Annual Conference 2020

VIRTUAL EVENT || NOVEMBER 4-8, 2020

Welcome from the American Society for Ethnohistory President

As you know, COVID-19 forced us to postpone the 2020 Ethnohistory conference to 2021. For this year, the program committee decided to offer our members a chance for a digital interaction that a standard conference would not allow. Thus, we have designed digital plenaries and workshops to address targeted issues related to indigenous communities throughout the globe. This format has allowed us to encourage ethnohistorical interaction between leaders of Nahua and Maya communities and Shawnee and Coharie nations and to gain insight into real time interactions between ethnohistorians in New Zealand and the United States. And the format permits us to emphasize workshops on a variety of issues related to digital scholarship and teaching.

We have all heard about and many of us have directly experienced the devastating effects of COVID-19 and the continuing violence against Black and Indigenous people. In the digital events we have scheduled, we hope to take up some of these issues by providing some ethnohistorical background to these topics, and by encouraging communication between community leaders and academics. In this, we further hope to inspire the activists that have responded to the current global events. We encourage you to participate actively in the digital program, and we hope that you will find it invigorating.

– Pete Sigal, Professor History and Gender Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, Duke University
President, American Society for Ethnohistory
Pronouns: he/him/his

You may access the plenary speakers’ full pre-recorded content below. This keynote plenary session took place on November 4, 2020.

You may access the recorded plenary session here.

“Screening Sovereignty: A Conversation with Makah Documentary
Filmmaker Sandy Osawa” Link.

  • Sandy Osaway’s film Miami Awakening Link.

“Indigenous People and the COVID-19 Pandemic,” with Miryam Yataco,
from the Peruvian Amazon, and Juanita Cabrera López, Executive Director of the International Mayan League. Link. Two accompanying photographs may be found here and here.

“McGirt and The Future of Tribal Sovereignty and Decolonization,” with
Robert J. Miller, from the Eastern Shawnee Tribe. Link.

“A Coharie Perspective on Indigenous Water Research, Education, and
Engagement in North Carolina,” with Greg Jacobs, a Coharie tribal
administrator, elder, and leader. Link.

November 5, 2020

Plenary: Authority, Interpretation, and Justice: Writing Indigenous Histories Around the Globe. You may access the recording for this session here.

November 6, 2020

Workshop: The Florentine Codex Initiative. You may access the recording of this workshop here.

November 7, 2020.

You may access the recording for the plenary on Collaborative Research in Ethnohistory below.

Video Link. Text file. Link.

Workshop: Teaching Ethnohistory

Video Link.

Program Committee

Daniel Cobb, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, co-chair

Pete Sigal, Duke University, co-chair

Nova Déjardin, Duke University, program committee assistant

Anderson Hagler, Duke University, technology adviser

Juliana Barr, Duke University

Chad Black, University of Tennessee-Knoxville

Larry Chavis, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Kathleen DuVal, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Malinda Maynor Lowery, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Michele McArdle Stephens, University of West Virginia

Theda Perdue, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Cynthia Radding, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill