Overview

This conference has two goals. First, we hope to further academic discussions about American Indian and First Nations sovereignty in all of its manifestations, and position Native peoples at the center of those debates. Second, we hope to build intellectual and institutional relationships throughout the broader Pacific Northwest. With the latter goal in mind, this conference is being held in cooperation with indigenous studies programs at the University of Victoria, the University of British Columbia, and the University of California at Davis. 

Conference Focus

The concept of “sovereignty” as both an international political norm and expression of cultural distinctiveness and political autonomy is central to American Indian and First Nations discourse in the United States and Canada. The terminology of “sovereignty” draws on long traditions of non-indigenous discourse with an extended history of development in European and Anglo-American legal and political thought. Not surprisingly, it has been adopted as a political strategy of resistance and a rhetorical method through which to advance aspirations for self-determination by tribal nations for centuries. At the same time, this language is often an uncomfortable fit on its own terms with the goals that tribal nations seek to pursue, suggesting hardened political and social boundaries around American Indian and First Nations communities and centralized coercive power within them. This stands in stark contrast to political relationships based in tribal epistemologies that acknowledge social flexibility, interdependence, reciprocity and non-coercive, respectful relationships between and within national communities.

This conference will explore both “alternative sovereignties” and “alternatives to sovereignty” that might better meet the political, cultural and social aspirations of American Indian and First Nations communities. We ask participants to focus on two areas: vision and struggle. “Vision” will theorize alternatives to centralized, coercive forms of sovereignty that might better reflect the social and political goals of American Indian and First Nations. “Struggle” will interrogate the rhetorical, representational and discursive strategies necessary to pursue these visions within adversarial cultural and political environments still defined and delimited by colonial power. Potential questions participants are asked to engage include, but are not limited to, the following: What might visions of “alternative sovereignties” or “alternative to sovereignty” look like? What values, hopes and aspirations would they express? In what ways do such visions align or exist in tension with contemporary expressions of the nation, sovereignty, self-determination and human rights both in Indian Country and beyond? What forms of contemporary political and social struggle will best allow Native peoples to develop and advance tribal visions that might substantively revise or intervene in hegemonic fields of power and knowledge? How and to what extent might individual tribal-national and global Indigenous issues compliment and reinforce one another? Considering contemporary movements like “Idle No More” and the ever-tenuous nature of Indigenous access to political, social and economic institutions of power, to what degree can “visions” be achieved even while “struggles” continue? Put differently, what are the theoretical and practical relationships between “vision” and “struggle,” and what role does Indigenous cultural and intellectual production serve in advancing these efforts?

Because there are many ways to investigate conceptions of alternative sovereignties, we seek participation from scholars who work on historical as well as contemporary American Indian and First Nations vision and struggle. Reflecting the interdisciplinarity of Native Studies as well as the co-organizers own positions as scholars in distinct academic fields (English and Political Science), we share a commitment to encourage conversation across academic, institutional and socio-cultural boundaries as the only appropriate way to address complex intersections between language, power, law, cultural production, imagination and experience. We thus actively seek participation from a diverse range of academic disciplines as well as from non-academic fields. This includes those most directly impacted by such debates: tribal leaders, attorneys, educators, activists, artists and other members of American Indian and First Nations communities in Oregon and the broader Northwest.

We expect the conference to have an impact on the field of Native Studies and affirm the nation-to-nation relationship between educational institutions and tribal governments throughout the Pacific Northwest. Building relationships between faculty members at the participating universities and Northwest indigenous nations will allow the University of Oregon to better serve its educational role in the broadest sense. Deepened relationships between faculty members within the university itself will also greatly strengthen our newly-created Native Studies minor by building common ground for course creation and educational content. We expect the conference to have academic implications more broadly as well, as we hope to develop a consortium for Pacific Northwest Indigenous Studies that may serve as a model for others.