Writing the First Peoples of the Americas: Quebec, Florida, Amazonia, The Caribbean
About the Event
Organizers
Martin Munro (FSU), Andrew Frank (FSU), Juan-Carlos Galeano (FSU) Rodney Saint-Éloi (Mémoire d’encrier), Eliana Vāgālāu (Loyola University Chicago)
Keynote Speakers
Joséphine Bacon, Virginia Bordeleau, Jessica Cattelino, Rafael Chancharí Pizuri, Alejandra Dubcovsky, Norma Dunning, Jorge Marcone, Rita Mestokosho, Jeremy Narby, Tina Osceola, Louis Karl Picard Sioui, Miguel Rocha and Jean Sioui
This conference brings together the people and cultures of the First Nations of Canada with those of Florida, Amazonia and the Caribbean. Conceived in a spirit of solidarity, the conference will welcome scholars, artists, authors, and activists from the four regions, in order to explore their particularities as well as the connections between them. What can the art and literature of these regions tell us about ecology, history, language, memory, and justice? What can First Peoples’ presence and survival tell us about the long history of colonialism and efforts to erase their histories and cultures?
“Writing the First Peoples of the Americas” furthers comparative and global mission of the Winthrop-King Institute by examining the ongoing presence and importance of these communities and cultures throughout the western hemisphere. The conference stems from a desire to amplify and learn directly from and about First Peoples’ voices, whether they are expressed in their own languages, French, Spanish, or English. In doing so, it reaffirms the survivance of the First Peoples.
While the study of Native American and Anglophone Canadian First-Nations literature is well established and flourishing, there has been relatively little scholarly attention paid to the work of First Nations authors from Quebec writing in French, and it barely features in discussions of Francophone postcolonial writing more broadly. And yet, since the early 1970s, a body of such work in French has developed, through texts that typically address issues of culture, history, and politics in attempts to raise awareness among and beyond the indigenous communities. During the 1980s and 1990s, the writing expanded beyond the preservation of old tales, and became increasingly creative in its use of genres such as the novel, poetry, and drama, and in its engagement with diverse social, cultural, and historical issues. As the literature develops, so does its audience, and awareness of this neglected but important literary tradition is slowly growing. One of the aims of this conference is to expand awareness, understanding, and appreciation of this important corpus of writing in French through hosting sessions and panels that bring together First Nations experts, guests, artists, filmmakers, and scholars from Florida, the Amazon, and the Caribbean (including French Guyane) in a celebration of the first cultures of the broader Americas.
The rich biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest and the lives of its culturally diverse inhabitants have had an important presence in the media and discourse on critical global issues such as destruction of the Amazonian biome and climate change. Whereas it is true that the Amazon rainforest still provides an ecological service to the world, no less important are the medicinal plants, cultural practices, epistemologies, and ecological spirituality native to the basin and its people. Cultural production, through the oral narratives of the First Peoples and Amazonian literature written in Spanish by non-Indigenous authors, have allowed Amazonian voices and perspectives to contribute to discourse examining the effects of globalization and the environmental crisis. Authors and researchers such as Jorge Marcone, Jeremy Narby, Miguel Rocha and the Amazonian philosopher Rafael Chanchari Pizuri from the Shawi nation will speak and discuss these issues and other related themes at the conference.
The conference will also consider the ways in which Seminoles and other First Floridians have used the written and spoken word to defy acts of colonialism, acts that sought to erase their presence on the peninsula and deny their legitimacy as a people. Prior to and during the 19th-century war, Seminoles insisted that Florida was their ancestral homelands and rejected notions that they were newcomers. Instead, they pointed to their primordial connections to their Florida homelands and tied their political authority to their connection to the territory’s peculiar ecology. As nineteenth-century headman Miconopy expressed, “Here our navel strings were first cut and blood from them sunk into the earth, and made the country dear to us.—We have heard that the Spaniards sold this Country to the Americans. This they had no right to do,—the land was not theirs, it belonged to the Seminole.” More recently the elder and activist Bobby Billie explained “In the earlier days, before you called it Florida, when there were not too many newcomers in the one you call Florida, we lived our way of life, we hunted and fished and camped and lived through out the one you call Florida and beyond just as our Ancestors did.” Their testimonies then and now reveal how Seminoles defined their identity through kinship, their cosmology and the ecology.
"El Rio," directed by Juan Carlos Galeano, Ph.D, will be screened at the conference.
Wednesday, April 5
3 to 4 p.m. Diffenbaugh 009
- Opening Remarks by the Conference Organizers
- Readings/Encounters: Joséphine Bacon, Juan Carlos Galeano, Rita Mestokosho, Martin Munro, Tina Osceola, Rodney Saint-Eloi, Jean Sioui.
4:30 to 6:00 p.m. Panels
Amazonia I - Diffenbaugh 128
Chair: Juan Carlos Galeano
- Richard Price (College of William & Mary), From Enemies to Allies: Maroons and Indigenous Peoples on the Amazonian Fringe.
- Mariana Aristizabal (Independent Researcher, Colombia), Post-covid Education in Leticia: Challenges and Implications
Language and Linguistics I - Diffenbaugh 009
Chair: Marie Bea
- Antje Muntendam (FSU), Language Maintenance and Shift in Indigenous Communities in the Andes: The Case of Quechua and Spanish
- Joanne Connauton (FSU), “I am a Salmon Person” – Indigenous Stories, Settler Legal Languages and Relationships with the More-Than-Human
- Eden Gordon Stafstrom (FSU), Amplifying Indigenous Voices: The Role of Researchers in Language Revitalization Efforts
6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Welcome reception
6:30 to 8:00 p.m. screening: "El río," by Juan Carlos Galeano at Diffenbaugh 009
The film will be introduced by Diego Mejia Prado
Thursday, April 6
9 to 10:30 p.m. Panels
Quebec I - Diffenbaugh 009
Chair: Mehdi Chalmers
- Severine Rebourcet (College of Mount Saint Vincent), Environmental Activism and indigenous Hip-hop
- Martin Munro (FSU), Listening to Joséphine Bacon
- Joséphine Bacon- Readings
Amazonia II - Diffenbaugh 214
Chair: Juan Carlos Galeano
- Corinne Fournier Kiss (University of Bern), Representations of the Amazonian Native in French Literature (from the 19th to the 21st Centuries)
- Romona Bennett (University of Guyana), The circum-Roraima landscape, Indigenous cosmographies and women in Pauline Melville’s The Ventriloquist’s Tale
10:30 to 10:45 a.m. Coffee
10:45 to 11:15 a.m. Author spotlight: Norma Dunning reading from her work - Diffenbaugh 009
11:15 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. Panels
Caribbean - Diffenbaugh 009
Chair: Martin Munro
- Pierre-Yves Boissau (Université de Toulouse), Revenir au pays: évocation des morts ou descente aux enfers?
- Erika Serrato (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Petroglyph as Cipher: Unearthing Resistance in Francophone Caribbean literature
- Isabel Bradley (Duke University), “Mais nos Dieux ont fait notre pais, & font croître notre Manioc”: Rooted Entanglements and Indigenous Resistance in the French Colonial Caribbean
Quebec II - Diffenbaugh 214
Chair: Timothy Lomeli
- Cris Robu (St. Lawrence University), Joséphine Bacon: the chronotope of the journey in Je m'appelle humain (2000)
- Bill Marshall (University of Stirling), First Nations Film-making in Quebec: from Documentary to the Horror Genre
- Dorothea Heitsch (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Gabrielle Roy’s Indigenous Heritage: Nature, Spirituality, and First Nation Culture in Street of Riches
12:45 to 2:00 p.m. Lunch
2 to 3:30 p.m. Keynotes - Diffenbaugh 009
Chair: Juan Carlos Galeano
- Rafael Chanchari Pizuri, (Formabiap, Peru) El buen vivir” is Harmony with the Earth
- Jeremy Narby (Amazonian projects coordinator, Nouvelle Planète), Writing about Amazonian knowledge
3:30 to 3:45 p.m. Coffee
3:45 to 4:15 p.m. Author spotlight: Jean Sioui, reading from his work - Diffenbaugh 009
4:15 to 5:45 p.m. Keynotes - Diffenbaugh 009
Chair: Juan Carlos Galeano
- Miguel Rocha Vivas (Universidad Javeriana), Amazonian Indigenous Contemporary Oralitures
- Jorge Marcone (Rutgers Univeristy), Boom and Bust: Amazonian Literatures and Resilience in 20th-Century Peru
5:45 to 7:00 p.m. Reception
Friday, April 7
9 to 10:30 a.m. Panels
Breaking Silences: Cultural Transmission in Indigenous Women’s Writing from Quebec - Student Services Building 203
Chair: Ioana Pribiag
- Isabella Huberman (University of Toronto), Beavers, Dams and Voices in Okinum by Émilie Monnet
- Ioana Pribiag (University of Minnesota), Paradoxes of Fragmentation in Naomi Fontaine’s Kuessipan
- Tania Grégoire (Université Sainte-Anne), La traversée de l'archipel : la poétique du mouvement et sa portée décoloniale dans Nanimissuat.Île tonnerre de Natasha Kanapé Fontaine
- Miléna Santoro (Georgetown University), Indigenous Teaching: The Transmission Imperative in the Works of Naomi Fontaine
Florida - Student Services Building 218
Chair: Andrew Frank
- Adam Beauchamp (FSU), Dispossession along the Archival Frontier: The Structure and Process of Settler Colonialism in Nineteenth-century Florida
- Brad Dixon (University of Memphis), Making the Case Against Colonialism: Indigenous Power and the “Trials” of Florida and Virginia, 1600-1625
- Denise Bossy (University of North Florida), Writing the Mocama History of French Fort Caroline
10:30 to 10:45 a.m. Coffee
10:45 to 11:15 a.m. Author spotlight: Rita Mestokosho reading from her work - Student Services Building 203
11:15 a.m. 12:45 p.m. Panels
Language and Linguistics II - Student Services Building 218
Chair: Gavin Byrd
- Antje Muntendam, Laura Gil, & Gabbi Isgar (FSU), Language contact in Santiago del Estero, Argentina: questions in Quichua
- Carolina Gonzalez (FSU), Degrees of Remoteness: The Grounding of Verbal Tense in Memory, Culture, and Human Experience of Nature in the Languages of the Americas
Amazonia III - Student Services Building 203
Chair: Juan Carlos Galeano
- Alexis Finet (Vanderbilt University), Are Amazonian Realities Translatable in Text?
- Virginia Machado (FSU), A Eurocentric vision on the Amazon and its people: then and now
- Amber Courtemanche-Vargas (Florida State University), Respeto como la salvación de los seres humanos: la relación recíproca entre los humanos y la naturaleza demostrado en White Gold: Diary of a Rubbercutter in the amazon
- Laura Parces (Florida State University) Observations of the Contemporary Material Culture of Amazonian Indigenous Communities.
Geographies - Student Services Building 214
Chair: Andrew Frank
- Tyler McCreary (FSU), Fire! Indigenous Oral History and the Memory of Recurrent Patterns of Colonial Displacement
- Dean Michael (FSU), Water and Sand: The Colorado River Compact, Parker Dam, and Chemehuevi Erasure
12:45 to 3:00 p.m. Lunch and Visit to Mission San Luis
3 to 4 p.m. Keynotes - Mission San Luis - Mission Room
- Sally Price (Independent Researcher, Florida), The Shifting Landscape of Indigenous Art
4 to 4:45 p.m. Coffee
4:45 to 6:15 p.m. Keynotes - Mission San Luis - Mission Room
Chair: Andrew Frank
- Jessica R. Cattelino (UCLA), Sovereign-Ties: Seminole Water Governance and the Everglades
- Alejandra Dubcovsky (UC Riverside), Writing the lives of Native Women in the Early South.
6:15 to 7:45 p.m. Closing reception: Open mike session—readings by authors and readers