California Indian Studies and Scholars Conference: Reorienting Research Towards Anticolonial and Communal Futures

Caitlin Keliiaa
Feminist Studies
UC Santa Cruz

Mark Minch-de Leon
English
UC Riverside

California Indian people have known upheaval for centuries, from land-grab colleges founded on genocidal logics to disciplinary formations founded on the material theft and study of our knowledges, languages, ceremonies, images, and bodies. Responding to the long history of extraction and exploitation of our communities’ knowledges and material worlds by invaders, corrupt governments, and avaricious institutions, our project organizes knowledge production towards anticolonial Indigneous futures. We do so through the California Indian Studies and Scholars Association, a newly formed, decolonial organization consisting of California Indian scholars, artists and activists. The conference gathering of California Indian scholars from across the UC, CSU and Community College systems includes a range of community practitioners, graduate students, and faculty. Too often scholarship is produced about Native peoples; our conference supports knowledge production by California Indian people. We push through the upheaval and imagine new Indigenous futures.