{"id":473,"date":"2025-04-20T12:32:31","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T16:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/?p=473"},"modified":"2025-04-20T12:36:23","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T16:36:23","slug":"chloe-center-hosts-faculty-panel-discussion-on-global-indigenous-studies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/2025\/04\/20\/chloe-center-hosts-faculty-panel-discussion-on-global-indigenous-studies\/","title":{"rendered":"Chloe Center Hosts Faculty Panel Discussion on Global Indigenous Studies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>By <strong>Ga Eun Cho <\/strong>(PhD candidate, Political Science)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What does it mean to teach Indigenous Studies in both global and local contexts? How can global indigenous experiences inform the way we understand indigeneity in Baltimore today? On April 15, the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism hosted a panel titled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/event\/global-indigenous-studies-and-at-beyond-the-university\/\">Global Indigenous Studies and\/at\/beyond the University<\/a>\u201d to take up these questions and reflect on what Global Indigenous Studies can and should look like at Hopkins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moderated by Associate Professor <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/english.jhu.edu\/directory\/jared-hickman\/\">Jared Hickman<\/a><\/strong> (English), the panel brought together four scholars engaged in Indigenous Studies in global and local contexts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/directory\/marina-bedran\/\"><strong>Marina Bedran<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of Lusophone Literatures and Cultures, Dept. of Modern Languages and Literatures<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/emmakatherinebilski.place\/\"><strong>Emma Katherine Bilski<\/strong><\/a>, Public Historian, JHU History PhD \u201923<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/history.jhu.edu\/directory\/diego-javier-luis\/\"><strong>Diego Javier Luis<\/strong><\/a>, Rohrbaugh Family Assistant Professor of History, Dept. of History<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/compthoughtlit.jhu.edu\/directory\/brahim-el-guabli\/\"><strong>Brahim El Guabli<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor, Dept. of Comparative Thought and Literature<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The panel was conceived by <strong>Olivia Lowry<\/strong> (KSAS \u201928) <strong>and Xavier Del Cid Avila<\/strong> (KSAS \u201928) of the Critical Diaspora Studies undergraduate working group, in collaboration with the Chloe Center faculty board. It aimed to foster multifaceted engagement with Indigenous Studies at and beyond the university, particularly in Baltimore, with its own history of indigeneity, colonialism, and displacement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/history.jhu.edu\/directory\/stuart-schrader\/\">Stuart Schrader<\/a><\/strong>, director of the Chloe Center, opened the event by situating it within the broader ambitions of the Global Indigeneities track of Critical Diaspora Studies, the Chloe Center\u2019s new undergraduate major. Schrader noted that the major aims \u201cto create space for Indigenous knowledges and forms of resistance and rebellion on a global scale, without limiting them to state practices of colonization or incorporation.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the panel, the speakers first reflected on how they came to Indigenous Studies and how the meaning of indigeneity is defined, claimed, and contested across different contexts, from the 17th-century Florida to contemporary Morocco. The conversation then turned to the tensions between academia and Indigenous communities, with panelists sharing stories about the past, present, and future of that relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"330\" src=\"http:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/98\/2025\/04\/Global-Indigeneities-1024x330.jpg\" alt=\"Crowded room with panelists at table in front\" class=\"wp-image-474\" srcset=\"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/98\/2025\/04\/Global-Indigeneities-1024x330.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/98\/2025\/04\/Global-Indigeneities-300x97.jpg 300w, https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/98\/2025\/04\/Global-Indigeneities-768x248.jpg 768w, https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/98\/2025\/04\/Global-Indigeneities-1536x495.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/98\/2025\/04\/Global-Indigeneities-2048x660.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/98\/2025\/04\/Global-Indigeneities-240x77.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Jared Hickman, Emma Katherine Bilski, Marina Bedran, Diego Javier Luis, Brahim El Guabli (l-r), photo by Ga Eun Cho<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marina Bedran<\/strong> spoke about her research in Brazil. She pointed out that, in contrast to Bolivia, where over 60% of people self-identify as Indigenous, less than 1% do in Brazil. This is the result of 20th-century political efforts to homogenize and integrate Indigenous people by forcing them to &#8220;become citizens&#8221; precisely through not being Indigenous, a process of \u201cwhitening\u201d or \u201cde-Indigenizing.\u201d Despite this process, Bedran noted that the Amazon, long overlooked in anthropology, offers a critical site for thinking globally about indigeneity due to its layered relationships to nature, culture, time, and development. She emphasized art and cultural production as key media through which people grapple with what indigeneity means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From Brazil, the panel pivoted to Baltimore. <strong>Emma Katherine Bilski<\/strong>, a Hopkins PhD alum and public historian who leads a walking tour company in the city, reflected on her experience in Indigenous Studies both at and beyond Hopkins. Initially focused on studying Indigenous history in 17<sup>th<\/sup> century Florida, Bilski was drawn Baltimore\u2019s own Indigenous history when a colleague at the Center for Indigenous Health asked her to help draft a land acknowledgment for the institution. Through the project, she realized the complex Indigenous history even within Baltimore, and also realized that while land acknowledgment is important, it must be paired with meaningful commitment to the Indigenous community here and now, such as hiring and retention of Indigenous faculty and students, and basic education of people who interact with Indigenous people, such as practitioners in Public Health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet the meaning of Indigenous is far from fixed, and we must recognize its socially situated character, according to <strong>Diego Javier Luis<\/strong>, a historian of 16th- and 17th-century Latin American colonialism. Luis traced the genealogy of the term \u201cIndigenous\u201d to the Spanish colonial classification of Native Americans as \u201cIndios,\u201d a result of the early confusion by figures like Columbus, who believed he had reached India. Luis noted that this category was later applied across the Pacific to Filipinos, with real and lasting implications for social status and identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Luis offered two provocations: first, that the social construction of the category \u201cIndigenous\u201d makes it essential to ask who defines indigeneity and under what conditions; and second, that homogenizing vastly different cultures under the same label risks reproducing the imperial project of erasing difference. In further discussion, Luis also emphasized the importance of reflecting on the role of mediators in scholarship, citing the example of Elisabeth Burgos Debray\u2019s interview with Nobel laureate Rigoberta Mench\u00fa, which showed that even when one attempts to faithfully interpret the interlocutor\u2019s experience, may be unable to capture it completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An Amazigh scholar from Morocco, <strong>Brahim El Guabli<\/strong> discussed the Moroccan state\u2019s long-standing effort to define itself solely as Arab and Muslim, erasing the Amazigh population\u2019s identity and history. El Guabli explained how in his own work he documented how Amazigh people were made invisible in authoritarian transition, drawing comparisons to other displaced and disappeared populations. While cautioning against flattening Indigenous experiences, Brahim contended that \u201ccommon to all Indigenous experience is oppression,\u201d and that this shared experience makes comparative study both necessary and possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Regarding the tension between academia and Indigenous communities, El Guabli welcomed the emergence of a new generation of scholars learning Indigenous languages and the recent founding of two journals dedicated to Indigenous studies in North African Studies, a discipline that historically dismissed the topic as itself a colonial intervention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reflecting on the speakers\u2019 remarks, <strong>Jared Hickman<\/strong> pointed out that the panel was able to address questions of Indigeneity from Europe to Australia and from the Americas to Africa, as well across time periods all the way up to the present. This interdisciplinary panel thus put into practice a key insight that guided the conversation: both analytically and politically, we must speak of Indigeneities in the plural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The discussion concluded with audience questions and a collective conversation about how the Global Indigeneities track in the Critical Diaspora Studies major could be further developed. <strong>Olivia Lowry<\/strong> and <strong>Xavier Del Cid Avila<\/strong> offered a joint reflection on the event after its conclusion: \u201cWe hope this event is the first of many to promote and amplify the voices of Global Indigenous scholarship. As undergraduates of diverse backgrounds\u2014including Indigenous ones\u2014at a university that centers research and exploration at its core, we know that Global Indigenous scholarship must not be left to the margins. We hope to continue these conversations in the coming years to expand knowledge, collaborations, and activism not only within Hopkins but also in its relationships outside the university.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This panel was one of several events co-organized by undergraduate students in the Critical Diaspora Studies working group this semester. The <a href=\"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/event\/immigrant-solidarities\/\">next event<\/a> will take place on April 21, a workshop focusing on the connected histories of Mexican and Chinese immigration in the United States. It is open to JHU undergraduate students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism recently hosted a panel titled \u201cGlobal Indigenous Studies and\/at\/beyond the University\u201d to reflect on what Global Indigenous Studies can and should look like at Hopkins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":754,"featured_media":474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,46],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-events","tag-critical-diaspora-studies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/754"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/chloe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}