Land, race, indigeneity topic of OIX conversation

Published April 1, 2021

“Land, Race and Indigeneity: Building Solidarity Practices” is the title of the next session on April 13 of the Let’s Talk About Race series presented by the Office of Inclusive Excellence.

The event, co-sponsored by the Gender Institute, will take place from noon to 1 p.m. via Zoom.

It will feature Mishuana Goeman, a Distinguished Visiting Scholar with the UB Center for Diversity Innovation, and Theresa McCarthy, UB associate professor of Native American studies, who will discuss the racialization of Indigenous peoples in North America and its effect on individuals and communities.

These ways of “seeing race” and their implementation in settler policies have profoundly shaped understandings of American Indians as political entities. By looking at some of the history and shifting notions of race over time, Goeman and McCarthy hope to advance new solidarity practices.

Goeman, a Tonawanda Band of Seneca, is professor of gender studies, chair of American Indian Studies, and affiliated faculty in critical race studies in the UCLA law school. She is also the inaugural special advisor to the University of California chancellor on Native American and Indigenous affairs.

She is the author of “Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations” (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and a co-principal investigator on two community based digital projects: Mapping Indigenous L.A (2015) and Carrying Our Ancestors Home (2019).

McCarthy is an Onondaga nation, Beaver clan citizen of Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario. She serves as associate dean for inclusive excellence for the College of Arts and Sciences.

For more than 20 years, McCarthy has worked on addressing the campus climate and retention-based concerns of Indigenous students in higher education; she has also been instrumental in launching the new Department of Indigenous Studies at UB.