2024 Past Events
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Friday, April 12, 2024
An electronic music performance
CCS Classroom 102 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
White People Killed Them is one of several imaginings of new designations, calamities, and celebrations by group members recorded in 2019 when we all happened to be in New Mexico. We encourage surprise inventions and innovations towards erecting, maintaining, and the defending of democratic spaces (beyond the limits of the band stand) in your community with other front line warriors. The name of the band is a group of words commonly paraphrased on many monuments across the United States.
CCS Classroom 102, April 12th, 7:00pm. Doors open at 6:30.
Limited entry is available on a first-come first-served basis, please arrive early.
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Thursday, April 11, 2024
Rethinking Place Morrison Lecture 2024
Olin Auditorium 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Scholars have been concerned either to criticize or to praise Morrison’s sparing inclusion of Native Americans in her novels. Are they beneath her notice? Or have they gone unnoticed by us? Following Morrison’s own methods in arguing that the “real or fabricated” “Africanist presence” in white American literature is crucial to writers’ “sense of Americanness,” we might pursue how the “Native American presence” works in her literature not only in historical and political terms, but also in aesthetic and cultural terms. This talk considers how, across her oeuvre and career, the Native American figure—meaning literary character; racial type; literary trope; and silhouette or profile—shapes her “sense of blackness.”
A reception catered by Samosa Shack Kingston to follow talk beginning at 4:30pm.
This event is the 2024 lecture of the Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck Toni Morrison lecture series.
Namwali Serpell is a Zambian writer and a Professor of English at Harvard University. She received a 2020 Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction, the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing, and a 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and was selected for the Africa39. Her first novel, The Old Drift (Hogarth, 2019), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction, the Grand Prix des Associations Littéraires Prize for Belles-Lettres, and the L.A. Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. It was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review and one of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of the Year. Her novel, The Furrows: An Elegy (Hogarth, 2022), was long listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the Carol Shields Award for fiction, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the California Book Award for Fiction. It was named one of the New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2022, and one of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. Her nonfiction book, Stranger Faces (Transit, 2020), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
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Thursday, April 11, 2024
Bito 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join American and Indigenous Studies and the Center for Indigenous Studies for a workshop with our guest composers and performers Raven Chacon, Marshall Trammell, and John Dieterich. Their group, White People Killed Them, is one of several imaginings of new designations, calamities, and celebrations. We encourage surprise inventions and innovations towards erecting, maintaining, and defending democratic spaces (beyond the limits of the band stand) in your community with other frontline warriors.
White People Killed Them will perform on Friday, April 12, at 7 pm in CCS Classroom 102.
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Wednesday, April 10, 2024 – Friday, April 12, 2024
Montgomery Place Estate 1:30 pm – 4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Register for timed entry here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/865614204387?aff=oddtdtcreator
Returning Home is the first small scale contemporary Native photography exhibition to take place in the Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College. The exhibition addresses long standing Indigenous child removal policies and practices of Canada and the United States, whose governments strategically implemented the kidnapping of Native children to be sent to Indian boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries to sever familial ties and dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and lifeways. By introducing the history of the United States’ settler colonial past and ongoing present alongside the works of four contemporary Native photographers—Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke(Crow))—and poet Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee), this exhibition provides narratives of resistance, resilience, dissent, subversion, memorialization, and what Anishinabe writer Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,” that disrupt historic and contemporary notions that Native peoples are helpless victims who are unfit to raise their own children – often infantilized by a paternalistic US government through colonial welfare practices. This exhibition is an intervention in a house museum whose history is intertwined with the forced removal of the Mohican peoples in early colonial New York.
Returning Home aims to highlight Indigenous representation, narrative, survivance, futurism, and resilience through contemporary Native art. The show will include pieces from the Forge Project's collection, as well as a written commission from Institute of American Indian Arts MFA Candidate Bonney Hartley. An accompanying publication will provide in-depth contextualization of land dispossession in the US, forced removal of Native peoples in New York State, and the impact of Indian boarding schools.
All events require separate registration. Exhibition viewing is not included in event registration.
Exhibition Viewing Hours:
April 6th & 7th, 1:00-5:00pm (timed entry every 15 minutes- register here)
April 10-12th, 1:30-4:00pm
Schedule of Events:
April 6th, 1:30pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley (reservation required, doors open at 1:00pm)
April 6th, 4:00pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite - registration required
April 7th, 3:00pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor's center. Register for the webinar here.
April 10th, 6:30pm: Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work & practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.
Sponsored by Hudson Valley Greenway and the Mellon Foundation, as a part of Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck.
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Sunday, April 7, 2024
Online Event 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Sponsored by Hudson Valley Greenway and the Mellon Foundation, as a part of Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck.
This event will be via Zoom, with viewing available at the Montgomery Place visitor's center. Register for the Zoom talk here.
All events require separate registration. Exhibition viewing is not included in event registration.
Exhibition Viewing Hours:
April 6 & 7, 1:00-5:00 pm (timed entry every half hour—register here)
April 10–12, 1:30–4:00 pm
Schedule of Events:
April 6, 1:30 pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley (doors open at 1pm - registration required)
April 6, 4:00 pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite - registration required
April 7, 3:00 pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor's center. Register for the zoom talk here.
April 10th, 6:30pm: Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work & practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.
Returning Home is the first small scale contemporary Native photography exhibition to take place in the Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College. The exhibition addresses long standing Indigenous child removal policies and practices of Canada and the United States, whose governments strategically implemented the kidnapping of Native children to be sent to Indian boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries to sever familial ties and dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and lifeways. By introducing the history of the United States’ settler colonial past and ongoing present alongside the works of four contemporary Native photographers—Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke(Crow))—and poet Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee), this exhibition provides narratives of resistance, resilience, dissent, subversion, memorialization, and what Anishinabe writer Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,” that disrupt historic and contemporary notions that Native peoples are helpless victims who are unfit to raise their own children – often infantilized by a paternalistic US government through colonial welfare practices. This exhibition is an intervention in a house museum whose history is intertwined with the forced removal of the Mohican peoples in early colonial New York.
Dana Claxton is a critically acclaimed artist who works with film, video, photography, single/multi-channel video installation, and performance art. Her practice investigates indigenous beauty, the body, the sociopolitical, and the spiritual. Her work has been shown internationally and is held in public, private, and corporate collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, Mackenzie Art Gallery, Audain Art Museum, Eiteljorg Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Forge Project, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery. She is professor and head of the Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory with the University of British Columbia. She is a member of Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations located in SW Saskatchewan and resides in Vancouver Canada.
Dana comments, “I am grateful for all the support my artwork and cultural work has received. I am indebted to the sun and my sundance teachings—mni ki wakan—water is sacred.”
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Saturday, April 6, 2024
Part of “Returning Home: A Contemporary Native Photography Exhibition”
Montgomery Place Estate 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Sponsored by Hudson Valley Greenway and the Mellon Foundation, as a part of Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck.
All events require separate registration. Exhibition viewing is not included in event registration.
Exhibition Viewing Hours:
April 6th & 7th, 1:00-5:00pm (timed entry every 15 minutes - register here)
April 10-12th, 1:30-4:00pm
Schedule of Events:
April 6th, 1:30pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley (doors open at 1pm - registration required)
April 6th, 4:00pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite - registration required
April 7th, 3:00pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor's center. Register for the zoom talk here.
April 10th, 6:30pm: Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work & practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.
Returning Home is the first small scale contemporary Native photography exhibition to take place in the Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College. The exhibition addresses long standing Indigenous child removal policies and practices of Canada and the United States, whose governments strategically implemented the kidnapping of Native children to be sent to Indian boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries to sever familial ties and dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and lifeways. By introducing the history of the United States’ settler colonial past and ongoing present alongside the works of four contemporary Native photographers—Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke(Crow))—and poet Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee), this exhibition provides narratives of resistance, resilience, dissent, subversion, memorialization, and what Anishinabe writer Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,” that disrupt historic and contemporary notions that Native peoples are helpless victims who are unfit to raise their own children – often infantilized by a paternalistic US government through colonial welfare practices. This exhibition is an intervention in a house museum whose history is intertwined with the forced removal of the Mohican peoples in early colonial New York.
About Cara Romero: "An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, I am a visual storyteller, activist, and mother. Born to interracial parents in LA, I grew up between the reservation and big city sprawl. I am known for dramatic fine art photography that examines Indigenous life in contemporary contexts. As an undergraduate at the University of Houston, I pursued a degree in cultural anthropology and was disillusioned by how Native Americans are portrayed in academia and media. After realizing that photographs could do more than anthropology did in words, I shifted my medium. With training in film, digital, photojournalism, editorial portraiture, and commercial and fine art photography, my work is shaped by 25 years of formal study and artistic practice. Blurring the lines between fine art and activism, I tell stories of cultural memory, collective histories, and autobiography. My work commonly explores themes of environmental racism, power and belonging of Native womxn, Native sub-pop, and mythos.
As my work continues to grow and evolve, my imagery–which ranges from pointed satire to the supernatural in everyday life — conveys the complex realities of contemporary Native peoples. Now entering my mid-career, my work has been acquired by major institutions including The Met, The MoMA, The Amon Carter, as well as the Forge Project Collection. Over the past 3 years, I have been commissioned to create monumental-scale public art including the 2019 Desert X Biennial and NDN Collective’s #TONGVALAND billboard series in Los Angeles. Since 2017, I have mentored four emerging Native American women photographers in my studio. Mother of three children, I travel between Santa Fe and the Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation, where I inherited my childhood home and maintain close ties to my tribal community and ancestral homelands through art and activism."
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Saturday, April 6, 2024 – Sunday, April 7, 2024
Montgomery Place Estate 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Register for Timed Entry
Returning Home is the first small scale contemporary Native photography exhibition to take place in the Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College. The exhibition addresses long standing Indigenous child removal policies and practices of Canada and the United States, whose governments strategically implemented the kidnapping of Native children to be sent to Indian boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries to sever familial ties and dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and lifeways. By introducing the history of the United States’ settler colonial past and ongoing present alongside the works of four contemporary Native photographers—Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke(Crow))—and poet Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee), this exhibition provides narratives of resistance, resilience, dissent, subversion, memorialization, and what Anishinabe writer Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,” that disrupt historic and contemporary notions that Native peoples are helpless victims who are unfit to raise their own children – often infantilized by a paternalistic US government through colonial welfare practices. This exhibition is an intervention in a house museum whose history is intertwined with the forced removal of the Mohican peoples in early colonial New York.
Returning Home aims to highlight Indigenous representation, narrative, survivance, futurism, and resilience through contemporary Native art. The show will include pieces from the Forge Project's collection, as well as a written commission from Institute of American Indian Arts MFA Candidate Bonney Hartley. An accompanying publication will provide in-depth contextualization of land dispossession in the US, forced removal of Native peoples in New York State, and the impact of Indian boarding schools.
All events require separate registration. Exhibition viewing is not included in event registration.
Exhibition Viewing Hours:
April 6th, 2:00-3:30pm (timed entry every 15 mins - register here)
April 7th, 1:00-5:00pm (timed entry every 15 mins - register here)
April 10-12th, 1:30-4:00pm (timed entry every 15 mins - register here)
Schedule of Events:
April 6th, 1:30pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley (reservation required, doors open at 1:00pm)
April 6th, 4:00pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite - registration required
April 7th, 3:00pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor's center. Register for the webinar here.
April 10th, 6:30pm: Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work & practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.
Sponsored by Hudson Valley Greenway and the Mellon Foundation, as a part of Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck.
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Saturday, April 6, 2024
Part of “Returning Home: A Contemporary Native Photography Exhibition”
Montgomery Place Estate 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Bonney Hartley is a ’25 MFA-Creative Writing candidate at Institute of American Indian Arts and holds an MSocSci in International Relations from University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is an enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and serves as a Tribal repatriation specialist. She is a founding member of Mohican Writers Circle and has forthcoming work in the Boundless exhibit catalogue (Smith College Mead Museum), The Last Milkweed (Tupelo Press), and North Berkshire Landscapes: A Celebration (Tupelo Press &Williamstown Rural Lands). Bonney lives within Mohican homelands in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Artist’s Statement:
My piece is offered to foreground and activate Returning Home with an archaeological reflection through layers of home, the land, inhabitation, removal, memory, and continuance.
All events require separate registration. Exhibition viewing is not included in event registration.
Exhibition Viewing Hours:
April 6th & 7th, 1:00-5:00pm (timed entry every 15 minutes - register here)
April 10-12th, 1:30-4:00pm
Schedule of Events:
April 6th, 1:30pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley (reservation required, doors open at 1:00pm)
April 6th, 4:00pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite
April 7th, 3:00pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor's center. Register for the webinar here.
April 10th, 6:30pm: Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work & practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.
Returning Home is the first small scale contemporary Native photography exhibition to take place in the Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College. The exhibition addresses long standing Indigenous child removal policies and practices of Canada and the United States, whose governments strategically implemented the kidnapping of Native children to be sent to Indian boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries to sever familial ties and dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and lifeways. By introducing the history of the United States’ settler colonial past and ongoing present alongside the works of four contemporary Native photographers—Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke(Crow))—and poet Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee), this exhibition provides narratives of resistance, resilience, dissent, subversion, memorialization, and what Anishinabe writer Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,” that disrupt historic and contemporary notions that Native peoples are helpless victims who are unfit to raise their own children – often infantilized by a paternalistic US government through colonial welfare practices. This exhibition is an intervention in a house museum whose history is intertwined with the forced removal of the Mohican peoples in early colonial New York.
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Thursday, March 14, 2024
Campus Center, Weis Cinema 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Kalen Goodluck ’16 is a Diné, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Tsimshian journalist and photographer based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, whose work focuses on Indigenous Affairs, near and far. Goodluck is a graduate of the Bard College Human Rights Program, class of 2016. kalengoodluck.com
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Friday, February 23, 2024
A Gonzaga Webinar with Dr. Christian Ayne Crouch, Dr. Beth Piatote, Julie Burelle, and Amy Pistone, moderated by Dr. Laurie Arnold
Gonzaga University The second program inspired by author and playwright Beth Piatote’s play Antíkoni considers how Native American story can inform social justice learning that equips students and institutions to move beyond land acknowledgments. Panelists will share their experiences with the study of multiple canons and how those narratives vitalize classrooms and the humanities as a whole.
Panelists: Dr. Beth Piatote (Nez Perce enrolled Colville) is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Arts Research Center at the University of California Berkeley. Dr. Julie Burelle is Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre + Dance at University of California San Diego. Dr. Christian Crouch is Dean of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of History and American and Indigenous Studies at Bard College. Dr. Amy Pistone is Assistant Professor of Classical Civilizations at Gonzaga University.
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Thursday, January 18, 2024
With the Center for Indigenous Studies
Campus Center 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Join us for an evening of warm soups inspired by Native chefs and local ingredients along with a screening of Gather, a film on the modern Indigenous food sovereignty movement. Vegan and gluten free option available.
January 18
Dinner: 5:30 pm in MPR, Campus Center
Screening of Gather: 6:30 pm in Weis Cinema, Campus Center
Gather is an intimate portrait of the growing movement amongst Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political and cultural identities through food sovereignty, while battling the trauma of centuries of genocide.
Gather follows Nephi Craig, a chef from the White Mountain Apache Nation (Arizona), opening an indigenous café as a nutritional recovery clinic; Elsie Dubray, a young scientist from the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation (South Dakota), conducting landmark studies on bison; and the Ancestral Guard, a group of environmental activists from the Yurok Nation (Northern California), trying to save the Klamath river.