Event
Friday, February 25, 2022 at 5:30pm in Olscamp 101
Sharing Narratives
Shaping Narratives is an Emmy-nominated series centers the experiences of Indigenous and minoritized individuals through reclaiming of heritage and the process of unlearning colonial structures and thinking.
Seth Thomas Sutton
Seth Thomas Sutton is a Métis descendant of the North Shore Band, waganakasing Odawa (Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, Harbor Springs, MI). An artist, scholar, author, and activist, Seth is also the chair of the Arts & Humanities Department at Montcalm Community College. He is an award-winning professor whose artistic works, scholarship, pedagogy, and activism address an array of topics including cultural criticism, postcolonialism, critical race theory, Tribal sovereignty, Indigenous art & activism, visual arts, art history, anthropology, sociology, and visual rhetoric.
Seth's Latest Project
"The Deconstruction of Chief Blackhawk is a qualitative critical analysis of the National Hockey League’s Chicago Blackhawks’ mascot, Chief Blackhawk. Through a decolonizing deconstruction of various Indigenous stereotypes, this book examines the ethical and moral consequences of the continued use of disparaging Indigenous imagery for professional sports mascots, dominant White society’s reliance on the Indian as the measure of American identity, and the ramifications of colonial control of Indigenous agency, thereby justifying Westward Expansion."
wiinwaa niizhaasing (We the 7th)
The Emmy-nominated documentary, wwiinwaa niizhaasing (We the 7th), shares stories of the Indigenous communities of Standing Rock and West Michigan.
For Further Reading
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Call Number: E76.8 .D86 2014ISBN: 9780807000403Publication Date: 2014-09-16Now part of the HBO docuseries "Exterminate All the Brutes," written and directed by Raoul Peck. Recipient of the American Book Award. The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples.
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by Call Number: E77 .T797 2019ISBN: 0399573194Publication Date: 2019-11-05FINALIST FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Named a best book of 2019 by The New York Times, TIME, The Washington Post, NPR, Hudson Booksellers, The New York Public Library, The Dallas Morning News, and Library Journal. A sweeping history--and counter-narrative--of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present. The received idea of Native American history--as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's mega-bestselling 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee--has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did one hundred fifty Sioux die at the hands of the U. S. Cavalry, the sense was, but Native civilization did as well. Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative. Because they did not disappear--and not despite but rather because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence--the story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention. In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes' distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. The devastating seizures of land gave rise to increasingly sophisticated legal and political maneuvering that put the lie to the myth that Indians don't know or care about property. The forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Conscription in the US military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.
Playing Indian by Call Number: E98.P99 D45 1998ISBN: 0300071116Publication Date: 1998-04-20The Boston Tea Party, the Order of Red Men, Camp Fire Girls, Boy Scouts, and Grateful Dead concerts are just a few examples of the American tendency to appropriate Indian dress and act out Indian roles. This provocative book explores how white Americans have used their ideas about Indians to shape national identity in different eras--and how Indian people have reacted to these imitations of their native dress, language, and ritual. 25 illustrations.
