Sawyer Seminar | Land Grant Universities
- Sponsor
- Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar
- Speaker
- Tristan Ahtone, Grist Editor at Large
- spurlock-museum@illinois.edu
- Phone
- 217-333-2360
- Views
- 3
- Originating Calendar
- Life of the Mind
This presentation examines the entangled histories of Indigenous land dispossession, the founding of the land-grant university system, and epistemicide in settler colonial institutions. Building on the Land-Grab Universities and Misplaced Trust investigations, and drawing from current efforts by the Trump administration to eliminate diversity initiatives at U.S. institutions, this talk draws a direct line between the violent expropriation of Indigenous territories to the erasure of Indigenous peoples on campuses and in American institutions at large, ultimately arguing that ideas of academic freedom cannot be disentangled from questions of historic justice and decolonial action.
About the Speaker
Tristan 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, Indian Country Today, and NPR to name a few. Ahtone’s stories have won multiple honors, including a George Polk Award, Richard LaCourse awards, a National Magazine Award nomination, and investigative awards from the Gannett Foundation and IRE: Investigative Reporters and Editors. A past president of the Native American Journalists Association, Ahtone is a 2017 Nieman Fellow.
About the Series
This lecture launches the Mellon Sawyer Seminar event series "At Risk U: the Past, Present & Future of Academic Freedom."
Dr. Joseph P. Gone is the Faculty Director of the Harvard University Native American Program and an international expert in the psychology and mental health of American Indians and other Indigenous Peoples.