Native American Studies Initiative Workshop
Claudio Lomnitz
Director, Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
William B. Ransford Professor of Anthropology
The objective of the workshop is to identify the advantages and disadvantages of studying Native Americans as a stand-alone group, or within the broader comparative frame of the study of indigeneity. This is a vexing question that involves weighing theoretical and historical considerations against the pragmatics of limited university resources, and an urgent concern with the recognition and study of Native American social conditions, culture, and thought. Our workshop opens a space for sustained consideration of this matter. The category "Native American" is one specific result and instance of the dialectics of identity formation around colonization, internal colonialism, and de-colonization. It refers to a set of peoples who suffered and who reconfigured their cultures and social institutions within the broad historical arc of British, French, and Spanish colonial expansion into North America, and subsequently within the national history of the United States. From the angle of a contemporary politics of recognition, the category also names a political space of identification.
Would the conceptual and comparative benefits of building a program around the more general category of indigeneity - a category that has been deployed across colonial worlds - outweigh sacrificing exclusive attention to the experience of Native Americans in the United States? Is there a way in which Native American Studies can be given pride of place within a program that acknowledges that indigeneity is a highly plastic idea, that has been used, for instance, to distinguish Black Dominicans from Haitians, to name "minorities" in the Soviet Union, and that has at times been substituted with a language of class (for instance, campesino, in the Bolivia of the 1950s)?
Our workshop seeks to explore the contours of comparative indigeneity studies and the place of Native American Studies within it. Its aim is to help us build a robust and intellectually coherent program in which Native American Studies can thrive.
Nahuatl Program - The First Steps
By Caterina Pizzigoni
In 2007, Columbia joined the consortium that Yale and Chicago created to promote the teaching of Nahuatl, the indigenous language of central Mexico. While many ideas and options continue to be discussed, focusing on cooperation with Mexican instructors, we are ready to start with a first experiment. During my seminar 'Nahuatl Language and Culture' in Spring 2009, the director of IDIEZ (Institute for Teaching and Research in Ethnology, University of Zacatecas, Mexico), Professor John Sullivan, and a native speaker from the same institute will join the class for ten days of intensive instruction and activities. The hope is that this will be just the beginning of a long-term collaboration that will make possible for the consortium to work with Nahua instructors within the framework of a language program. At the same time, the interaction between students and native speakers from indigenous communities in Mexico will foster a deeper understanding of the language and the culture that nurtures it. I thank the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and the Institute of Latin American Studies for their generous support which has made this initiative possible.
Courses, Spring 2010
- CSER W3250 Representations of Native America
- John Gamber ~ T/R 2:40 - 3:55 PM ~ 420 Hamilton This introductory lecture course is targeted for students majoring in programs within the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and for those interested in Native American studies more generally. This course is designed to serve as an introduction, at the undergraduate level, to a number of the key issues and debates of the humanities within Native American Studies, particularly when paired with Professor Audre Smith's social science-centered course, Indigenous North America from 1871 to the Present. Students will come away with a working knowledge of many of the most pressing issues pertaining to Native American people and communities today and their developments in the modern era. We will take a primarily chronological approach to our studies which will range from literature, art, film, television, music, and theatre. Alongside these artistic texts we will study articles and book chapters that relate to issues present in the primary texts, issues including attempts to define Native identity, relations to land, religion, law, history, education, museums, and anthropology.
- CSER W3080 Indigenous Peoples and Environment
- Chie Sakakibara ~ T/R 9:10 - 10:25 AM ~ Location TBA This course is a worldwide survey of indigenous peoples' ongoing struggle to control and use natural resources, to have a say in determining the path of economic development, and to restrain the destructive tendancies of Western colonialism and economic globalization. These conflicts now comprise a global political movement that chcallenges the economic and political institutions of the West, one that has contributed significantly to changing the nature of old-fashioned international (i.e., state-to-state or country-to-country) relations. Our main task is to develop a basic understanding of where indigenous peoples fit in to the environmental conditions and the political, cultural, and economic practices that are part of these conflicts. You should keep up with both the reading assignments and the lectures. The lectures will be coordinated with the assigned readings, but will include information not in these readings.
Courses, Fall 2009
- ANTH W4480 CRIT NATIVE/INDIGENOUS STUDIE
- Audra Simpson ~ T/R 11:00 - 12:15 AM
- ANTH V3090 INTRO TO NATIVE AMER STUDIE
- Audra Simpson ~ T/R 2:40 - 3:55 PM
You may download a complete listing of Columbia and Barnard Native American Studies courses, past and present.
Native American Studies Committee
- Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart Associate Professor, School of Social Work
- Geraldine Downey Vice Provost for Diversity Initiatives; Professor of Psychology
- Severin Fowles Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
- Aaron Fox Associate Professor, Department of Music; Director, Center for Ethnomusicology
- Evan Haefeli Assistant Professor, Department of History
- JoAnn Kintz
- Karl Kroeber Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Department of English
- Claudio Lomnitz Director, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race; William H. Ransford Professor of Anthropology
- Colleen Major
- Brinkley Messick Chair, Department of Anthropology
- Caterina Pizzigoni Assistant Professor, Department of History
- Elizabeth A. Povinelli Professor, Department of Anthropology
- Adam Spry
Sponsors
- Columbia Native American Council
- Office of Multicultural Affairs
- Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity Initiatives
- Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
- Institute for Research on Women and Gender
- The Center for Ethnomusicology
- For Native American Studies Initiative & CSER Events, Click Here.

