Indigenous Cartographies and the (Cultural) Rhetorics of Mapping: a Conversation
Event details
This conversation is a response, in part at least, to Donald Trump's decision to reinstate the name Mt. Mckinley to Denali in Alaska. Reflecting on points of intersection between our work in the field of Indigenous Studies we will draw on different moments and geographical spaces to discuss Indigenous activist responses in art and literature to colonial imposition as it relates to the claiming, naming, and framing of Indigenous lands. Putting the work of writers in the early 20th century, such as Dakota author Zitkala Sa into discussion with writers and artists in the later 20th/early 21st century, such as Mohawk artist Alan Michelson, we will explore a number of cultural (and) rhetorical responses to the mapping and remapping of Indigenous territories.
Julianne Newmark is University of New Mexico's Director of Technical & Professional Communication and Assistant Chair for Core Writing. During 2024-2025, she is a Fulbright-Tampere University Scholar, supported by the Fulbright Finland Foundation. Her research focuses on usability/UX/UCD and TPC pedagogy. She also teaches, conducts research, and publishes in Indigenous Studies, particularly concerning early-20th-century Native activist writers’ rhetorically impactful bureaucratic writing, largely in Bureau of Indian Affairs contexts. Archival research grants from CCCC/NCTE and the American Philosophical Society have supported her in-progress second monograph, provisionally titled Reports of Agency: Retrieving Indigenous Professional Communication in Dawes Era Indian Bureau Documents. Her 2015 book was The Pluralist Imagination from East to West in American Literature (University of Nebraska Press). She is Editor-in-Chief of Xchanges, a Writing Studies ejournal.
David Stirrup is Professor of American Literature and Indigenous Studies in the Department of English and Related Literatures and the founder of the Centre for Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies. He is currently PI on an AHRC project titled Metis: a Global Indigenous People, working with Metis scholars and community members from the Prairie Provinces of Canada. His most recent publications include the monograph Picturing Worlds: Visuality and Visual Sovereignty in Contemporary Anishinaabe Writing (Michigan State UP, 2020) and The Canada-US Border: Culture and Theory (Edinburgh UP, 2024), co-edited with Jeffrey Orr. He is one of the founding editors of the online journal of contemporary Indigenous writing, Transmotion.