Description:

The proliferation of Native Studies in the 2010s made Indigenous politics visible and increasingly mainstream. This talk, hosted by Northwestern Anthropology Professor Megan Baker, considers the trajectory of Native/Indigenous Feminisms within wider Native Studies and its present predicament with the “anti-DEI” politics that dominate US policy today. Paying particular attention to the liberalization of Native/Indigenous feminisms into reconciliationist politics underscores the need to adhere to an internationalist framework of Indigenous feminisms that challenges settler colonialism in community-specific ways. In its most community-grounded iteration, Native/Indigenous feminisms offers avenues for surviving and thinking beyond ongoing US settler colonialism that has expanded into global empire and the structures required to maintain it. 

Bio: Megan Baker (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University. Trained as a sociocultural anthropologist and tribal historian, she specializes in Oklahoma Choctaw law and history and Indigenous Southeastern material culture. Her research and teaching broadly considers the intersections of Indigenous sovereignty, economy, and history of anthropology in North America. While completing her PhD, Megan worked as a Cultural Research Associate for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma’s Historic Preservation department. There, she worked on projects involving community-engaged research, exhibition curation, collections research, archival legal research, public history, NAGPRA, and the revitalization of traditional arts like textiles and rivercane basketry.