2020 Brown Bag Series

Weaving Trans-Indigenous Solidarities in the Pacific: The Case of West Papua

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 18:55:22 +0000

Weaving Trans-Indigenous Solidarities in the Pacific: The Case of West Papua Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/05/2020 - 11:55

This talk focuses on artistic and literary activist work emerging from and constituting Indigenous protest movements in the Pacific. Activism constructs and depends on narratives—on stories. Specifically, I present the case of West Papua, using the poems from a special issue of Hawai‘i Review, Wansolwara: Voices for West Papua, to bring a literary lens to contemporary expressions of Papuan protest by West Papuans and by other Indigenous authors for West Papua. These poems articulate material and embodied acts of story-making as critical for mapping the Pacific as Indigenous space. Such acts of storied activism are not only responses to colonialism but part of creating coalitions that assert interconnected Indigenous presences and persistence in the Pacific. They theorize frameworks for transoceanic decolonial futures that emphasize the Pacific’s multiplicity of stories while also making visible relationships beyond the forced connections of empire.

Bonnie Etherington is the Environmental Futures Postdoctoral Fellow at CU �鶹ӰԺ. She earned her PhD in English from Northwestern University, and she is at work on a book manuscript entitled One Salt Water: Writing the Pacific Ocean in Contemporary Indigenous Protest Literatures. Her scholarly work is forthcoming in The Contemporary Pacific, and recently published in New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific (Routledge, 2019). Her first novel, The Earth Cries Out (Vintage NZ, 2017), was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and long-listed for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Bonnie was born in Aotearoa New Zealand and raised in West Papua.

Zoom:

Time: Nov 13, 2020 12:00 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/98651871346

Meeting ID: 986 5187 1346

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Changing Woman and the Collective Voice in Navajo and Korean Literature: Oral Tradition and the Poetry of Luci Tapahonso and Kim Hyesun

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 19:26:06 +0000

Changing Woman and the Collective Voice in Navajo and Korean Literature: Oral Tradition and the Poetry of Luci Tapahonso and Kim Hyesun Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/09/2020 - 13:26

By Ivanna Sang Een Yi

This talk compares the use of the collective voice by leading Diné/Navajo and Korean poets Luci Tapahonso and Kim Hyesun. Countering a narrative of the diminishment of oral traditions, the talk foregrounds the significance and flourishing of the oral tradition in (post)colonial contexts.

�鶹ӰԺ the speaker: Ivanna Sang Een Yi is a scholar of Korean literature, culture, and performance. Her research focuses on the performative dimensions of living oral traditions as they interact with written literature and the environment from the late Chosŏn period to the present. Her current book project, Continuing Orality and the Environment in Korean Literature, examines the flourishing of Korean oral traditions such as p'ansori (epic dramatic storytelling) and sijo (lyric poetry) through transformative encounters with writing, the environment, and recording technology. The monograph engages Indigenous perspectives and theories from the Americas to illuminate ways in which land has been treated as a sentient interlocutor rather than a commodity by Korean singers and writers both before and after the rise of global capitalism. She is also working on a second monograph project which examines the representation of nonhuman animals and interspecies relationships in modern and contemporary Korean literature. Before coming to Cornell, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the �鶹ӰԺ and a Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis.

Friday, October 30th, 2020 from 12:00- 1:00pm

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Karelian and other Indigenous Languages of Russia: endangerment and revitalization efforts

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 19:49:34 +0000

Karelian and other Indigenous Languages of Russia: endangerment and revitalization efforts Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/07/2020 - 13:49

All indigenous languages in Russia are endangered to differing extents, and in most cases their transmission from generation to another is damaged or interrupted. Indigenous language communities are interested in urgent revitalisation projects and long-term planning, while the authorities are seeking to promote «good practices» and «centuries-long experience» in safeguarding linguistic diversity. Karelian, Komi, Mari, Nenets, Sami and dozens of other languages will not survive without a logical and effective model for coexistence of endangered and dominant languages that includes setting priorities, restoring prestige, and promoting true revitalisation activities. As the world prepares for the United Nation’s International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022-2032, my research considers questions of how to make expectations a reality and who should participate in language policy development and implementation in Russia and beyond.

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Coca, Cocaine, and the New Left in Bolivia: Ethnographic Fieldwork on the ‘Drug War’ and Sindicato Democracy.

Anonymous — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 23:19:18 +0000

Coca, Cocaine, and the New Left in Bolivia: Ethnographic Fieldwork on the ‘Drug War’ and Sindicato Democracy. Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/28/2020 - 17:19

Bolivia’s agrarian sindicato, or labor union, system of communal governance represents a hybrid form of democracy which draws from several political traditions -- including European syndicalist theory, Bolivia's 1953 Agrarian Reform, and Andean cultural traditions -- and has contributed to the rise in indigenous participation and representation in national politics. Former President Evo Morales’s leadership style was forged through the agrarian sindicato system and its resistance to forced eradication of coca leaf via the U.S. “war on drugs.” My ethnographic research shows how the lucrative and highly symbolic coca leaf economy is the issue around which agrarian sindicato activity has been organized since the 1980s, utilizing such measures as assemblies, protest marches, road blockades, and summit meetings. I analyze these classic syndicalist methods of collective popular participation and show how sindicato governance contributed to Morales’s “democratic revolution” as part of the New Left and innovative coca policies centered on harm reduction.

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