Prophetstown Revisited: An Early Native American Studies Summit

Unless otherwise noted, all events take place in Stewart Center.

Thursday (April 3, 2008)

10:00 a.m. – 11:30. a.m.

Bus tour of Historic Prophetstown, led by Professor Dawn Marsh, Purdue History Department.  For more information and to sign up, email Cassie Smith (smith491@purdue.edu).

1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Registration, Stewart Center East Foyer

1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Panel – “Before Prophetstown”
Susan Sleeper-Smith, Michigan State University, chair

• Alan Shackelford, Denison University:  “Before Pan-Indian: Multiethnic Communities and Ethnogenesis in the Indigenous Great Lakes”
• Katy Chiles, Northwestern University:  “Native Confederation, Pan-Indianism, and Hendrick Aupaumut’s Ohio Valley Diplomacy”
• Jeremiah Waggoner, University of Notre Dame:  “Confederating Bodies and Texts: Hendrick Aupaumut, Prophetstown and the Contestation of Native Cultural Renewal”
• Tyler Boulware, West Virginia University:  “Secession and Civil War? The American Revolution in Cherokee Country”

Workshop – “Building Networks of Relation and Exchange:  Scholarship with Native Communities”

The field of Native American Studies has placed a renewed emphasis on the importance of working cooperatively and responsibly with Native communities.   How can early Native American studies establish responsible and reciprocal relationships with Native communities?  University-based scholars and Native communities both stand to benefit from increased communication and interaction. This workshop will offer practical insights into developing Native-academic networks of relationship and exchange in our scholarship and our classrooms. Our conversation will discuss benefits that stem from these relationships, as well as ways to address the challenges they sometimes entail.

As a common text for the workshop, we will be using the introduction and first chapter from the book Natives and Academics, which will be available to those registered for the conference.

Leaders:

• Joanna Brooks (SDSU)
• Lisa Brooks (Harvard)
• Dawn Marsh (Purdue)

3:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Break

3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Panel – “During Prophetstown”
Edward Watts, Michigan State University, chair

• Patrick Bottiger, University of Oklahoma: “Peculiar Connections:  Vincennes Factionalizes Over Prophetstown”
• Sarah Miller, University of South Carolina – Salkehatchie: “British Promises, Indian Disappointment”
• Brad Jarvis, Saginaw Valley State University: “‘No great friend of Indians’:  Politicians, Economic Development, and the Failed Brothertown Migration to the White River (1809-1825)”

Panel – “Faith/Race”
Hilary Wyss, Auburn University, chair

• J. Patrick Cesarini, University of Southern Alabama: “Pachumu Hope’s Confession and the Ambiguities of Indian Conversion”
• Theresa Gaul, Texas Christian University:  “Religion in the Cherokee Phoenix”
• Rob McLoone, University of Iowa: “Community-building and Separatism in Two Hymns by Samson Occom”

Workshop – “Culture Keepers: Historic Preservation and Protection in Tribal Communities”
                     Sponsored by the Tecumseh Group, Purdue University

This workshop concerns the contemporary mission of tribal preservation offices: maintaining cultural identity by protecting and preserving traditional lifeways and historic/cultural sites.  Discussion will touch on current issues such as data management, section 106 responsibilities and fostering cultural participation of language and art revitalization. 

Leaders:

• Robin Dushane, Eastern Shawnee
• Karen Kaniatobe, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Absentee Shawnee Tribe
• Joshua Sutterfield, Miami Nation
• Andrew Warrior, Director, Cultural Preservation Department, Absentee Shawnee Tribe
• Dawn Marsh, Purdue University

6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

Conference Banquet, Memorial Union Ballroom

7:30-8:30

Blessing, Andrew Warrior, Director, Cultural Preservation Department, Absentee Shawnee Tribe

Keynote Address – Rick West, founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian, Memorial Union Ballroom

Friday (April 4, 2008)

8:30 a.m.

Coffee in the break room

9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

Panel – “Lands/Borderlands”
Neal Salisbury, chair

• Tracy Brown, Central Michigan University:  “What Makes a Borderland a ‘Borderland’? Indigenous Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands”
• Tom Shields, East Carolina University:  “John Lawson’s Indians: Early Eighteenth-Century Portrayal of Native Americans of the Southeast in a Comparative Context”
• Sabine Klein, Purdue University: “Indian Ventriloquism: Constructing Whiteness in Colonial New Netherland”
• Andrew Newman, State University of New York, Stony Brook: “‘[T]hey had not understood it was to be done that way’: Colonial Land Transactions, Interpretation, and Equivocation”

Panel – “After Prophetstown”
Nicole Livengood, Purdue University, chair

• John Fierst, Central Michigan University: “‘Salt Mountains and Horned Frogs’: The Politics of Removal and the Publication of John Tanner’s Narrative”
• Julie Byrd, Indiana Historical Bureau:  “Stephen Benack:  A Metis Who Avoided the 1838 Potawatomi Removal”
• Joshua Bellin, La Roche College:  “Transfers of Power: Tenskwatawa, George Catlin, and the Fate of Indian Sacred Performance”

Workshop – “Envisioning History:  New Technologies for Presenting the Past”

Participants include Sorin Matei (Purdue University, Communications) and Gary Foreman (Native Sun Productions).  This workshop will offer demonstrations of two cutting-edge approaches to collecting, remembering, studying, and making accessible history and historic places and events, followed by a conversation about best practices for representing history, reaching new audiences and including diverse communities.  Of particular interest will be the possibilities for adapting these approaches to Prophetstown.

Leaders:

• Susan Curtis, Purdue University, facilitator
• Gary Foreman, Native Sun Productions
• Sorin Matei, Purdue University

10:30 a.m – 11:00 a.m.

Break

11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Panel – “Oratory/Performance”
Sandra Gustafson, University of Notre Dame, chair

• Megan Hughes, Purdue University: “Native Allies, Native Enemies:  Miantonomi’s Use of Colonial Deliberative Rhetoric”
• Jeffrey Richards, Old Dominion University: “Carabasset: Performance, Memory, and the Slaughter of the Norridgewocks”
• Penelope Kelsey, Western Illinois University: “Wampum and Tribal Theory:  Haudenosaunee Oratory and Material Culture”
• Tania Jabour, University of California:  “‘Who will regard us?’ Native American Orators and the American Visual Field”

“Revolutions/Nations”
Joy Howard, Purdue University, chair

• James Greene, West Virginia University:  “The Treaty as Ban:  The Treaty of Hopewell and the Construction of American Sovereignty”
• Granville Ganter, St. Johns University: “Race and Nation for the Haudenosaunee in the Age of Handsome Lake”
• Stephen Warren, Augustana College:  “Borderland Cultures:  Transience and Ethnogenesis in Woodland Indian History”
• John Kucich, Bridgewater State College: “William Apess and Pan-Indian Nullification”

Workshop – “The Words of the Prophet (and Tecumseh too)”

As scholars analyze the spread of Tenskwatawa’s spiritual movement and the leadership of Tecumseh in the Native resistance to U.S. colonization of the Old Northwest, the actual spoken words of the two men are an invaluable source. From about 1808 until 1813, many individuals set down records of speeches they claimed to have heard the men utter, transcriptions which appeared in a variety of printed works. Among the most important scenes are Tecumseh’s meeting with William Henry Harrison in Vincennes in August 1810, and his rebuke of General Proctor in 1813, as well as the Prophet’s articulation of his prophetic vision, and statements of his message such as are found in John Tanner’s Narrative. But methodological problems are numerous:

• What language, Shawnee, English, or others, did the brothers speak?
• Who served as translators or interpreters and what were their skills?
• How might oral histories from members of relevant tribes add to the understanding of these men’s words?
• What was the possible influence of the motives and interests of the authors in whose books some of these speeches first appeared?
• Because heroic oratory by American Indian chiefs was already a powerful popular genre in the early 19th century, how might we need to read through or sift out certain popular conventions to arrive at more accurate texts?

James H. Merrell’s article on Teedyuscung’s 1756 treaty council speeches, published in the October 2006 issue of William and Mary Quarterly, offers a model for our analysis of Tecumseh and the Prophet’s speeches, and will be available electronically to registered workshop participants in advance of the meeting. The workshop will look at key sources including Benjamin Drake, Moses Dawson, John Richardson, John Tanner, John Dunn Hunter, C. C. Trowbridge, William Henry Harrison, and archives such as the Draper manuscripts at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Leader:  Gordon Sayre, University of Oregon

12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Lunch break

2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Panel – “Native American Medical Knowledge in Colonial Encounters”
Ralph Bauer, University of Maryland, chair

• Julie Chun Kim, University of Florida: “Tobacco, Taste, and the Atlantic Roots of English Empiricism”
• Kelly Wisecup, University of Maryland – College Park: “Communicating Disease:  Plague, Indian ‘brabbles,’ and History in the New England Colonies”
• Cristobal Silva, Florida State University:  “Appropriating Epidemiology: Tisquantum and the Etiology of Buried Plague”

Workshop –  “Teaching Native American Texts in High School and Middle School”

This workshop will emphasize pedagogy and hands-on strategies for teaching Native American materials.  Discussion will begin with topics suggested by high school educators who have attended previous SEA meetings as well as members of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures listserve, but will continue with topics suggested by workshop participants.  While the emphasis is on high school and middle school education, the workshop is also intended to be useful to college and university faculty with students who are English/Secondary Education majors.

Leaders:

• Zabelle Stodola, University of Arkansas, Little Rock
• Betty Donohue, Independent Scholar, Cooweescoowee District, Cherokee Nation West

3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Break

4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Panel – “Changing the Critical Narratives of Early Native American Studies”
Eric Gary Anderson, George Mason University, chair

• Maureen Konkle, University of Missouri-Columbia: “The Marshall Trilogy and the Rise of Liberal Imperialism in the U.S.”
• Eric Gary Anderson, George Mason University:  “‘Driven up the Red Waters:’ Southeastern Captivity Narratives and Indigenous Voices in Exile in the Wake of Removal”
• Phillip Round, University of Iowa:  “American Indian Literary Studies and the ‘New Genre’ of the Revitalization Movements”

Workshop – “Re-appropriating Early Documents:  Language and Image”
                     Sponsored by the Tecumseh Group, Purdue University

Native Americans have been documented since early contact by outsiders, the “other,” by use of the written word, drawings, paintings and/or photography to capture a native community’s way of life. How are primary documents like these meaningful to a native community today? Can they be re-appropriated in a way that they become internally pertinent? What use can they have for the issues that are of relevance to the native community of the 21st century?

This workshop will look at how Native Americans in present-day have re-appropriated, re-interpreted and decolonized early documents created by outsiders from an internal perspective. The workshop aims to create a forum for exchange of experiences in dealing with early documents in a way that can be of relevance to present-day native communities.  Participants include Daryl Baldwin, Myaamia, jessie little doe, Wampanoag.

Leaders:

• Daryl Baldwin, Director, Myaamia Project
• Lynne Harlan, Eastern Cherokee Band
• Jessie Little Doe, Wampanoag, “Using Historic Assimilation Tools to Create a Venue for the Survival of Contemporary Culture”

Facilitators:

• Elena Benedicto, Purdue University
• Valerie Yazza, Purdue University

5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

Dinner on your own

8:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Keynote Event – “An Evening with Chris Eyre”; screening of A Thousand Roads (2005) and preview of the Tecumseh documentary for the PBS series “We Shall Remain.”

Lafayette Theater, 600 Main Street, Lafayette.  Busses leave from the front of the Union Hotel from 5:30-6:30, and will return following the event.

Saturday (April 5, 2008)

9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.

Coffee available in the plenary room

9:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Plenary Roundtable – “More Materials into Play: How Can We Make More Early Native Materials Accessible?”

• David Carlson, California State University, San Bernardino
• Lorrayne Carroll, University of Southern Maine
• Matt Cohen, Duke University
• Betty Booth Donohue, Independent Scholar, Cooweescoowee District, Cherokee Nation West
• Stephanie Fitzgerald, University of Kansas
• Jeffrey Glover, Yale University
• Ivy Schweitzer, Dartmouth College

Dennis Moore, Florida State University, moderator

11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Break

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Keynote Address – Gregory Evans Dowd, Director of the Program in American Culture, University of Michigan

1:00 p.m

Optional event:  excursion to Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis.  Busses leave from Union Hotel at 1:00.  Box lunch provided; registration required.