "the fair and equitable distribution in space of socially valued resources and opportunities to use them." Resources and opportunities in the form of property ownership were denied to some Omaha residents through the use of racially restrictive covenants, contractual agreements prohibiting the purchase, lease, or occupation of property by a defined racial or ethnic group. (Moderator Ramón Guerra)

VIDEO

4. Building Right Relationships in Your Community: A Dialogue

Paula Palmer and Jerilyn DeCoteau (Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples)

What would “right relationship” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in our community look like? How can we learn about the Indigenous people — past and present — in our community? What steps can we take to start building right relationship? What are some examples of right relationship? (Moderator: Kevin Abourezk)

VIDEO

1 - 2 p.m. CST: Concurrent session block 2

1. Truth and Reconciliation Process in Lincoln, Neb.

Paul Olson (Professor Emeritus, UNL), Kathleen Rutledge (retired editor, Lincoln Journal Star), Margaret Jacobs (Professor, UNL), Dewayne Mays (President of the Lincoln Branch of the NAACP), Kevin Abourezk (Lincoln Indian Center)

The panel will describe what presenters believe to be a somewhat effective beginning to a "truth and reconciliation project" that began in Nebraska in 2015, one exploring what the history of racism directed against several groups has been in the state and the possible institutional remedies that would work toward reconciliation. (Moderator: Paul Olson)

VIDEO

2. Surviving the Onslaught: 50 Years of Assaults and Persistence — Black Studies and the North Omaha Community

Barbara Hewins-Maroney (Associate Professor, UNO), Cynthia Robinson (Associate Professor, UNO)

2021 is the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Black Studies Department at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Begun during a time of social unrest in the country, the department has weathered attacks on its curriculum and its focus of uplifting the achievements of African Americans. As the department was being organized, the North Omaha community was being assaulted and vilified. The killing of a 14-year-old teenager Vivian Strong by a white Omaha policeman and his acquittal of her murder by an all-white jury sent the black North Omaha community into an uproar. Three days of civil unrest resulted in the destruction of property, arrests, and the entrenchment of black power ideologies throughout the community. Now 50 years later, the UNO Black Studies Department survives but is assaulted by disparate funding strategies, schemes to strip the department of its status, and on-going threats regarding its curriculum and viability. (Moderator: Eric Ewing)

VIDEO

3. In the Shadow of the Sacred: Developing a Lands Statement that Moves Beyond Recognition and Towards Reconciliation

Justin Curtis (Assistant Professor, Chadron State College), Matthew Evertson (Professor, Chadron State College), Shannon Smith (Independent Historian and Executive Director Emeritus, Wyoming Humanities Council), Tishina Mindemann (Instructional Technology and Design Specialist, Chadron State College)

Chadron State College offers many courses and some programs that address the legacy of conflict and abuse in the resettlement of the region. However, CSC does not currently offer any formal acknowledgement or statement of the dispossession of lands and people in the region, or of conflicts past and present worthy of reconciliation.  Faculty from Chadron State College will discuss the institution's progress toward creating a land-acknowledgement statement by engaging the many groups in the region impacted by our colonial past and by the present activities of the college. (Moderator Margaret Huettl)

VIDEO

4. Rural Communities

Garret Zastoupil (University of Wisconsin)

Regenerative Communities, Settler Colonialism, Decolonial Futures in North Dakota Coal Country
In the 1970s, the North Plains experienced rapid industrial development through the emergence of coal mining and power production. This growth was precipitated by increased demand on rural electrical cooperatives driven by the dual pressures of suburbanization and industrialized farming. This presentation will present a portion of a study examining how rural residents are (or are not) creating post-coal futures and enacting a just transition on the Northern Plains.

Jess Shoemaker (Professor, UNL) and Anthony Schutz (Professor, UNL)

The Rural Reconciliation Project
This presentation will explore how a reckoning and reconciliation framework might inform broader work on the future of rural people and places, which are now often situated on the losing side of a perceived rural/urban divide. This divide is frequently imagined as situating significant social, economic, political, and racial differences along geographic lines, and dialogue about these differences tend to take on a universalized sense of gospel, without enough room for more nuanced and complex questions about the past, present, and future of rural landscapes and communities.

(Moderator: Peter Longo)

VIDEO

---

APRIL 8: VIRTUAL

9 a.m. CST: Indigenous Journalism and Cooperative Media, Tristan Ahtone

Reporter Tristan Ahtone will present approaches to Indigenous journalism and cooperative reporting and newsroom organizing as tools to restructure the way journalists operate and subvert long-standing values that rely, and thrive, on racism, colonialism, capitalism, and nationalism.

Ahtone is a member of the Kiowa Tribe and is Editor at Large at Grist. He previously served as Editor in Chief at the Texas Observer and Indigenous Affairs editor at High Country News. He has reported for Al Jazeera America, PBS NewsHour, National Native News, NPR and National Geographic. Ahtone's stories have won multiple honors, including investigative awards from the Gannett Foundation and Public Radio News Directors Incorporated. He additionally led the High Country News team that received a George Polk Award, an IRE Award, a Sigma Award, a Society of News Design Award and a National Magazine Award nomination. A past president of the Native American Journalists Association, Ahtone is a 2017 Nieman Fellow and a director of the Muckrock Foundation.

VIDEO

10:30 - 11:30 a.m. CST: Concurrent session block 1

1. Conciliation as Curatorial Methodology

Tarah Hogue (Curator (Indigenous Art) at Remai Modern in Saskatoon, Canada), Adrian Stimson (Artist, Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation), Ernie Walker (Professor, University of Saskatchewan)

This roundtables features perspectives from the Northern Plains on the work of (re)conciliation in collaborative, cross-disciplinary, and cross-cultural contexts. In September 2021, Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation artist Adrian Stimson was artist-in-residence at Wanuskewin Heritage Park near Saskatoon, Canada. Wanuskewin is a significant cultural gathering place and archaeological site comprising aspects of habitation and spirituality. In 2019, Wanuskewin reintroduced buffalo and a calf was born during Stimson's residency. In April 2022, an exhibition of Stimson's work, including new works arising from the residency, will be mounted at Remai Modern in Saskatoon. The confluence of activities—archaeological, ecological and cultural—that Wanuskewin enables will ground a discussion of the work of (re)conciliation across an arts and science context. (Moderator: Annika Johnson)

VIDEO

2. Memories and Counter-Memories of Settler Colonial Violence

Jeffrey Shepherd (Professor, University of Texas at El Paso)

Racial Violence, Settler Colonial Memory Making, and Indigenous Views on the Washita "Battlefield" National Historic Site
As locations of public memory, our national monuments, memorials, and historic sites hold great promise as spaces of reconciliation and healing. Far too often, however, the narratives they foreground privilege settler-colonial visions of the past that justify conquest and Indigenous dispossession from aboriginal homelands. In doing so, these public sites of history perpetuate another form of violence in the present, by silencing the pain and suffering of Indigenous peoples caused by their erasure in dominant national histories.

(Moderator: Tom Lynch)

VIDEO

3. Treaty Rights and Frontline Resistance

Keshia Talking Waters De Freece Lawrence (Ramapough Lenape International Law scholar) and Isabella Knife (Indigenous Activist from the Ihanktonwan Dakota Nation, of the Feather Necklace Tiospaye)

This presentation will discuss, and layout the treaty history of the so-called United States with Indigenous nations, and examine this history in relation to international law, self-determination, ecocide, environmental sovereignty and indigenous autonomy. Presenters will also discuss the current stance of 'Blockadia,' the international environmental justice movement happening across Turtle Island. In addition, this presentation will critique climate change education systems, and the lack of transparency presented towards Indigenous nations with regards to land and water uses, and STEM research. (Moderator: Chris Steinke)

VIDEO

4. Chicano Mexican American Veterans

Marty Ramirez, Greg Rodriguez, Joe Perez, Gavino Saldivar (all Vietnam Era, Veteran, community activists)

Veterans Day and Memorial Day are celebrated annually throughout our country and while these days honor veterans who served, little has been done to recognize the contributions of Chicano/Mexican American veterans from the Scottsbluff/North Platte Valley in western Nebraska. Many veterans come from humble beginnings and from a culture where patriotism was strong, which led many to serve. The history of Chicano/Mexican American in the military has been excluded from the historical consciousness of the country. (Moderator: Laura Muñoz)

VIDEO

11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. CST: What Would Land Back Look Like at UNL?, Margaret Huettl (Assistant Professor UNL)

Dr. Margaret Huettl, Dr. Luis Othoniel Rosa (Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Ethnic Studies, UNL), Samantha Byrd (UNL undergraduate, Chickasaw), Nasia Olson-Whitefeather (UNL undergraduate, UNITE president, Anishinaabe)

This conversation considers the entanglements and possibilities of land, resources, and reconciliation at UNL. Beginning with context about UNL's history as a land grant university funded in part by the ongoing appropriation of Indigenous lands and resources, Huettl and her fellow panelists from across the university will discuss what it might look like to re-found the university on reciprocity and reconciliation rooted in the land itself.

VIDEO

1 - 2 p.m. CST: Concurrent session block 2

1. Indigenous Art, Film, and Media

Todd Richardson (Professor, UNO)

Indigenous Pop Art and Reckoning with Settler Colonialism
An exhibition featuring the artistic work of Tom Farris (Otoe-Missouria/Cherokee) will open at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in spring 2022. This will be the first time Farris's work, which challenges static notions of Indigenous culture by blending traditional and pop mythologies together, is shown in Nebraska. This is notable because Nebraska is ancestral home to the Otoe and Farris is a member of the Otoe-Missouri Tribe, yet he has never before set foot in the state. In April 2022, Dina Gilio-Whitaker will visit UNO in conjunction with this exhibition of Farris's work. Author of As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock, Gilio-Whitaker will address the ethics of living on stolen land, providing another opportunity for reckoning with the settler colonialism of the Great Plains. Richardson will discuss both of these events in the context of how Indigenous Pop Art and the Indigenization of pop mythologies offer unique opportunities for reckoning with colonial violence.

George De Medts (Aix-Marseille University, France)

Truth as Weapon and Medicine in Georgina Lightning's Older than America
Older than America (2008) written, produced, directed and starred by Canadian Cree filmmaker, Georgina Lightning, focuses on the devastating consequences of trauma caused by the Native boarding school system in North America. Dedicated to the director's father and inspired by his personal story, the film looks at the young victims of psychological, physical and sexual abuses practiced in these institutions. However, Older than America is not a period drama retelling the story. Instead, Georgina Lightning places the action of her suspense drama in the present, in order to underline the trauma's intergenerational impact. Permeated with Native spirituality, Older than America exemplifies how art could help in healing from the wounds caused by the decades of violence, forced acculturation and assimilation by bringing awareness about the truth and promoting Indigenous traditions.

Clementine Bordeaux (University of California, Los Angeles)

AIM and the Politics of Nostalgia: Indigenous Representation from Wounded Knee to Standing Rock
Founded in 1968, the American Indian Movement is a source of complicated nostalgia for Indigenous activists today. AIM orchestrated many actions that remain instructive touchstones, including the 1973 occupation at Wounded Knee, but the organization has also been characterized by a masculinism often found in its iconography. During the 2016 #NoDAPL mobilization, common invocations of AIM by mainstream media revealed the contrast between these moments of struggle. Analyzing this contrast through the visual record, Bordeaux argues that a dual nostalgia for AIM presents an opportunity to work through the colonial imposition of hetero-patriarchal norms. Current Indigenous media-makers have begun the work to demonstrate emancipatory gender politics that provide an elaboration of Indigenous representations of relationality, attesting to the connection between feminist, queer, and other-than-human kinship. Foregrounding the importance of tribal specificity, the author focuses on media produced on and of Lakota tribal homelands.

(Moderator: Rebekka Schlichting)

VIDEO

2. Settler Colonial Memoirs

Bernard Flaman (Royal Architectural Institute of Canada)

Ready-Made Farms on the Canadian Prairie Through the Lens of Reconciliation
In the 1980's, my father added the last plot of land to our family farm in Saskatchewan and it came with a compelling abandoned house. It was a ready-made farm constructed circa 1912 by the William Pearson Co of Winnipeg. The company archive consists only of maps, marketing brochures and several boxes of glass slides. This material was used to market property via "land seeker" excursions originating in Minneapolis to mainly American settlers, in a voracious pursuit of land and profit. This presentation will review these items in the light of reconciliation and as an illustration of what was mistakenly construed as terra nullius. What might be portrayed as a triumphant settlement story, must now be viewed as one that came at great expense and suffering to indigenous peoples.

Lily Nagengast (Georgetown University)

Heartland and Plains Women
Sarah Smarsh's Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth is the latest work in the burgeoning genre of rural memoir. Published in 2018, Smarsh's memoir recounts her upbringing as a fifth-generation Kansas wheat farmer and the child of generations of teenage mothers. Alongside her family's narrative of struggle on the Great Plains, Smarsh maps out the destruction of the working class wrought by public policy. Despite Heartland's success, no scholarship exists on it, and little scholarship exists on rural literature in general. This presentation situates itself in this significant gap in American literary studies. Instead of casting rural women's memoir as a subgenre of women's memoir, I place the two side-by-side to see where they intersect, rub against each other, and where they vastly differ.

Tom Lynch (Professor, UNL)

Eco-memoir, Bioregionalism, and Uncanny Settler Belonging in Jerry Wilson's Waiting for Coyote's Call
Environmentally attuned people of settler ancestry often feel they lack a deep belonging to place. Bioregionalism developed out of such circumstances. This paper examines the role of the bioregional eco-memoir as a sometimes problematic settler colonial response to this condition. Early bioregional thinkers drew inspiration from Indigenous peoples and bioregional texts evince a palpable envy for the deep connections Indigenous people have, and these members of settler cultures wish they had, with their local ecology. At the same time as these memoirs seek a form of settler belonging that is environmentally responsible, however, they nevertheless often recirculate tropes of pioneering settlement and often struggle to meaningfully engage with the Indigenous displacement from the very lands to which they themselves are seeking to belong.

(Moderator: Melissa Homestead)

VIDEO

3. The History of Las Voces / How Latino/a Immigrants Came to Nebraska

Marty Ramirez (retired psychologist), Rebecca Gonzalez (community activist), Yolanda Nuncio (community activist), Maria Elena Villasante (doctoral student, behavioral health consultant/community activist), Olga Kanne (community activist)

Historically, the question of how immigrants came to Nebraska has been a point of interest. With the recent discussion on immigration reform, this question from a historical perspective has ignited a renewed discussion. How Mexicans and other Latinos arrived to Nebraska has generated little attention. Thus a "Latino Voice" has been invisible, silent and forgotten.  In 2018, a few Latinos began to organize a group, LAS VOCES, (The Voices) to once again address current and past issues facing Latinos throughout Nebraska. The mission of Las Voces is to advocate and inspire positive change in the Latino/Hispanic community of Nebraska by addressing social justice issues through leadership, civic engagement, and collaboration. (Moderator: Michelle Warren)

VIDEO