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Mary Jane Wilson (Anishinaabe) wears a keffiyeh in the Winter 1985 issue of Akwesasne Notes. Call number: Ayer oversize E75 .A39
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NCAIS Graduate Student Conference
Call for Abstracts
Submission deadline: October 10, 2025
The D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies invites graduate students within the Newberry Consortium for American Indian and Indigenous Studies (NCAIS) to submit proposals for individual papers in any academic field relating to American Indian and Indigenous Studies.
To propose a paper, please submit a title and a 250-word abstract of your paper and a short bio by October 10, 2025 using this Google Form. All accepted presenters will be notified by November 2025.
The NCAIS Graduate Conference is a unique opportunity to present your work to and network with other students and faculty in the consortium. One student from each NCAIS member institution will be eligible for up to $700 of reimbursement toward their travel expenses (including hotel, flight, train, or driving/parking). If there is leftover travel funding available, it will be used to lessen the travel costs of other graduate students.
The 2026 NCAIS Graduate Conference will coincide with the second part of the 2025-2026 Indigenous Crossings workshop, which will take place at the Newberry Library February 6-7, 2026. Co-sponsored by the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University, this workshop aims to anchor visions of the past and future into a deeper planetary archive, one linked to Native nations and Indigenous communities and their historical border crossings worldwide.
If you have any questions related to the conference or would like to receive announcements and updates about NCAIS programs through the NCAIS mailing list, please send an email request to McNickle Center Program Coordinator, Sarah Jimenez at mcnickle@newberry.org.
—What's in the Archives? Settler Archives and Indigenous Knowledge
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Navajo artist Gerald Nailor paints Henry Chee Dodge into a mural in the Navajo Tribal Council House on July 22, 1943. Photo by Milton Snow. Image courtesy of the National Archives, NAID 290019730.
The application period has closed.
Dr. Jennifer Denetdale (Diné), University of New Mexico
Dr. Myla Vicenti Carpio (Jicarilla Apache), University of New Mexico
Jul 14–Aug 01, 2025
At the Newberry
This course is an exploration of the intersection of colonial archives and Indigenous knowledge and practices. Much research has interrogated archives as the site for what is “known” about Indigenous peoples throughout the world. As Edward Said argues, colonial archives are the sources used by western writers, observers, travelers, philosophers, and imperial officers of their colonial countries, among others, to structure knowledge about the “Other.” These structures of knowing have material effects and consequences that have profoundly facilitated the dispossession and disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples. Within the U.S., Indigenous peoples, especially during the era of Red Power, critiqued and challenged knowledge making of colonial archives in myriad ways, including drawing on these sources as forms of cultural revitalization, repatriation of material culture and intellectual and culture knowledge, and as sources to foster storytelling and remembering. Our work surveys definitions of colonial archives and their uses and simultaneously, examines these same archives as sites of Indigenous sovereignty and revitalization.
The NCAIS Summer Institute is a three-week-long intensive graduate course held during the summer at The Newberry Library in Chicago. Participants are provided with housing in Chicago, receive a $600 living stipend, and will be reimbursed for travel expenses up to $750. Leftover funding will be used to more fully reimburse students whose travel accommodations exceed this amount. If you have questions about the institute, please contact mcnickle@newberry.org.