Center for Indigenous Studies to Host Symposium

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON – The Bard College Center for Indigenous Studies will host its inaugural symposium on Thursday, April 25 and Friday, 26 at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The symposium includes workshops, lectures, and discussions centered around Dr. Beth Piatote’s (Nez Perce enrolled Colville Confederated Tribes) brilliant play Antíkoni, an adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone. Piatote will give her public keynote address “Antíkoni and the Question of Adaptation” on Thursday, April 25, 2:00–3:30 pm ET in Weis Cinema, located in the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College. A closing public lecture “Between the Heart and Horizon Line: Culturally Responsive Care in Collection Management” will be delivered by Yale University’s Dr. Royce K. Young Wolf on Friday, April 26, 4:30–5:30pm ET in the Bito ’60 Auditorium, located in the Reem-Kayden Center, room 103, at Bard College. All talks are open to the public and do not require registration.

Dr. Beth Piatote’s (Nez Perce enrolled Colville Confederated Tribes) play Antíkoni is from her collection The Beadworkers and was written in part while in residence as a fellow at Bard Graduate Center. Inspired by this work’s themes of possession, belonging, and inheritance, the Center for Indigenous Studies has invited speakers to discuss tribal preservation, NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), and the universality of the values that run through both Sophocles’ Antigone and Piatote’s adaptation. Invited guests include Dr. Laurie Arnold (Sinixt Band Colville Confederated Tribes), the director of Native American Studies and Professor of History at Gonzaga University; Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican), tribal historic preservation manager for the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans; Dr. Julie Burelle, performance studies scholar, dramaturg, and assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California San Diego; and Dr. Sailakshmi Ramgopal, classicist, artist, and assistant professor of history at Columbia University.

On the symposium, the Center for Indigenous Studies Curator of Public Programs Brandi Norton (Iñupiaq) writes: “To have Beth Piatote and her play Antíkoni at the center of this symposium is more than we could have hoped for. The play uses the classics as its own trojan horse; it is an invitation to examine how we as a collective can disrupt colonial practices and shift decision making. Antíkoni is the perfect material for the cross fertilizing between the classics, theater, American and Indigenous Studies and civic engagement.”
This symposium highlights the curricular mission of the Center for Indigenous Studies to support interdisciplinary work at Bard and beyond. “It is a privilege to host such a diverse and distinguished group of thinkers and artists,” says the center’s director Christian Ayne Crouch, “Antíkoni is the perfect work around which to launch the annual symposium because it showcases the dynamism of contemporary Indigenous thought, method, and practice for liberal arts education today and because, at its core, it invites collaboration.”