4:00 p.m.
Presented by the Oregon Humanities Center
Our world has become rife with peril and uncertainty. Indigenous writer Patty Krawec asks, “How do we survive everything that is happening? From climate change to polarizing politics to a seemingly endless cycle of displacement and erasure for modern-day land grabs, we live in a world that profits from instability and precarity. How do we survive? We survive not by drawing boundaries around ourselves and hoarding resources that must be expended to protect what will inevitably slip through our fingers. We survive by becoming kin. By remembering what it means to be related not only to each other but to the worlds around us. Revisiting our traditional stories, whatever those traditions may be, and re-imagining them in our contemporary world, can help us find new ways to see each other and forge the solidarities we need to survive.”
As the 2024–25 Robert D. Clark lecturer Patty Krawec will give a talk titled “Surviving Together.”
Krawec is an Anishinaabe/Ukrainian writer and speaker belonging to the Lac Seul First Nation in Treaty 3 territory Canada.
She is a founding director of the Nii’kinaaganaa (we are all related) Foundation which challenges settlers to pay rent for living on Indigenous land and disburses those funds to Indigenous people, meeting immediate survival needs as well as supporting the organizing and community building needed to address the structural issues that create those needs.
In her book, Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future (2022) Krawec critiques the harmful impact of European Christian settler colonialism on Indigenous Americans. She details Indigenous American history from the first humans to populate the Americas through the present and outlines ways in which descendants of European colonizers and Indigenous people can become ‘good relatives’.
Krawec’s talk, part of this year’s “Re-imagine” series, is free and open to the public and will be livestreamed and recorded. Please register.
Native American and Indigenous Studies Calendar
The Department of Native American and Indigenous Studies events calendar is regularly updated.
Indigenous Peoples Day
The origins of Indigenous Peoples Day date back to 1989 when the South Dakota legislature passed legislation changing the second Monday in October from Columbus Day to Native American Day, celebrating the day for the first time in 1990. The state of Oregon voted to recognize the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day in a new bill passed in 2021 by the Oregon Legislature. University of Oregon holds a tribal flag raising ceremony in the EMU Amphitheater each October.
Native American Heritage Month
Film, lectures, workshops, theater, colloquiums, panels, and gatherings happen across campus and the community throughout November.
UO Native American Student Union
NASU meets regularly at the Longhouse and holds events, speakers, and meals.
Native American and Indigenous Studies
This College of Arts and Sciences department hosts speakers, films, colloquiums, and other events.
Mother's Day Powwow
This annual event takes place over Mother's Day weekend in May on campus. 2018 marked the 50th year and the powwow was honored with an Oregon Heritage Tradition designation from Oregon State Parks.
Native American Strategies Group
This group is a volunteer coalition of faculty, staff, administrators, students, alumni, and community members who meet to communicate, plan, and facilitate a holistic vision of scholarship and service for Native students and Native American and Indigenous studies on campus. They meet on the first Friday of the month, noon-1:30 p.m. in the Longhouse.
Native American Law Student Association
NALSA holds occasional events.
Events subject to change.