Session Submission Summary

Plenary: Indigenous and Baltic Crossroads

Thu, May 26, 6:00 to 8:30pm, wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House, Meeting Hall

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Four scholars of Native American studies explore how their research might inform study of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Short Bio

Astrida R Blukis Onat was born in Riga, Latvia. She received her MA degree in anthropology at the University of Kansas in 1965. She earned a PhD at Washington State University in 1980, in anthropology with archaeology emphasis. For 29 years she taught anthropology, including Rield archaeology and ethnography, at Seattle Central College. She is the owner of cultural resource consulting firm BOAS, Inc. founded in 1982. She has directed extensive cultural resource studies throughout the state of Washington. She continues to work as expert ethnographer for two Washington tribes.

Aldona Jonaitis has written or edited 10 books on Northwest Coast Native art history. She has been professor of art, Associate Provost and Vice Provost at Stony Brook University, Vice President for Public Programs at the American Museum of Natural History and Director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North. She is now retired and working on a book about contemporary Tlingit art.

Uldis Balodis is a researcher at the University of Latvia Livonian Institute and received his Ph.D. in Linguistics (2011) from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a refugee Latvian descendant who grew up in Arizona speaking Latvian, circumstances which led to the development of his interest in endangered languages in general but more specifically in Livonian — an indigenous Finnic language of Latvia — and the Native languages of North America. Uldis has studied several Native Arizona and California languages and published a reference grammar of the Yuki language (Yuki Grammar with Sketches of Huchnom and Coast Yuki, UC Press, 2016) based on his dissertation as well as a guide to the language, culture, and history of the Lutsis, a historically South Estonian-speaking community of eastern Latvia (Lutsi kiele lementar | Ludzas igauņu ābece, UL Livonian Institute & Ludza City Main Library, 2020). He is currently working on an English translation of the Livonian-Estonian-Latvian Dictionary.

Indrek Park is a Research Associate in Linguistics at Indiana University. He studies indigenous languages in Europe, North America and Asia. He is currently working on documentation and support for the indigenous languages of America, with particular expertise in Hidatsa and Mandan. His work in establishing a Mandan language program for children was recently the topic of a widely discussed documentary film, To Save a Language (Liivo Niglas, 2020). The film will be screened at the conference on Friday, May 27, time to be announced. We hope to also recruit one or two UW scholars as discussants for that event. I am allowed to share the film with discussants at the plenary event or the screening. A trailer is available at https://youtu.be/KpUoW60Kx7c

Dr. Dian Million (Tanana Athabascan) has been teaching in AIS since 2002. Dr. Million received her Ph. D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2004. Currently Dr. Million is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of American Indian Studies and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the English Department at UW. Million’s research explores the politics of mental and physical health with attention to affect as it informs race, class, and gender in Indian Country. She is the author of Therapeutic Nations: Healing in an Age of Indigenous Human Rights (University of Arizona Press, Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies Series, 2013) as well as articles, chapters, and poems. Therapeutic Nations is a discussion of trauma as a political narrative in the struggle for Indigenous self-determination in an era of global neoliberalism. Dian Million has been part of an ongoing Indigenous conversation on theory and Native studies. Million is the author of “Felt Theory: An Indigenous Feminist Approach to Affect and History,” “Intense Dreaming: Theories, Narratives and Our Search for Home,” and “A River Runs Through Me: Theory from Life” in Theorizing Native Studies (Audra Simpson and Andrea Smith, Eds., Duke University Press, 2013). She teaches courses on Indigenous politics, literatures, feminisms and social issues.

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