Seminar

Many Returns—as its optative title implies—takes up questions around restitution and rematriation, or more specifically, land back and return from Indigenous perspectives, from Turtle Island to Palestine. Considering return as a reparative and corrective mode of relation to the land, the program speaks to severed connections under continued colonial and settler control, while revealing the multiple and layered forms of rematriation that resistance ushers. Sharing a range of strategies, from the poetic to the insurgent, the program balances the urgencies of the present—the right of return for refugees and displaced peoples—with ancestral time and the return of land management and environmental stewardship practices to Indigenous peoples. 

Palestinian artist Vivien Sansour shares the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library project, which seeks to preserve and restore heritage and threatened seed varieties, Indigenous Palestinian farming practices, and the cultural stories and identities associated with them from colonial erasure and environmental change. Indigenous Yaqui and Jewish multidisciplinary artist Tehila speaks to her artistic practice as a Water Protector and Land Guardian and about her forthcoming book on Indigenous land relationships and Indigenous womens’ resilience, radiance and rising up. Krystal Two Bulls (Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne), Honor the Earth Executive Director, speaks to her organizing and activist work protecting environmental rights and lands of Indigenous people through Land Back and educational initiatives. This seminar is co-sponsored by The Tishman Environment and Design Center and the Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management program at The New School.

This program builds on Seminar 6: Indigenous Cultural Revitalization: Rematriation and Preservation, organized with Borderlands Curatorial Fellow Larissa Nez (Diné).